/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

this is a sketch i did awhile ago in about 40 mins i guess. i chose this one because it is 100 percent entirely from imagination. literally just a sketch, but its probably a level you would like to be at potentially so you see the art alongside the advice.

values and rendering is something i obsessed with for awhile. my number one advice for values which took me a long time to learn was that values are actually more tighter together than your brain realizes(unless the material is gloss/reflective).we want to think values are more dyanmic than they are and they can be but only in separate groups from one another, thats an entirely different topic in its about composition. if you want to learn how to "shade" from imagination you need to do a lot of studies im sorry theres no other way around it but when you say this people think grinding cubes and shit which WILL help and ive done plenty but the majority of your gains will come from actually painting.

yes its taking you forever to shade from imagination but thats part of the process, there is nothing here that is necessarily bad its just a grind and grinds suck. the reason you want to use references for form is so you KNOW when something looks bad which is the first step of progress and you can work it out seeing if the form looks identical to the reference even if the lighting is not the same from the reference

theres a million other things i can tell you. light rays go straight. bounce light is always darker than the lighted areas. a smaller more powerful lightsource results in harder shadows. cast shadows are hard edges and form shadows are soft edges. "ambient light" in most cases is the more pervasive light in the scene. most all paintings can be done in 4-5 values. theres so much more but u can learn this from youtube videos, the main takeaway i would suggest is keeping your values tight in their dedicated value groups.