So last week was my first week at Laguna College of Art and Design, and I did an exercise for Fundamentals of Painting. It's in oil paint, and it's a grayscale chart and a sphere (no reference).
It's pretty good practice. Oh btw, I recommend James Gurney's Color and Light: A guide for the Realist Painter. It's quite informative.
Main points I learnt from this exercise:
- Make sure the darkest light isn't darker than the lightest dark
- Value is relative, so compare values next to each other
- Start from big shapes, and then add detail with smaller shapes
- Try not to blend first, show exactly where the hard shadows are, then blend in the soft shadows after. It's easier to view where your light and shadows are.
- The most focused area is the point where light is shining on the object (largest contrast)
- Occlusions are areas that light does not reach at all
So yeah, this is first week at LCAD. I did other exercises, but I'll probably post them later instead. Good luck with painting and stuff. (:
P.S. : I'll just keep editing this post if I think of any other points I learnt from this exercise. They're probably all very basic stuff, but I hope they're useful. (: And a disclaimer, all these points don't exactly apply to all paintings, so yeah.
