Watercolour light and tone test

Coming to the end of the project i wanted to try one last experiment to see if i could produce the same style in watercolour to that i use in my digital paintings. The painting was fun and i instantly found that my understanding of light and tone through the digital paintings was feeding into this work, my watercolour paintings in the past have been a bit naff. This piece, even though i am not completely happy with it, kind of surprised me. 

I began the painting by laying down all the tones of the building ( this is actually a drawing from memory of a pub i saw in Bath . . . exaggerated a little) and being aware of what white space i needed to keep, no 'undo' option here. 

The next stage was to paint in the highlights and shadows and this is where i found the watercolours lost out to the digital alternative. by going over areas with a wet brush again the definition in the areas of colour i had applied began to diminish and they blended together. You can see this best on the dark side of the building. What i would need to do in future is to cool the temperature and darken the first set of colours that i lay down so that the multiple tones remain distinguishable from each other. This way i would not have to apply a wash to create the shadow.

Colour alteration made in Photoshop. Increasing/ decreasing temperatures and repainting the sky.

Animatic

Thought i would have a go at making  a little animatic from the painting. It was pretty easy to convert it as i already had elements on separate layers. Had to rearrange the composition though to with everything form portrait to landscape.

ILLUS 241 Final

So this is my Final piece of artwork that i will be submitting for ILLUS 241. I am very pleased with how this has turned out and i feel i have been successful in applying everything i have learnt over the past weeks into a single image. The image below is of the first stage of completion of the piece.

 It was raining rather heavily when i was at this location but because of the bright sky above, the rain didn't really stand out. I thought would take advantage of my 'Artistic license' and try to communicate better how i saw the rain in person but also what it felt like.

I decided to add the rain at the end stage and found this really established the atmosphere of the piece. I have exaggerated the rain to a point but it needed to come out against the light clouds. I evaluated how Jeff Rowland rendered rain in his traditional painting and looked for a way in which i could create a similar effect using digital tools. In the end i drew in the rain using a flat edged brush in Photoshop which pretty much simulates the strokes of a physical brush. Building the rain up in the background shows how far away the furthest building and the hills behind it are.

Alberto Mielgo

From Neil Ross' blog i found a link to Alberto Mielgo's page. His work is similar in appearance but Mielgo has produced work for within a variety of contexts in Illustration. I really like his animation work as his Illustration style transfers well over to this. The animations look very polished but when asked he said he uses only Adobe Photoshop and Adobe after effects to produce his films. I was thinking of trying to make some sort of animatic from the final painting i am currently working on. I have been building the painting on separate layers so i have the ability to animate objects. I want to see if i can take the technique that Jeff Rowland uses to simulate rain in his painting and insert this into an animatic.

Beatles rock Band Ad

Like in the work that i just recently completed for the Olympics animation, original pieces of artwork are inserted into the animation as backgrounds.

Rubbish atmosphere

Sat in the studio today i decided to do a digital painting of what i could see from the window. Being indoors and provided with a desk meant that i could paint comfortably with my laptop and tablet. As much as i try to improve this piece it just seems to remain a little boring. The sky was overcast and the lighting not very dynamic. Everything in the composition appears to have the same tonal value so nothing really stands out. I tried making the lamp in the bottom left corner a focal point by painting in more detail to contrast with the looseness of the buildings behind but the image feels flat. It was nice to paint the hills in the background because they contrasted with the sky, on the other hand the buildings just seem to blur together.n Its not a very interesting scene but it offered a good sense of depth to try and capture. The atmosphere was hazy and glum, the opposite to the studies i did of the Christmas steps in Bristol.

Aesop's fable Illustration

After much deliberation i decided to go ahead and do this Illustration just to be on the safe side. Was a fun little painting to do. I referenced an iPad painting of the lion that i had done in one of the drawing sessions and placed it into a scene.

I decided to render this illustration in the style i have been using for my observational drawing. Emphasising the warm colours on the lions body and applying strong shadow to give the impression of a hot climate with the sun high in the sky.

Final Image

Reference

Artists and Galleries

I also visited a few of the galleries that Bath had to offer to see some artwork based on the city and other locations. The artists that caught my eye were Hannah Cole, Claire Henley and Jeff Rowland.

Hannah Cole

Claire Henley

I was particularly interested in this artists work because they use quite bold and contrasting brush strokes. The appearance is quite graphic using blocks of colour. Areas of colour have been reduced to singular tones removing graduation of colour. The pieces are made in mixed media, this is what gives the definition between colours and textures. Reminded me of the work i am doing for this project. Looking at the work close up you can see each individual colour used in the piece but at a distance these colours merge together.

Jeff Rowland

I liked Jeff Rowland's paintings because he used the rain to distort objects in the scenes and to push them back. Structures in the far distance are reduced to a single tone. I would like to see if i could adopt this technique into my digital paintings. I am currently working on a painting a scene of rooftops of buildings in Bath and i am referencing from a photo that i took on location. It was raining when i captured the picture and i would like to show that in the painting and i thought Roland's work was a good example of how to do this.