Group run through creative environment design week 2 art and feedback

[ArtofAleksey]

Ughh this was a little rough to get through for me but I did it. Environment is not my forte... yet

[braden H]

@Aleksey Wow, man! That bar's gettin' higher and higher.

Gonna have to get off my butt and do some of these

[ArtofAleksey]

@Braden-Hallett better do some work or I’m gonna leave ya in the dust

[burvantill]

@Aleksey wow you picked some pretty tough environments. Way to challenge yourself!
I love Jeremy Fenske... not in a creepy way. I just follow him around/ I mean on IG.

[ArtofAleksey]

@burvantill yes he’s so good! Yes that is an acceptable form of stalking

Thanks. If I wanna get good at this I gotta challenge myself.

[murielle]

@Aleksey These are really good. Very hard and detailed environments :smiling_face_with_open_mouth_cold_sweat:

While writing this review I realize you probably limited yourself to 3 colors. That might be the cause of what I'm going to mention below. I remember Will Terry saying something about limiting yourself to only 3, but I found it was to little for this exercise. So I also used white for the highlight and black for the darkest parts.

It's the highlights that I'm missing in some of your pieces, which make the focal point disappear.
If I give numbers to your images
1 . 2 .
3 . 4 . ....
In that case the 3rd one with the castle, it has a yellow glow behind it. Which makes the tower the focal point of the image. I miss that in your value version. I would put a little white around the top of the castle and see if that makes a difference.

The same goes for number 10. I feel the house and the street should be lighter than the dark part of the background. You could put in the white highlight at the edge of the building and the street.

(I'm currently at work so I can't edit the image, let me know if you don't understand )

[ArtofAleksey]

@murielle i see what you’re saying, you don’t need to do a drawover I’m gonna keep this in mind for the next batch. im gonna do this exercise at least 2 more times.

For the highlights though I don’t know if I wanna put highlights because i was trying to see if I could rely on my silhouettes more. Because if I can communicate the shapes without the highlights I would be very happy. I really liked the silhouette exercises from last week and it made me realize that approach helps me with so many issues I’ve been facing so I’m gonna try to experiment more.

[ArtofAleksey]

@murielle i really thought about what you said and about highlights and really tried to restrict myself further with these next few.

I had to ask how would I know there is a highlight on something, and reaized that values are relative, and contrast is what really makes it stand out. So i only used 3 values, no matter what, no white nor black. I think the fact that these were from a cartoon (steven universe, amazing cartoon with a great story and art btw) made it easier to try this out. So thank you

The next one i think will be interiors. I really stink at interiors.

[Heather Boyd]

@murielle looks like fun fun fun!

[Heather Boyd]

@Aleksey look fabulous

[JerrySketchyArt]

Exercise 5

[Heather Boyd]

Which video talks about Exercise 5? I am currently working through the Reference video.

[braden H]

@Heather-Boyd They go through ALL the work books starting at about 50 minutes into reference

[Heather Boyd]

@Braden-Hallett I stopped at 48:45 what timing I have lols

[JerrySketchyArt]

Decided to redo these. Wanted to try that style with more detail, but I really prefer my thumbnails to be less specific. This fits me better:

[ArtofAleksey]

Ok my last one for the exterior environment studies. I admit i zoomed in a bit because i wanted to see how far i can push the contrasts with only 3 grays. I did use white for that one with the sun, i didnt know how else to solve that. I’ll do interiors tomorrow

[murielle]

@JerrySketchyArt Interesting take on this exercise. I never would have thought to go abstract like this.

[murielle]

@Aleksey Admit it... you're addicted to this exercise :smiling_face_with_open_mouth_closed_eyes:

[braden H]

@JerrySketchyArt Cool, man Very 'framed ink'!

[Erin.Cortese]

Whoo, these were tough but I learned sooo much! I decided to go in a different direction with these and really focus on values and shape - almost like a master study in thumbnails. ***I had to update this because I just realized the exercise is literally titled “Master Studies” - I thought Master Studies were supposed to be detailed. Anyways, I went with detailed!

I am so glad I did because I learned so much about how the artists use values to visually organize the composition and draw attention to certain objects. At that size, everything is a random shape and value and it was really neat to see how the values literally lead your eye through the composition and give the piece balance. It made me realize that very little is random, and these artists are making conscious choices for every single value and shape relationship! I also learned a lot about my own process and bad habits - to pull these off in this detail I had to begin with large shapes and work my way to finer details later (which my brain always fights), and l discovered why it is easier to work from back to front like Disney artist Laura Price does with her compositions.

*I worked out of order, so I labelled the order that I completed these in.