All Star Illustration Break Down 2021.

LauraA

@norman-morana Ah, now I totally see it! I love the addition of the light posts, by the way. It almost looks like they're getting lost in fog.

Thanks for doing this. I love your work!

aurelia

@norman-morana said in All Star Illustration Break Down 2021.:

Through almost all of the processes I'm zoomed out on the canvas and rarely ever zoom in to draw anything.

Congratulations on winning the All-Star!! Your work is always so amazing! Your imagination is at another level. And thank you for sharing your process. I've learnt quite a lot of good tips.

I heard a lot the teachers saying not to zoom in too much.

It's funny. I thought I didn't have this problem. Until I really paid attention to the size of my piece in the recording. It's like 20% zoom in Photoshop.

I probably zoomed in around 70%-80% while painting. Can I ask how zoomed out are you when painting yours? Is 20-30% a good number?

Norman Morana

Hi @aurelia thank you, I'm glad you've found this helpful!

There isn't really one answer for how zoomed in our out you should be. I wouldn't focus on the percent. That will all change depending on your screen size and canvas size. For instance, my canvas is built to 16.5" x 20.5" at 300 dpi. The scale percent is very small to see the whole image.

For different stages you'll probably want a different zoom percent. When thumbnailing, color, and initials lay ins for shapes and final color, I have it so I can see the whole canvas. This is because I want to see how the marks I'm making will effect the whole image. I'm also keeping in mind how most people will view the image. I really only zoom in further when I have to. I probably zoom in about as much as you see in the giants head close up, above in my first post. That would be when drawing faces or other small details. Same when drawing the people with the lantern. I will also keep zooming out to see how the new marks are effecting the image. I hope that gives you some idea?

Something cool to check out to get you in the mindset might be some impressionist paintings. Degas or Monet for example. When you look closely at their works it can be messy and sometimes look like nonsense squiggles, but when you stand 10 feet away, the whole image comes together. I think most art is meant to be viewed from a slight distance. This will change for picture books or phones, where people's eye will only be a few feet from the image. The scale might be similar to the impressionist paintings example, though.

aurelia

@norman-morana Thank you for the answer. This is really interesting, I haven't looked at the fine art enough to really appreciate them. You mentioned impressionism, according to the definition of Wikipedia : they portrayed overall visual effects instead of details. I can see your work has this resemblance.

Hopefully i'll be "cured" from the tendency to get too detailed and look more at the big picture.