Look for an opportunity to create a white path into the composition and link the whites into a single shape. If you allow the whites to separate each one could fight against the viewer's attention, and the composition could lack unity. I am not necessarily talking about the color white. I am talking about lightning the values you use, to create a viewer's path, to bring the eye to your focal point.
Once you have your white and mid tone paths, you can complete the composition framework by adding darks. The darks do not need to create a single path. The reason is that the eye seems to connect darks even if they are not literally connected.
A major consideration is the light source. The old rule of thumb used in architectural perspectivist is that the light source should come from over the left shoulder. This configuration puts one face of the building in bright light and the other in shadow, which makes it easier for the viewer to understand the structure.
What does color mean, and how does it make you feel? I once heard that a color doesn't exist, unless it has a name. A rendering or illustration should tell a story. Do you want to make your viewer feel happy or sad, calm or excited, color can help you accomplish your goal of telling a story.
HOW THE COLOR GREEN AFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
HOW THE COLOR BLUE EFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
HOW THE COLOR YELLOW AFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
HOW THE COLOR ORANGE AFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
HOW THE COLOR RED AFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
HOW THE COLOR PURPLE AFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
HOW THE COLOR PINK AFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
HOW THE COLOR BROWN AFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
HOW THE COLOR GRAY AFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
HOW THE COLOR BLACK AFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
HOW THE COLOR WHITE AFFECTS US PHYSICALLY
To check your rendering for balance, you can squint your eyes, which helps you concentrate on shapes and lines, avoiding all the detail. Your rendering will never look complete, until you achieve balance in your composition. To show you the value of squinting, here is a squint/spatial illusion
On a close-up view, you can see on the left face, an angry man and on the right face, a woman with a neutral facial emotion. But further back, the faces change expression and even genders! if you squint, blink, or defocus, an angry man should substitute for the face of the woman, and the left angry face should not be angry anymore.
This impressive illusion created by Dr. Aude Oliva and Dr. Philippe G. Schyns, illustrates the ability of the visual system to separate information coming from different spatial frequency channels. In the right image, high Spatial Frequencies (HSF) represent a woman with a neutral facial expression, mixed with the low spatial frequency (LSF) information from the face of an angry man. On the left, the face of the angry man is represented in fine details whereas the underlying female face is made of blur only ("blobs")
Many times the most captivating characteristics about a subject is the feeling invoked in the viewer. For example, the energy of a bustling street scene or the serenity of a peaceful meadow can be captivating. So how do you translate the mood of the scene to the screen? In general, warm colors portray a sunny, upbeat mood, whereas cool colors seem more calm or mysterious. For example, a sunlit field of bright yellow flowers seems cheerful and invigorating, where is a quiet harbor blanketed in blue-gray fog appears serene and still.
In this rendering, of an unused roof deck, I wanted to create a mood of a hot summer day. The building owner wanted to convert the roof deck into a patio space. The concept was to convert a cold space into a warm space, which I accomplished by using color.
Here, is the same rendering, only using cool colors, to create a more mysterious mood. I created a night scene, but I changed the ambient light, and kept the warmth contrasts of the artificial lights.
So, as you can see, just by the use of color I can change the mood and invoke a whole different feeling.
Detail is a imperative to any well-finished rendering. If overdone, however, detail can be a detraction. Too "busy" a rendering is bewildering, and its main purpose is smothered in a welter of minutia.
A talented artist recognizes this fundamental fact: what is left out of a rendering can be as significant as what is put-in.
Study of photography with a wide range of tonal value will help you understand how and where detail should be played down or limited. Notice its tendency to disappear in bright sunlight or dark shadow, how obvious it becomes in middle value areas, how much vegetation is massed together rather than seperation in isolated clumps. You will also learn much by examining the work of other illustrators
An illustrator has a natural tendency to include too much in a composition. When this fact is clear, he has an equally natural reluctance to remove portions of a rendering over which has worked so diligently. Renderings are often improved significantly by some judicious "cropping" - removing areas that detract from the center of interest or interferes with the effectiveness of the composition.
None of the rendering actually needs be cut away or destroy. It may be crop differently (non-destructively) for another use, so keep the entire rendering and crop in a non-destructive way.
Whats its color is an image-color processing utility that will evaluate an image and give you the image's primary and complementary dominant colors of an image, how many visually unique colors are in an image, and the top ten visually unique colors in an image. Extremely useful when creating any type of designs around an image. The more colorful the image, the better the results. Results will display your image on the best suited background for that image... http://whatsitscolor.com/
To create the most pleasing shade and shadow pattern, light intesity should be greatest on the main facade (or facade at the least angle to the picture plane). Secondary or receding walls receive less intensity and are lightly shaded.
Cast shadows should be deep enough to strengthen and emphasize the eve line, but not so deep as to overpower the architectural design with a too-heavy effect.
To decide whether a painter is visual narrative, you should ask yourself three questions:
If the answer to any of these questions is "yes," then the artist is probably telling a story.
How do you read these stories? To read a narrative painting, you don't necessarily start to the left and move toward the right the way you read a book. Instead you begin at the focal point {the place where the artist leads your eye). The focal point may be the beginning of the story - but it can also be The climax.
One of the most anticipated successful of all renderings is an internal frames. As with any established rendering formulas, it contains real risks of overuse, and has the making of a cliche', but these dangers are the only evidence of the fact that it does work. It simply needs a little more care and imagination when it is being applied.
The appeal of frames within frames is partly to do compositions, but a deeper level it relates to perception. Frames within the render have the effect of puling the viewer through; in other words, they are a kind of window.
On a purely graphics level, frames focus the attention of the viewer because they establish a diminishing direction from the outer render.
If the subject is oviously in motion, and its direction is plain, then the natural tendency is to have it entering the frame rather than leaving it.
The most straightforward rendering environment is one single, clear subject filling your view port. Before you fill your view port, with one single image, you should consider if the surroundings are critical to the view, or its design. If you need to fill your frame right up to the border, with a single subject, you might run the risk that the eye may feel uncomfortable concentrating on points falling particularly near the edge of the render. If often needs - or at least benefits from - a little free area around a subject to be able to move without feeling constricted.
The Ames RoomThis room was devised by the artist Adelbert Ames, Jr., to show just how deceptive the geometry of three-dimensional objects can be. We think that we see a rectangular room inhabited by two abnormal people; but the room is not rectangular, and its planes - walls, floor, and ceiling - are not set at right angles to each other. It is actually a six-sided irregular construction with sloped floor, ceiling, and rear wall, inhabited by people of normal size.
Our binocular vision means that we see horizontally. Fatter frames are the most natural image format. In other words, they are the least intrusive and most accommodating to the eye. The naturalness of horizontal vision reinforces the eye's desire to scan from side to side, and a corresponding reluctance to scan up and down. There is an assumption that the bottom of the picture is a base; a level surface on which other things can rest. Most things are longer in one direction than in another, and it is natural to align the main axis of an image with the longer sides of the rectangular frame.
A square format render often suffer from lack of direction. Patters and other formless arrangements fit well into a square frame because the frame has no directional emphasis - very few renders lend themselves well to square compositos.
The question of which aspect ratios are perceived as the most comfortable is a study in its own right, but in principle, there seems to be a tendency towards longer horizontally, but less elongated for vertically composed images. The most common render is the proportions 3:2, but it does depend on the subject you are rendering.
Artist's look at the world in a different way, at least I do, and so should you. We tend to observe every thing we see, make mental notes for reference, and use what we take for guidance on our next project. Although not as good as our minds eye, here are some links to resources I sometimes use for reference, and I would like to share with you. 3D.SK
Taking your own photographs is the easiest way to get references of a subject. They're also essential if it's a subject you're not going to encounter again easily.
Take at least half-a-dozen photographs, none of which need be the perfect. You'll use these together to reconstruct the element in your mind's eye. On any given project I may use hundreds, if not thousands, of reference photos. With today's drive capacity you shouldn't have a problem building up a very robust library of custom reference photos.
Almost everything has more than one value. Depending on the light source, most things have some areas that are very light and others that are quite dark.
If you look closely at a mound of dark earth, you notice that it has several different values. If a fresh layer of snow covered this mound of earth, there would still be lots of values. When you can see a range of different values you can draw your subject in the third dimension.
Squinting to see values and simple shapes
Seeing values is key to drawing in the third dimension. Many artists can visually simplify complex drawing subjects by simply squinting their eyes. Squinting helps you screen out details and see simple values and shapes. When you can see the shapes created by different values, you can draw your subject more accurately.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could simply press a button in the middle of your forehead and magically transform the world from full color to gray values? This ability would certainly make drawing a lot easier. Thankfully, simply squinting your eyes can help you develop this skill.
If your subject has, for example, light-pink and dark-red stripes, seeing two different values in the two colors is easy. You simply draw the dark red as a dark value and the pink as a light value. But, some objects have colors that seem to be the same in value. When this is the case, you simply have to rely on your own discretion to decide which colors should be drawn lighter or darker than others. If your subject has stripes of dark green and dark red, you need to pick one to be a lighter value. Otherwise, you end up drawing a solid tone instead of stripes.
Almost every photo has a situation in which a colored halo (usually purple, green or red) is apparent around certain elements of a scene. This sort of optic anomaly, more commonly known as color fringing, is known as chromatic aberration. We, as photo real computer illustrators, can use this effect to help us fake reality. Chromatic aberration is an optical phenomenon in which the camera lens is unable to focus the different wavelengths of light on the same plane (in this case the image sensor) in order to produce a correct image, resulting in a halo or fringe around objects.
Caution! use sparingly, it is suppose to be very subtle, if done correctly.
"S" composition, the subjects create a shape similar to the letter S. This composition formula reflects gentleness, fluidity, and gracefulness. The curve of pathways, rivers, or lines of trees works well in this composition.
In an "O" composition, the object forms a kind of "O" shape on your screen. The circular movement of the "O" keeps the viewer's eye inside the drawing.
The opening of an "O" composition is a good place to draw your focal points. To find the perfect place for your local points, draw several objects, value masses, and/or lines to form your "O". Then place your focal points within that circle
