Struggling With Value by Marek Okon Ceo ae net Okay, let's get this show on the road. This time we will try to apply the theoretical knowledge obtained in the previous part to paint something more practical - a human. At the start | would like to point out one important thing, which | may have not stressed enough earlier. Base value is not permamently assigned to a given object, it varies and fel el tae RoR UL Meolare a Rem UR elt ale ae Mia (lected occlu) oo C10 has the value it has, because it sits on a brighter plate, next to a darker onion and apple. That's why picking the values in the scene is not really that difficult, it just needs to be chosen in such a way, so that separate objects are relatively brighter or darker than one another. To put it nicely, we can say that VALUES ARE NOT UNIVERSAL, ONLY RELATIVE Pee US te Ce ne see Ou es TROL u SRC acc un ete teal Ree ec kamera eh umes ROR ues Coming back to our tutorial. Just like with our fruit, we start by establishing the base Mune Oa ecu ce ca OMe cua liecntclsen CCUCNe tC Ruka kuch earner atet Manteca than white cloth. Painting people is always a hard task, so it's always good to help yourself with some reference, both in terms of anatomy and lighting. In this case, | was PIMP niungierch a uremic tice iuiicc memes aan We emtcetaR Auk We've got the base value established, so we apply our value gradients. On the left one can still see the line art, which helps me find out where particular muscle groups or sig- nificant bodyparts like eyes, ears, mouth are located. This is useful for proper applica- tion of base value and, of course later on during shading. We begin shading, just like in the case of the fruit, by sampling values from our value gradient. Obviously in this case we are dealing with more complicated shapes, but the principle is the same. In order to stress that something is convex, we sample a value SiClM Atle a cee OMe Tl a em Omen ec Re oe trasting values we sample, the more convex/concave shapes will appear. We must re- member the relativism mentioned before. Despite the fact that we are dealing with the same object, the brightest value on the bicep is only a middle value on the shoulder. It is of course a result of a particular lighting situation in a scene. SUCe ies Roma e RMU ME Roe mM eC RMAC lel ele Ud shading and sampling process. The right side, more developed, has some stronger highlighs and shadows from outside of our initial value gradient already laid down. As an experiment, | will now play around with this version by applying a bit of bright DER RU RCo ERR Me Ce- Re ee RRL ee OR Ue ae very common mistake made by young artists, who, instead of a local value range, op- erate in a global range from the whole object, or even the whole scene. As a result, our arm looks unnatural and too convex compared to the rest of the body. Let's now consider how values behave on partially darkened surfaces. r ld A As you can see, the brighter/darker relationship should be kept, and with some materi- Puce rice nt aa aah giee talc haces ecu cmc emuenn ae auiiecs eleva U nae Mcur kaa uu Ser uC Rk uns CSM A cet a cts Rae ees ate cues Well, it is the most common example of diffused lighting in nature. The kind of lighting CME M Cue ec ecoi Wa ae MecuCi ica om a define the base value correctly, and we shade our object well, we can easily modify it, Ee ee ecu c a iM a erect ou Cusine eyetoe tat mt enact aU OUR Mmaccuke ac num auc n Cec) Pens ICCC ees With a good fill light it is enough to throw in some kind of directional light for a more in- teresting effect and the picture is almost ready. It is a simple recipe which proves itself useful surprisingly often and can be found in many really great pieces.