Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Gayatri Mahesh on July 12, 2012 at 8:58am

Hi Arundhathi,
In moist waether atmosphere forms a very thick film.. As the distance increases
The play of color intensities vary a lot. Colors in distance get more muted. Value shifts get very subtle and edges become soft. We need to take advantage of these effects in our representation. Maybe you could have made the edges in the background more soft . Also the use of titanium white!! In middleground and background you may increase its use so that the greens get muted which brings in the effect of moist weather.

Coming to ref pic... You can put more thought when taking it. Think in terms of focal point ,middleground , foreground and background.. Have the DOF as shallow as possible and use spot metering... This shows only few sharp edges and that makes our job easy- ie, paint all edges soft and gradually sharpen the edges that are in focus. Sharp edges are to create interest and lead the viewers eyes to the focal point-maybe those white flowers(leaves?) in the foreground in this case.
Hope this helps :)

Permalink Reply by Arundhati Sarkar Bose on July 12, 2012 at 10:04am

Thank you so much Gayatri for taking the time to see and write back. There is so much to learn!

Its an acrylic painting ... so I can take some liberty and try to correct the problems without spoiling it.

Permalink Reply by Arundhati Sarkar Bose on July 13, 2012 at 6:30pm

very well put, Asha. :)

Permalink Reply by Prosenjit Roy on July 12, 2012 at 11:29am

I think I'll have to equally applaud Gayatri's critque and Arundhati's painting... this was wonderful to read/view... thank you guys!

I'll only add this comparative pic to the discussion, Gayatri has said it all.

These are grayscale versions of the ref and the painting, posterized (i.e. color depth reduced) to four colors only. This is a helpful way to analyze the value distribution in a painting/image. Gayatri has mentioned the need to create visual accents through selective use of edge focus, as well as muting/desaturating of color away from the point of greatest interest (in this case the flowers).

The picture on the right will reveal the need to also use values (bright-dark areas) to create visual accents. You'll see how the viewer's attention immediately goes to the lightest areas on those petals, thus creating visual focus. The large pools of darkness, on the right, seem to enhance these lighter areas, playing a supporting role (mind you, the role of bright and dark areas could well be reversed in creating focus, especially in an image which is predominantly lit-up).

Also, the contrast is more in the ref. In the painting, we only seem to be getting a 'dark - mid - light' gray gradation, with the very dark and much lighter areas missing. This is a more homogenous, gray-based scheme which is less stimulating to the retina. Plus, the lightest areas seem to be covering a lot of the painting's 'real estate', thereby tending to scatter visual focus. You'll notice that even within the flower mass in the ref, there is a lot of contrast, imparting volume to it.

Albeit, in a colorful painting, values needn't be all that important... a blue and red, of equal value, when juxtaposed will create a strong accent. But the same image, when turned into grayscale will lose all of that and become uniformly gray. So color is very important. But, in a 'realistic' rendering of a physical scene, the effect of light can't be discounted -  hence the importance of values.

Permalink Reply by Arundhati Sarkar Bose on July 12, 2012 at 1:02pm

I think I get the point. I can udnerstand where the flatness is coming from. The grey scale pictures reveal a lot about how one should paint light.

Thanks a lot for taking the time. I am happy to be learning so much here. :)