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If this would be animated it would be in rivalry to the light and would be overdone. But having a closer look to A. and his shivering on his chair you feel the mist crawling under his pajamas without actual moving.

You said it all in that last sentence.

I think the difference between lemec's approach and ours is that his leans heavily towards design; it could be a pattern on a dress, almost, or a poster. Ours leans towards telling a story -- the place, the time of day, the interaction between man and dog; the entire feel and look of these scenes are the result of what happened during the night before it came to this.

You can't (and perhaps don't even want to) put that much into a poster design.

These drawings are all exercises of technical skill - to gain insights on a subject I didn't have prior to studying them. They are studies of reality. My imagination relies on the regurgitation of prior knowledge. Although I might have walked through forests a few times, and I've seen trees and foliage quite often in my everyday life, I haven't done my fair share of colour and light studies. I can't say I know everything there is to know about reproducing a forest in full colour.

By studying the many different lighting conditions that occur within a forest at different times of the day, different atmospheric and weather conditions, I can build an understanding so that when the time comes to construct a realistic picture of a forest that no one has photographed before, I won't be handicapped by my ignorance of the subject. When the time comes that I want to tell a story, I'll be able to design a forest whose every condition (be it time of day, weather, lighting, species of plants, if it's raining or it's on fire) will be subordinate to the story. But I won't be able to picture it in my mind without that homework.

Whether it's for a poster, a film, comic book or whatever medium, it doesn't change the image. To me, being able to draw a forest is like being able to generate an element, a piece of background imagery or a prop. The same can be said for being able to draw architecture and mechanical objects. If the job calls for it, I have to be able to materialize one in exactly the right position and angle and lighting conditions called for.

I'll say one more thing - I can't say whether or not I love something unless I really know it. I've painted outdoors at dawn and I'll tell ya - it's cold, the colours are nice, but the shadows move fast and the lighting changes faster than you can paint it. What I did learn was to take quick note of colours and shadow placements and lighting angles and eschew all the minor details so that I could take my time afterwards studying those details and painting them in using the same lighting conditions that I established in the image. It meant having to imagine things as they were when the sun was just rising, and only made possible by my initially established lighting.

Technical talk isn't a bad thing - it's a specific vocabulary that lets me say things in fewer words. I can say "axial" instead of having to say: "sticks outwards like the spokes of a wheel". Many of the artists of the european renaissance were accomplished inventors and mathematicians. Such people are very rare to find, nowadays, perhaps through the mindset that the technical and artistic are best held apart from one another, as if knowledge had a way of poisoning one's creativity.

This last one was done on one layer. To work on one layer means you have to think ahead, to understand the stacking order of objects, to understand what's far away and what is up close, and to paint them in that order. It's not something that can be done haphazardly without respect to the dimensional structure of the scene. It's not an effect you can see, but it sure as hell makes painting harder if you don't know what you're doing. It's what differentiates people who paint like chess players from the people who paint well, any way they feel like it. By painting this way, you minimize the amount of repainting and you can get acceptable results in under half an hour.

This is a bit off-topic, but has anyone seen trailers or screenshots of the upcoming video game Alan Wake? Now THERE's some really nice outdoor rendering, done on a computer and will someday be generating realistic images of forests and rivers and mountains in real time on the average gamer's computer video card. I know a lot of people with job insecurities will probably scoff at it but I think it's pretty damn convincing and beautiful, and a good example of something a computer can do better than the average artist, and requires a huge amount of technical research and development to make possible.

I can't operate on an intuitive level, not yet, anyways. Some people are born savants, which I am not. Other people gotta figure out what causes the things they see, understand why things are the way they are, understand why they look the way they do. Otherwise it really will take a lifetime to master it.

Mark, you're right, technical talk is not bad - but it's a secondary thing. What I am missing in your (posted) images is your pulsating blood, the dank crumbs of the duff under your nails.
Secondary is for me how often you walk in the forest, how good you're with Maya, how fast you can draw, how you arrange things technically ...

To me, these exercises are an investment for a lifetime. Not to say that I do them and forget about them, I do them so that I can draw forest environments whenever I feel like it, and I'm beginning to develop a love for something that previously frustrated and annoyed me.

As for speed, it's a byproduct, an indicator of how much I'm getting hung up on unimportant details, or going about the process backwards. I should set a stroke limit for the next one I do. Nothing gets me thinking harder than that. The number of strokes used, the lack of layers or assistance from colour adjustment filters are important things to me because it shows how much I really know (or DONT KNOW). Sometimes it's good to perform mathematics without a pocket calculator, to work things out longhand so you don't get too rusty. I simply use a reliable colour palette that rapidly lets me pick the colour I have in mind, a few solid circular brushes, an airbrush, that's it.

Getting things done efficiently and quickly is important to me, because of deadlines imposed on my by my clients (and myself). I've got standards to live up to. It's also important that I get things done to an acceptable level within that time limit. There's a certain level of realism I have to match because I have no sense of intangible aspects in art. Things like soul and emotion, I don't understand those things or how to get those things in any measured quantity into a picture in a reliable manner so I don't purport to sell them to my clients. I'd be lying otherwise. I want to work for clients who don't ask for things I can't measurably provide. In exchange, I have to be prepared to study (often on the spot) and materialize whatever concrete desires they have, and do it all within the time limit. I can't be farting around too long in training but even more importantly, I can't afford to be bumbling in a haze of ignorance. I don't have established clients or grants or a steady flow of funding. I gave that up along with my career in the visual effects industry. I have to pay my dues all over again, and this is it.

Okay, last one of the day. Promise.

Ok, this is what happens if I get all serious and spend like, 4 hours on a study...

splendid !
at what res. did your work ? ... I mean what size is your original painting ?

Yes, it is nice... perhaps a little too nice though. For a nature study I don't sense a real corner of the woods in there. If it's a study in technical possibilities then it's really good.

ZigOtto wrote:splendid !
at what res. did your work ? ... I mean what size is your original painting ?

If you click the attachment, you can see the image at its full size. I simply cropped it to 616 x 845 before posting it up.

juicy forrest! nice work Mark!

Paul Fierlinger wrote:Yes, it is nice... perhaps a little too nice though. For a nature study I don't sense a real corner of the woods in there. If it's a study in technical possibilities then it's really good.

I can't help it if a rainforest possesses a surreal and unnatural beauty.

Referenced from corbis.com #: 42-17489843

I like that forest scene also, but i must agree with Paul about, i don't feel like i am there. Then again after 30 years of trying i don't get that feel from a good many of my oil paintings, more so now than before though. But i do like your work, very much.

A couple oils for review, i am looking to do a style like this digitally, these are on location, and then from memory. I have far to go digitally because i still fight thinking in one layer, like canvas. I hope it does not take 30 more years because i don't have that long.

Has anyone had a problem thinking from one layer to many, or did you all start, with a layer system?

NIce work! Mark

Referenced from corbis.com #: 42-17489843

I understand; it's a very skillful rendering. You know your tools well (but photographs too can be a little too nice too).

Paul Fierlinger wrote:Yes, it is nice... perhaps a little too nice though. For a nature study I don't sense a real corner of the woods in there.

I do, I can feel the heavy with moisture place, and the smell of the mossy rocks too .
my only marginal 2 tiny crits could be :
1) maybe a little more texture/details on the foreground part ...? (but not 100% certain on that point),
2) a little less saturate (some colors seem to me a bit too "shiny" to my taste),
otherwise, I really enjoy the over-all aspect, the energetic strokes, the well-balanced lighting .

keep it up, Mark, your skill is improving day after day.

Geopeto wrote:I like that forest scene also, but i must agree with Paul about, i don't feel like i am there. Then again after 30 years of trying i don't get that feel from a good many of my oil paintings, more so now than before though. But i do like your work, very much.

To get a viewer to experience that true, IMMERSE-O-VISION™ YOU-ARE-THERE feeling, you can do one or both of the following:

Sensory Method: Feed sensory information into the viewer's perceptions to fool them into believing that their surroundings are based on the sensory information they are receiving.

Associative Method: Place a character into the world within the picture, and make the viewer associate with that character.

The Sensory Method won't work with a tiny little picture like the one I've drawn. It only encompasses a small portion of your central vision, and cannot change your perception of your surroundings because the image simply doesn't surround you. Creating a wide panoramic mural or projecting images onto a giant screen are tried-and-true methods that have been in use in centuries. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to big screens or cavernous European cathedrals to paint in (I've been in a few). At best, I can achieve the sense that I've scratched a little window into the environment.

Associative Method: If I were to make a narrative series with a story that ran long enough (for as little time as it takes for a person to get sucked into a good TV show) then I don't necessarily have to rely on the Sensory Method. When you get 'sucked into' an image, what's really happening is that you forget about your own surroundings and body and begin living in the body of some character on the screen. It doesn't matter how realistic the imagery is, at the very least, the viewer gets the sense of living in a real world as long as everything within that world is consistent with the universe designed around the story. Making people associate with a character means designing characters that share behaviours in common with the viewer and placing them in credible situations that the viewer can empathize with and feel as if they are experiencing the same situation.

Pick your poison. Personally, I want to possess at least the bare minimum technical rendering ability to affect the general public through the Sensory Method before I progress to the Associative Method. After all, people are taking precious time out of their day to see my work, I may as well make it as easy as possible to get sucked in by showing them images that are recognizable and somewhat consistent with reality. Doing this sort of thing at this early stage in my developing skills takes every bit of mental effort I can squeeze out, so I'm really not in the mood to begin throwing in characters at this point. A man does not get stronger by jumping into a Byzantine exercise machine that forces him to simultaneously lift individual weights attached to each and every muscle in his body. You work on a few areas at a time until it becomes effortless, and then you can try multitasking.

I'd also like to add that a person cannot immersed into a picture unwillingly. There MUST be some amount of participation on the part of viewer, I just try and make it as painless as possible.

Geopeto wrote: A couple oils for review, i am looking to do a style like this digitally, these are on location, and then from memory. I have far to go digitally because i still fight thinking in one layer, like canvas. I hope it does not take 30 more years because i don't have that long.

Has anyone had a problem thinking from one layer to many, or did you all start, with a layer system?

last lndscp.jpg

FrmFrtPrch1.jpg

NIce work! Mark

As for the layers vs. no layers, the last two images were done without layers. I used to use dozens and dozens of layers at one point, but after training myself to paint on a Nintendo DS Lite with no layers and no undos, I learned I had to think ahead, and before painting something, I had to spend a little time thinking about what was sitting behind the thing I was trying to paint. In many ways, it was like working with traditional media except that I didn't have to wait for paints to dry, didn't have to deal with toxic heavy metals and turpentine thinners, mixing colours is a lot easier, and I don't have to spend an hour afterwards cleaning up my brushes.

I find that the less you rely on layers, the greater the burden you place on your intellect, the more forethought is required, the less attached you can be to particularly well-painted areas. I feel it makes for a stronger artist. Layers ARE beneficial, however, in multistage processes where things are done in passes (esp. animation) or where frequent edits (with fickle clients) occur.

Regardless, with any medium I need:

- The ability to pick colours accurately and reliably
- A paintbrush which allows me to create smooth, controlled transitions based on pen pressure
- A paintbrush that allows me to make sharp markings

...and that's all!

It's amazing the things you can get done with just a circular brush.

Thank you for your thoughts on this, your time is appreciated. So far it seems i haven't figured out a decent "system" for working with layers, but my biggest problem is, i just forget to switch layers. I tend to concentrate on what i am putting on the work area and forget all about layers. I do find some very useful versatility, in layers and will continue to experiment.

I just recieved my unlock code for the program so now i may many more questions for you all, but i see this is a very friendly forum, and i am glad to be here.

I do like your work with a round brush, but i tend to lean more toward, a 33% to 20% aspect, i like the variance i can get, with broken color, which really is my favorite look. Broken color has always done something to and for my spirit, i suppose that would be why the imppresionists have always fascinated me so much.

You work on a few areas at a time until it becomes effortless, and then you can try multitasking.

I'd also like to add that a person cannot immersed into a picture unwillingly. There MUST be some amount of participation on the part of viewer, I just try and make it as painless as possible.

I like these thoughts a lot, and it makes sense. thanks again