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Thurnip's paintings and stuff


Thurnip

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Yo dudes, how are you doing?

I'll try to pratice more often, to improve painting and drawings skills :)

So, im going to drop the results here and i would enjoy critics and comments.

 

I searched for some National geographic images-tumblr, and i found this cool img.

Took me about 2 hours, and i made it using a simple brush with little texture on it.

 

Reference

speed_00.jpg

 

Process1

http://thur.dreamhosters.com/labs/speed_01.jpg

 

Process2:

http://thur.dreamhosters.com/labs/speed_05.jpg

 

final

speed_06.jpg

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cool.... thanks for this feedback Em!

At first I thought it would be a good idea to use only one brush, a simple one, as an exercise, and then try to solve all shapes with it... Do you (guys) think is a good strategy? Probably is not good idea for time sake.

 

Definitely i'll use different brushes in future :)

Edited by Thurnip
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A few things:

 

The color of the ice wall compared to the rest is unnatural. Desaturate it so it fits with the other colors in the image

 

The clouds look very peaceful and not very menacing - you can make the fog and the clouds merge to become more of this mistful/mysterious entity.

 

The edge of the wall needs to be more jagged and sharp. The wall is a dangerous object, make it look dangerous by adding unappealing shapes associated with danger.

 

This will greatly help your composition and make it seem more like the dangerous place the original presents it to be.

 

A final point would be to make the ship look like its closer to the wall (once again, emphasize the danger).

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I really like your paiting Thurnip. I agree with some of the previous comments, especially the ice-blue looks to be from an highlight marker. But picking it up just as an exercise, it really has the same atmosphere of the original picture... read: not everything should necessary be dangerous to look good (so long that in Feng Zhu design school they forbid the drawing of guns, except when explicitly assigned – "it's easy to make something look good with guns on it").

 

Same for texture and materials, how realistic the painting must be depends on the target, imo (ie: stylized game vs realistic). Also, details can always been added, another tip from Feng is "the painting must always be in a deliverable state (so don't spend all your time in detailing just one area)".

 

In conclusion, i think it would really be great exercise to take this stage and see how can you turn it in a different scene from the one in the original pic, so like Sentura says, making it menacing.

Edited by blackdog
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I didn't mean it should look dangerous to look GOOD, I meant it should look dangerous because that's what the aim of the image is. Having something look dangerous just because people think dangerous looks "good" is a terrible thought. You want to emphasize the properties of whatever you are painting to the point where they create an effect. More than 50% of the canvas real estate is taken up by the ice wall, which shows it is massive - and judging by the proximity and size of the ship in contrast, it creates the dynamic of imminent danger for the ship crashing into the wall. So if you use round or soft shapes for the edge of the wall, it will counter this, because then people are more likely to think of it as a nonthreatening surface.

 

I'm currently writing about art and use of art components in this sense (among other things), and in the interesting design resources thread there is a link to the principles of neuroaesthetics, which I have been using as one of the main sources of inspiration and theory. I suggest you take a look at it.

Edited by Sentura
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in the interesting design resources thread there is a link to the principles of neuroaesthetics, which I have been using as one of the main sources of inspiration and theory. I suggest you take a look at it.

I've downloaded a couple of pdfs from there, haven't read any of the material provided... it's in the reading list btw!

Thanks for the heads up.

 

Anyways, I completely agree on the theory you explained... it's just I disagree about the aim of the painting. I mean, how do you know? :) There's no assignment or brief shared by Thurnip; the picture doesn't transmit danger to me, as an exercise it seems a good reproduction of the original. Sure, if he said "i wanted to render a dangerous scene" i would totally agree with you!

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yo dudes! thanks for the feedback. As you spend time providing me feedback, i needed time to respond to them properly. So I'll do it now. q-¬

 

@sentura the color of ice is more vivid indeed. after finished the painting, i used saturated it more because i felt it was kinda boring... at the time looked cool to me, but yeah, is more unnatural, stylized. Maybe i should have saturated all the comp.

 

I don't believe this is menacing to me. Even in the original pic, this is more like a giant monolith to be explored and stuff... Huge, massive, but not a treat. Like a snorlax sleeping. But i think this matter really subjective, right?

 

@cincinnati maybe...... i should saturate all the comp around, or desaturate the ice. The main problem is that it's not fitting, right?

 

@blackdog this "the painting must always be in a deliverable state" is veeeeery interesting. I have the habit of working on a area/theme on the comp and when i got bored, move to other part of the work... I'll try to keep this tip in mind :)

 

About your conclusion: can be a good idea! try to actually create/translate something, not only reproduce.

 

====

 

That's it. I'm not planning to come back too much on the same comp.   I think its less frustrating to me, try a different paintings in a small time spam. Maybe i come back on some works and try to redo them or attach ideas (make things threaten, darken, etc)

Again, thanks for the comments, im reading them with open mind :)

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tuesday i started another study

reference

speed_ter_00.jpg

I started to paint this scene and then figured out its far more complex than i imagined lol ! the bridge, perspective and a lot of tones and colors... after a few hours, i went to bed frustrated.

What was to be a fast study, took hours and it wasnt fun stuff...

on thursday, i just grayscaled everything, so i could eliminate the hue difficulties in the process, and see better tones and the contrast.

speed_ter_grey_06.jpg

still, the main lesson on this study is... choose the reference well :v

Comments and critics are welcome :)

Edited by Thurnip
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As far as copying the reference and looking the part, it's pretty accurate. Something I would probably have considered would be the holes in the bridge railing, but that's nitpicking really.

My personal opinion is that with landscape pieces like these you usually want some strong focus on a particular contrast - something that is interesting. The photo makes this happen with the overexposure of lights on a road, but that doesn't translate well into a painting. Maybe you could improvise and making something interesting happen on the road?

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On the last one, what Sentura said. Add for example a checkpoint, do you remember those sentinel towers in HL2? Or maybe add a bottom part and have an airplane/spaceship passing underneath. Etc.

Without color is totally unclear the scene is populated, those car lights look like snow to me.

 

I wasn't referring to Thurnip's recreation, I was referring to the original. But even so, looking at the original image, was your thought ever that it was supposed to be a peaceful image?

Thurnip answered already and i agree with him. I don't want to appear like those who contradict for the sake of it, but to me the iceberg picture looks "breathtaking", which doesn't mean scary nor peaceful. I dunno, it is maybe because I know everything's fine, because you don't get that close if you are not sure you are safe... i was in similar situations: sailing that close to huge rock cliffs (i've been lucky enough to navigate a huge chunk of the Mediterranean coast with my parents during summer vacation on our small boat :) ).

 

@cincinnati maybe...... i should saturate all the comp around, or desaturate the ice. The main problem is that it's not fitting, right?

 

That's it. I'm not planning to come back too much on the same comp.   [...]

I think it's totally fine to work on as many pieces... the important thing is to learn something every time. There was another concept I found original and important watching a tutorial one time: you don't have to get attached to your stuff, the guy showed that after making a complex study... he deleted the file.

 

As per the saturation argument (a) looks perfect for a glacier scene (b) ties well in another tip from, sorry i'm a broken record, Feng: he shows that he uses a white layer in "Luminosity" to switch to a grayscale painting to always keep values to the right amount, making sure things are lit properly. And that's a general principle, i have used it for blocking out a website, a teacher I got suggested to do so. You can even work in greyscale and then color the thing.

If you have some time to spare, i really suggest you to follow FZDSchool YT channel and watch the earlier lessons because these concepts are repeated over and over, while seeing a professional work and explain many different techniques.

Edited by blackdog
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@sentura i made some holes for the bridge in illustrator, to try to apply them on the bridge later, but at some point i just gave up on this... Looking now, probably the holes would help give the scale and help perspective sense... hummm.

 

Good points! without color, all the coolness is lost indeed... the gorgeous car lights just vanished because of greyscale and/or bad representation...

 

@blackdog

definitely i'll take a look on this stuff on yt :) thanks for the tip...

my intention was to greyscale the stuff, tune all the tones and the recolor, but... but probably i'll just move on for one less traumatic painting :v Maybe i'll start on greyscale and them color it from the beginning...

 

When sentura said about trying to get things more interesting on the road, i just remembered that scene from

neon genesis evangelion

anime, when there's a lot of tanks facing an enemy on the horizon... i googled it and found that the env is similar, so i made a giant alien-ish robot on horizon and planted some tanks on the road. Added some smoke to communicate that attack is is going on :)

 

speed_ter_grey_08.jpg

 

anime reference

http://www.wallmay.net/thumbnails/detail/20121023/neon%20genesis%20evangelion%20tanks%201920x1080%20wallpaper_www.wallpaperhi.com_58.jpg

 

smoke reference

http://darkroom.baltimoresun.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/REU-LIBYA-EXPLOSION_.jpg

 

 

(oh! and... when i was planting the tanks, i remembered about Fang zu and how i was using guns to make the stuff look cool hahah)

Edited by Thurnip
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