BA1 - Composition Fundamentals

Why plan Composition?

The reason why we as artists should learn to plan our composition of a art piece is so the viewer's eyes are directed to the important focal points of your piece. It's very easy for you as the artist to know what parts are important for you in a piece but if you don't lead your viewers eyes to it they will not perceive it as a focal point of your piece. I will go through some of the different ways of composition and show examples where they are used.

Divine Proportions

"The height of a well proportioned man is equal to his out-stretched arms"

-Marcus Virtruvius Pollio

The Devine proportions, or "The golden ratio" relies on the ratio 5:8. This is seen as the perfect ratio for proportions to be seen as most realistic and perfect by your viewer. 

Human Figure in a Circle by Leonardo Da Vinci

Devine Proportions can also be constructed by using different shapes such as squares, triangles and rectangles. I will now go through some of the different structures you can use to properly plan composition for your artwork.

Root 2 Rectangle

In this one all the shapes are proportional. Where the dotted lines intersects is where the eyes are led to.

Root 3 Rectangle Spiral Construction

This way attracts the eye to the key focal point by using the minor focal points of the image.

Root 3 Hexagon Construction

This structure can only be used in symmetrical shapes.

Rule of Thirds

To use this construction it requires you to split up your painting into a 3 x 3 grid. Where the lines collides, that's where your'e focal points are. 

The "L":

The "L" composition is used to get focal frames by creating a frame within a frame.

The Cross:

This composition is based on a cross, it requires your image to have different atmosphere on the different parts of your picture. For instance if at the top of your picture you have strong lighting and at the bottom half it's dark etc.

Iconic:

This composition is also called "The pay off" and relies on symmetry. It is pretty much simular to The Cross one but adds two diagonal lines to create the shapes of triangles.

Examples

Here I have chosen a poster from the game "Deus Ex: Human Revolution" and as you clearly can see that they use the iconic composition with the glass shards to attract your eyes to the main character in the middle. Some of the glass shards even fit precisely with the lines.

Here you can see a Concept piece from the game "Thief" where they clearly used the "L" composition. It is very common to use in Environment pieces like this to attract your eyes to specific key points.

BA1 - Silhouettes

And so the 100+ silhouettes are now done! Since I have never done silhouettes before, I decided to try out different techniques to find out what suited me best.

At the beginning my silhouettes were too refined. I struggled with painting without thinking about the end result, so it didn't turn out as random shapes. Instead they became silhouettes of images that I already had in mind, thus ruined the points of silhouettes.

I quickly realised I could not continue doing them like this. I decided to loosen up and just draw random blobs that slightly resembles a human shape and create stuff from there.

After trying a few silhouettes using this approach, I started to play around doing a 2nd pass of the characters. I then noticed that working with negative space allowed me to start with creating random blobs. I then explored the shapes and as a result made a clearer view of what I saw within those blobs. So I started to do the rest of the silhouettes with another brush and from there, picked my favourites and gave them a 2nd pass.

(1st Pass)

(2nd Pass, Using negative space)

When using negative space in my silhouettes, I managed to get out a bit more detail to the silhouettes without removing the randomness of it. As you can see, after a while I decided that my Hunter would be a female hunter and thus the rest are female.

(These are my five favourites so far.)

Of all silhouettes I made, the one below really stood out to me. I decided to base my final piece on this silhouette. I think this pose would be suitable for my final piece as it reflects my characters personality and portraits a sense of mystery.

(My favourite one)

BA1 - Light, Colour & Shadow Fundamentals

What is Light?

When working with art, light is one of the key components to get your artwork look one step closer to reality. Light can help us with colour, form and distance. In this post i will go through why Light is so important and how it works. 

How does Light work?

Since we perceive colour by the help of light it is very important what kind of surface the colour is bound to. To explain how light works we have to dive deeper into three main areas: Absorbtion, Reflection and Refraction.

Absorption

If the surface the light is bouncing to is absorb-able the colour itself and it's saturation will be effected. 

Reflection

If the surface is reflecting the light, it will effect the colours diffuse. If light get's reflected it will always bounce off the object with the opposite angle.

If the surface that the light hits is uneven (Bumpy) the light will still bounce off in the opposite angle it hit from. 

Refraction

Refraction means that the light is travelling through the object. The material of the object does effect the amount distortion that will occur. 

Those three are the main ways how lighting works. Using these different ways that light can travel through materials we can get different effects. We will take a look of some of these effects now.

Bounced Light

Bounced Light means when light bounces off a certain object/material and illuminates surrounding surfaces. As described in the picture below, you can see that the ball is originally not green but because of the close by wall is green the light that bounces off it makes the ball get a green tint to it.

Sub-Surface Scattering

Sub-Surface Scattering occurs when light travels through slightly translucent objects, like leafs or grapes for instance. 

Shadows

A shadow occurs when light gets obscured by an object. The shape and intensity of a shadow is based on the light's intensity and position. The shadow itself is always strongest close to the object and the shadow fades the further away from the object it gets.  This effect is known as Dynamic Occlusion.

Colour

To fully describe what colour is i would have to go on forever so i will try keep it as short and simple as possible. The very basics of colour is that it is light power versus wavelength. For instance the reason why we see the sky as blue is because it has the shortest wavelength so that is the colour our eye catches first from all the different colours wavelength's. If red for instance would have a shorter wavelength interval than blue we would perceive the sky as red instead. 

Colours are very relative and can be changed by many different factors. On objects the colours can be different depending on the material of the object, it's environment and the person's eye and brain that perceives the colours. Different people can perceive colours differently depending on their viewing angles and such.

Colour in Photoshop

When working with colour in Photoshop it is important that you know how the HSV picker works. I have made a picture that shows the basics of it.

Colour Tempature

Colour Temperature is the degree of warmth a painting has. It can have a great impact on the atmosphere of your painting. Here you can see a scale of the different warmth's. 

Light Analysis

For my first picture to do a light analysis of i have chosen a piece of Concept Art from the game "Dishonored" 

In this picture we can see various kinds of lighting. The strongest kind of lighting in this picture is bounce lighting. As there are no light source inside the building itself the only light source is the sky outside that bounces with the help of the water and uses bounced lightning to lighten up the interior. Cause of the mix of bounce light and the green murky water the interior also get's a green tint to it cause of the light. If for instance there would be no water and the chandelier in the roof would be lit this room would probably appear a lot less green.

As for my second picture to study i choose a concept art piece from the game "Assassin's Creed: Revelations"

In this piece we can see several light sources. We have a strong directional light coming from the roof and several torches lighting up the surrounding areas. While the lighting from the roof delivers a very cold light the torches delivers a sense of warmth to them. Having the cold lighting on top of the chest is a clever move to attract your eyes to it since it's so different to the surrounding areas.

BA1 - The Tinder Box Synopsis (Long)

On his way back from the war, a soldier stumbles upon a witch who suggests an opportunity for him to gain riches. She asks him to climb down into a hollow tree stump and retrieve her tinderbox. Within this place lies chests carrying copper, silver and gold in separate chambers. Each of these are guarded by three dogs with large eyes. To subdue the dogs, the soldier was given an apron to put them on from the witch.

When he had filled his boots, hat, clothing, knapsack and everything he could fit a single gold coin in, he ventured back to the witch. However, he forgot the tinderbox and when the witch reminded him about it, he went back for it. The witch was very eager to retrieve the tinderbox when he returned. But before the Soldier gave her the tinderbox, he became very curious in this little thing and asked her why she wanted it so much; why all those gold coins he have gathered is less worth to her than this Tinderbox. The Witch refused to share what value this tinderbox had and this made the Soldier very angry. As a result he struck her down and separated her head from her body.

With his newfound wealth, the Soldier continued on with his journey with the closest town being his new goal. Upon reaching the town, the soldier quickly started to spend his riches. He stayed at the best inn and ordered his favourite dishes and the day after, bought himself a set of proper clothing and he would soon become known as a fine gentleman. The people that came to visit him started sharing tales about the wonderful town and more importantly, about the king's beautiful daughter, the Princess.

The Soldier became very interested in the Princess and wished more than anything to see her. There was just one problem, the king have locked her inside a copper tower and no one is allowed to visit her except the King. The soldier tried to get to see the princess but he could not obtain permission to do so. The Soldier was not pleased with this but nevertheless he continued to live the in the town and spend his wealth. As he spent and gave away his riches to poor people without any income, he found himself eventually with only 2 shillings left. This forced him to leave his fancy life behind him and with the few shillings he had left he bought a little shack, where none of his old friends would visit him.

One day when it was dark outside and he had become so poor that he couldn't even afford a candle, he remembered that there was a candle inside the tinderbox. When he struck the flint and steel to create a spark, the door flew open and inside came a dog with large eyes. It was one of the dogs from the tree stump. The Soldier came to realise that the power of the Tinderbox was to summon the three dogs from the tree stump which were there to abide to his commands.

With the help of the tinderbox the Soldier first ordered the dogs to retrieve the riches from the chests and thus getting his wealth back. Secondly, he asked the dogs to get him the Princess. He asked them to do this at midnight so the princess would be asleep and thus she wouldn't notice a thing and expect it to be a dream. The princess told her parents about the odd dreams but the queen suspected it to be more than just a dream. The queen tried different methods to figure out where the dogs came from. Eventually she bound a bag of flour to the princess's neck and cut a small hole in the bag so that flour would scatter on the floor and reveal that path to the Soldiers house.

And so it did. The next day, the king and queen gathered their soldiers and followed the flour trail that led them to the Soldier and sentenced him to death by the noose.

The Soldier was now in prison waiting to get hanged. However, a shoemaker boy came by his cell and the soldier offered him four shillings if the boy went and got him his Tinderbox that the soldier left in his shed when he got captured by the king and queen. The shoemaker boy complied as soon as he heard four shillings and got him the Tinderbox.

The day arrived for the Soldier to be hanged. He was led up to the noose, but as they were about to place the rope around his neck the soldier asked for a last request; to smoke his pipe a last time. The king granted his request and the soldier picked up the tinderbox and used it to summon all three dogs and commanded them to attack all the surrounding soldiers and the king and queen. 

With the king and queen dead, all the remaining soldiers got petrified and declared the Soldier to become their new king and to marry the princess that was locked away in the copper tower.

And so, the Soldier became king and finally could spend the rest of his life with the Princess.

BA1 - Concept Art 2D

And so, University finally begins and we have received out first project brief. 

For our first project we are focusing on 2D concept art. We were assigned the task to first read a story called "The Tinderbox" written by Hans Cristian Andersen and from there choose one of the characters in the story to redesign in a time setting we a all recieved at random. I am quiet excited to say that i got Britain's Iron Age.

The main goal of this project is to end up with 1 final character piece including model sheet, etc. And 2 large environment pieces. Since 2D is not my strong side i am very excited for this project since i am here to learn after all.

The way i will approach this project is the following:

• Read "The Tinderbox" and write a short synopsis.
• Do research on Britain's Iron Age.
• Create at least 100 silhouettes.
• Write a back story for my character.
• Make a few Character Iterations where i will combine ideas from the silhouettes, research and the backstory.
• Create a Model Sheet (Front, Back, Side)
• Create a Character Sheet. (Emotions, Poses, etc.)
• Environmental Studies, here i will create several environments where my character would fit in. 
• Creating the final pieces for my character and the environments.