Environment Sketching - Week Six!

So this week, we had a different exercise - this time, we had to create value thumbnails with a painterly method instead of the traditional line sketch/line drawing. You just paint with strokes and blocks of value, design various shapes to depict a window into a specific world. Again, since these are thumbnails, the goal is not to get too detailed. So these were some first drafts using the new method; and it was a bit more difficult, since I'm not used to creating images in this particular way - I'm used to sketching out an image using line loosely, and then sort of refining and coloring in. And painting with oil in reality is a little of both methods, but it is very different than painting digitally in Photoshop or Paint Tool Sai. With these I used different types of brushes, experimented a little with Photoshop's effects since I haven't used it much before this class (I've always preferred Paint Tool Sai). These have been critiqued already by the Environment Sketching professor, Dzu Nguyen - I do have to redo these, and some suggestions he gave me were techniques push the perspective a bit more, especially in the second from the top and the last one down. Also to avoid large shapes or horizontals in the foreground, because they tend to "block" the viewer's path into the rest of the scene; that there should be a clearly defined and open pathway into the picture, somehow. Another thing is that I tend to be shy about having objects in the background extend off the image frame at the top. He suggested that I should emphasize the size of receding buildings or structures in the distance by having them be larger than the image can capture. So I will be editing these a bit more in addition to what our HW is for Week 7!