Friday, January 22, 2010

Dragon Head Video


A half hour of work compressed into 5 minutes.

I pick a mid tone color for the back ground. Lay in a soft rough shape with a darker tone. I vary the dark tone between warm and cool darks. This adds some color variety. Even though this image is essentially monochromatic, monochromes are really boring by themselves, so varying the color makes the image much more interesting to look at. This dark shape hopefully conjures up some idea of what I want to draw. When in doubt I fall on my backup, a dragon. So now I have an idea. I lay down a rough highlight shape. Now I have a better sense of what the shapes are and can begin refining. As I carve into the values I constantly pick new color from my image. Because I used the soft brush to begin my shape there is a wide range of value and color to choose from without much effort. I pull darks into lighter areas, pull lights into darker areas, and am conscious to do this several times as I come around the form. A deep dark added to a bright light will be way too much contrast. By picking new values as I go from one value to the next I ensure a subtler transition between values and details. If an area I'm painting becomes too uniform I take the soft brush and hit a wide area with dark or light. This brings values in an area together and also pulls or pushes the form for more dimension.

That's a mouthful!

I'm trying to pay more careful attention to what I do as I'm doing it. Writing things down is great to help me remember what I've done.

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