Hi everyone! I want to show you a process that will help you build your design,
lighting and value skills all at once. I'm starting out here with just two
values: a dark value for the shadows and a light value for the light. I'm thinking
about the overall geometry of this character's head that I'm designing; it's
a very basic calculation to start with. The planes of her head that face the
light directly (the light is coming from the upper-right), those will be assigned
the light value. And the plains of the head that don't face the light, they will
remain in the dark that I've already toned the canvas with. The brush I'm
using has a little bit of texture to it, but I'm not thinking about edges or
texture or brushwork or anything like that right now. I just chose a brush that
feels controllable. And that's important because what I'm doing right now is I'm
drawing! Drawing with shapes of light. Using only two values - one for the light
one for the shadow - frees up some bandwidth in your brain. Bandwidth that
you can now use exclusively for the task of designing shapes. After all, your
shapes are pulling double-duty. They have to describe the three-dimensionality of
your subject, as well as look good on the canvas two-dimensionally. So despite this
stage appearing simple, it's actually quite demanding. I've been a teacher for
10 years now, and I'll tell you this is where people struggle the most. Including
me. I mean, I'm constantly refining my drawing here, and I will only move on
when I feel like I've satisfied that dual criteria. When you study other
artists work, try and look for how they're using the basic language of
shapes of light and dark to communicate. Underneath someone's style and all the
bells and whistles that goes into art, every painter must use this visual
language to build their pictures. And if you want to be a good painter, you have a
responsibility to also become good at this. Using this simplified approach I
love how quick it is to change the form, change the light, change the design. Now,
in terms of getting acquainted with shapes that are true to life,
I recommend ... studying from life. The live model is good, but you can also use like
the Asaro Head here. I have one of these in my studio which
helps me create all kinds of reference. Anyway, my shape language has evolved
into this kind of pointy theme, which makes me think of an elf. So yeah, I can
roll with that, let's make her an elf! Here's the result of step one. And just
to recount: we have used two values. An Average Light and an Average Shadow. OK,
so what many people will try and do at this stage is go to work on blending the
edge between light and shadow. And while that can work sometimes ... there is a whole
category of value responsible for this task.
It's called 'Halftone.' Let me show you halftones using this 3D program. I have
a very basic object here made of two planes. These planes are currently
oriented the same way in space and they're being lit by this light. And this
orange line shows you clearly the angle the light is coming in from. Now, these
two planes get the same value because they're facing the same way in relation
to the light source. if I took this plane and changed its angle dramatically, it no
longer faces the light and therefore it's in shadow. These are the same two
values we just used with our character. But let me undo that. I want you to look
at the value change *before* this thing gets to shadow. And as you probably
guessed, it gets progressively darker the more the angle turns away from the light.
These are called halftones. And I'd say right about here is the darkest halftone
before it plunges deeply into shadow. It's important to understand that
halftone values exist in the light family. These two planes are still both
being hit by the light source despite being at different angles from it. So as
painters, what we want to do is keep our halftone values close to the average
light. Even our deepest halftone - this one here - should be closer to the average
light value then to the average shadow value. This will ensure we keep our light
and shadow families separate, which is something I really recommend when it
comes to painting believable light. So let's now apply some halftones to our
character! I think you can see here how understanding the planes of the head is
really, really helpful for this process! What I'm doing here is kind of taking
internal angle measurements, and assigning various halftone values to
different planes. Here's the Asaro Head again, lit in a similar way. This is a
selection of planes in halftone, but ones that have different angles. And here are
their relative values. So unlike average light and average shadow, where I just
picked a single value to represent each one, halftones can be a *series* of values.
The other thing I'm doing for the first time in this painting is I'm using soft
edges to blend between various halftones. Also
to blend halftones with the average light. I can do that because these values
are all part of the light family and soft edges help to describe subtle
directional changes within a family. Here's a black and white close-up of
John Singer Sargent's 'Madame X.' She's mostly in light, which means the modeling
is mostly done with average light and halftone. Sargent had an impeccable
ability to control halftones, which is one of the reasons he's so revered
amongst modern painters. Halftones can be difficult to paint well, but as a
reminder, it'll really help to keep their values close together, and as a whole,
keep your half tones closer to the average light. So here's the end of step
2. We now have average light, average shadow, and of course, halftones. Alright
let's jump over to the shadow family now. Shadows in real life are illuminated by
ambient light. That is light bouncing around the environment. I have a two-part
lecture about ambient light on my channel already, so if the concept of
ambient light is new to you, please go check that out! As for this painting,
imagine the basic planes of the head. Something like this. What I like to do is
choose an overall direction that's gonna get the most ambient light. I will
choose the planes that point upward. It's a safe choice because often a lot of
ambient light does come down from above and when it does it'll mostly strike the
planes that face upward. The first thing I'll do is select the shadows and then
hide that selection, so that when I'm painting I'm only affecting the shadow
family. So I'm gonna go for some of those upward facing planes first, as well as
any planes that I feel would be getting a lot of bounce light. For instance her
left eye socket there's a lot of direct light hitting the flesh and bouncing
around there so I think that eye socket would be lighter than her right eye
socket. You can think of reflected light values as kind of like the inverse of
halftone values where halftone values are kept close to the average light, I
recommend keeping reflected light close to the average shadow. Again, this will
ensure that our lights and shadow families stay separate. Now, the planes
that don't face up, like the jaw for instance, will still get some reflected
light ... just not as much. Reflected light is also like halftones in the sense
that you can have a few different values, often with soft edges to handle the
transitions. I ended up with something like this. And, of course, we'll update our
value list to include the Reflected Light category. Next up is something
called 'Ambient Occlusion.' When it comes to ambient occlusion, you're looking for
the deepest spaces in the head. So, for instance, I'll trace a line over the
surface of the head. That's the side of the head, which doesn't have a whole lot
of directional change to it. But when we get to the jaw here, it turns sharply in,
and then meets the neck. This area here is one of these deep spaces I'm talking
about. It stands to reason that less ambient light is going to be able to
affect that area just because it's harder to get to. So I'll just pick a
darker value - this will be the darkest value in the painting - and I'll search
the head for those deep areas and apply the ambient occlusion. Ambient occlusion
is often paired with soft edges. In the case of the human head, often *very* soft
edges. The head is an organic form which means the plane changes will be more
gradual as compared to, say, the engineered crevices of a machine or
something. And because I'm using a darker value I'm gonna go ahead and take the
opportunity to darken the local value of her hair. The hair still has all the
values we've been dealing with, it's just I'm pitching them all darker. I
waited for this stage to do that so I could balance the darks of her hair with
the darks of the ambient occlusion. I find a good ambient occlusion pass adds
a subtle bit of life to things, especially characters! So here we are.
Let's bring back our value lists and add Ambient Occlusion to it. You know,
throughout this video I've been talking about the planes of the head. And if you
want a deep dive into them, you can go to MarcoBucciArtStore.com - click on
'Workshops,' and find my seven-hour class, 'Understanding and painting the head.'
You'll learn about the anatomy and planes of each individual piece of the
head. You'll learn how they all come together. You'll learn about different
lighting setups. And there are multiple real-time demos of me painting both in
black and white and in color! My goal with the class is to give you the
understanding you need to help break into a professional level. The course has
gotten a lot of five-star reviews, and I'm sure you'll like it too! You can go
check it out at MarcoBucciArtStore.com
All right, now that I have all these values in play, at this stage I just want
to work with them all together. You know, further modeling and refining the design
of this character. The way I separated each value into stages in this video, I
did that primarily for teaching purposes. Now, you could work that way - however,
eventually you'll want to get to the point where you just know these values
so well that you can jump from one to the next and build your painting in one
go. I think that's true of any artistic endeavor; you learned the fundamentals
one by one and eventually gained the confidence to combine them. I'm finally
noticing that her right eye has drifted out of the socket a bit, so as a final
effort, let's fix that. Digital painting amirite?? That's better! Now it looks
like the nose overlaps the eye properly. Okay, one more thing: the value groups I
used in this painting look something like this.
But this is by no means set in stone! So long as you keep them in their
respective groups, you can configure them however you want! Remember: there are NO
rules. Well, that wraps up another video. Thank you for watching! Thanks to my
patrons for your generous support. You guys really help me put out the best
video I can each month. That's all for me folks - I'll see you next time!