It is something that I try to keep at the forefront of my mind when painting. One great trick that I read about and was shown by Meg and Roman was using a greyscale shot of your mini to see how it looks. Here are some examples of my own work:
This is one of my earlier models, but painted after my class with Meg. There is a few issues with the contrast in general. Firstly, one of the things that really resonated with me was when Raffa said you should try and have each section that sits beside another have a different contrast (value), so they stand out. You can see that on the lower leather sections, they are very similar value, and the same as the skin and the shirt colour, and hair and skin colour. The model has pretty good contrast on individual colours, the skin goes from quite dark to quite bright, although other areas need more contrast. Also as a whole, the model needed more focus on the contrast of the key area: the face.
This is another of my earlier models, you can see similar problems to the bust. The head is again not as much of a focus as it needs to be, the value of the blue is too similar to the clothes, and there needs to be more contrast from dark to light in the skin.
This model I got right with the values moving from darker down the bottom to lighter up the top, but the differentiation between sections isn't great. A few areas where it works though, including that little patch of creamy leather stuff.
This model I did a lot better job in most areas, the skin vs the blue, you can see the contrast, the leather, the staff, all definitely improving over the last few examples. I missed the mark on the banner, and also on her wrappings on her legs. They are almost identical value to the skin. I also needed more contrast on the skin, and the hair. The good news is that all the focus is drawn to the face and head area, but for this piece the banner should also have been a focus.
So the rest of my pieces I've got photos of were done after the class with Raffa, where I had a lot of lightbulb moments. However, as you will see it's still not smooth sailing!
This is one of my main problems with this model. You can see all of the model sort of merges together without any real focus point. Whilst individual pieces of the model are well painted, it all sort of lacks any focus and this is a problem with my initial painting process.
Some good improvements here, the faceand helmet are the highest points of contrast, but there needed to be a bigger differentiation between the sections again.
Another improvement, with the focus on the face, but I could have gone darker on those lower areas, and there could have been a bit more contrast in sections individually.
So these were all examples where I felt like I had room to improve, but you can see a gradual improvement. My last two pieces however, I feel like I am really starting to nail it:
Look at how big a contrast there is between sections! The only issue is that I probably needed to focus more on brightening the face area so it is more of a focus. The legs kind of draw attention because they are so bright.
This is the best piece in terms of contrast I have completed to date. The various sections are all separated from each other, really dark leather, darker beard, the orange and bone contrast, the focus is on the face and upper chest area, how the base is a much lower value to the rest. This is now my new mark, moving forward.
Anyway, enough about contrast. I have finished all my entries for Crystal Dragon:
It is 12 in total. My goal for this year was to improve on last years result, where I received no medal for my single entry of the Fishermens Guild team I submitted. So, if one of these entries achieves a Bronze, I will be happy. Obviously I'd like to achieve more than that, but as I wrote about in my Enchanted Pool reflection post, I have lost my real drive to compete for competings sake, I am more excited about the feedback and possibilities for growth and improvement.
This will be my last post before Cancon, so I will have a big post afterwards giving a rundown of the event! Check my Twitter over the weekend as I'll be posting lots of photos I hope!
Cheers
Trent
No comments:
Post a Comment