SUKAATO's Hypomnema

Visual_Art_Tips_and_Reminders

7 min read

Visual Art Tips and Reminders

Contour

This is for line and shape of a form.

  • Tips

    • Practice idealized component shapes to be anticipated in a sketch or visual study.
    • Start the drawing with the long horizontal or diagonal lines that comprise a major shape of the observed object for, or intended result of, the visual study or sketch.
    • Imagine and mirror the movement of the line traced by your eye on an observed object as a movement or motion of your drawing hand or arm, in preparing to draw that line.
    • Imagine the directional movement or motion of a line for an end result as the felt muscle efforts for that line, in preparing to draw that line.
    • Repeatedly gesture at the line to be drawn on the given surface to intuit an appropriate scale and matching direction relative to the bounds of that surface.
    • Use plumbline and level to analyze the symmetry of what you are drawing, and its orientation / rotation and position, relative to the bound surface.
    • Optionally start with an underdrawing decomposing the given form into basic major shapes and minimizing the number of lines needed to convey those shapes
    • Straighten all edges or sides of a complex, periodically curved shape perimeter of a form so only the major arc of change in the corresponding line is, or inflection points on the shape perimeter are, conveyed. Details of the shape perimeter can be added later.
    • Find sight lines through sighting of the observed object being drawn; otherwise, find a part of the end-result that is a point of reference for measuring that imaginary end-result, and draw it first to intuit proportionality of the shape.
    • Draw the edges of blotches of light/shadow, the color of those edges being distinct for each discrete degree, amount or level of tonal value declared or anticipated for every light/shadow blotch.Otherwise, simply apply a label to each light/shadow blotch declaring its anticipated intensity, level, or degree. There should be at least three discrete intensities of anticipated or declared darkness/lightness, i.e. of tonal value, expected for any set of drawn light/shadow blotches.
      • This is especially encouraged if using drawing layers to build a visual study, as this allows previewing the final result so as to validate or verify consistency between shape contour and desired form. With quick sketches, this is not as necessary as it may be enough to simply render the drawing in a very general, less defined way.

  • Reminders

    • You are drawing the image of the object on your visual field, not the object as such.
    • Edge (line) and shape conceptually organize an image.
    • Edge (line) and shape should always concede to spatial observation and imagination.

Rendering

This is for the application of tonal value (light and dark) to express form.

  • Tips

    • Squint at the object you are drawing so that hue and value pop out, or transform your imagined end-result into hue or value blotches, to ease observation of hue and tonal value.
    • Divide tonal values into at least discrete degrees, amounts or levels of intensity.
    • Underdraw the edges of blotches of light/shadow, the color of those edges being distinct for each discrete degree, level or amount of tonal value declared or anticipated for every light/shadow blotch. Otherwise, simply apply a label to each light/shadow blotch declaring its anticipated intensity, level, or degree.
      • This is especially encouraged if using separate layers to build a visual study, as this allows previewing the final result so as to validate or verify consistency between shape contour and desired form. With quick sketches, this is not as necessary as it may be enough to simply render the drawing in a very general, less defined way.
    • Be mindful of fill light in the process of filling in tonal values.
    • When filling in tonal values, start with tonal values of lesser intensity, level or degree and then follow with tonal values of greater intensity, level or degree.
    • When filling in tonal values, start with the intensity, level or degree of tonal value that encompass larger surface area, moving on to tonal values of different intensity, degree or level that encompass smaller surface area.

  • Reminders

    • It is impossible to color without rendering, but it is possible to render without coloring
    • All forms, real or imagined, to have realism must have at least three distinct tonal values, of the following types: local or intrinsic tonal value (tonal value of the form based on diffuse or ambient light, typically comprising the lightest part of an image), transitional tonal value (tonal value that provides a gradient between larger lighter and darker blotches, typically the product of fill light in shadows), and shadow tonal value (tonal value that expresses an absence of illumination).
      • Shadow tonal values can be understood in terms of their different actual or alleged causes in the observed object or imaginary end-result: directional shadow (facing away from light means being in the dark), cast shadow (occlusion of light means creating a dark patch on an adjacent or parallel surface on the opposite end), and balance-point shadow (infinitesimal reduction in reflective surface area means increasing darkness nearing corners and planar intersections).
    • Fill light often results from diffuse or ambient light, or radiance.
    • Cast shadows and directional shadows are the shadows likeliest to be affected by fill light.
    • When there is fill light on the directional shadow of a form it has a darker shadow called the terminator delimiting it from the lit side of the form.
    • Not all diffuse light is ambient light, but all ambient light is diffuse light.
    • In a closed environment, artificially diffused light and ambient light conceptually overlap.
    • The cardinal direction of an opening in a porous environment, given a geography, may determine how much and how often light passes through
    • Form suggests that there is more to an image that is invisible.

Coloring

This is for the application of pigments to express hues in an image.

Fill out when have read up on color theory, or otherwise point out techniques for application of pigments

  • Reminders

    • It is possible to render without coloring, but it is not possible to color without rendering.
    • In an open environment, ambient light is a large or distant (typically white) light source with a hue filter or series of hue filters (those being gases and aerosols in the environment).
    • In a closed environment, the predominant hue of ambient light is the hue of the largest or brightest–or otherwise most artificially diffused–artificial lighting.
    • In a closed environment, whatever the predominant hue of ambient light is, is affected by white balancing.
    • In a porous environment, radiance from adjacent enclosures and a gradient with the middle being a mixed-hue ambient light and the extremes being the ambient light in each enclosure determines the predominant hue.
    • As a rule of thumb, fire is red-orange (with a heat-related spectrum from red-orange to ultraviolet), tungsten lights are yellow-orange, fluorescent lights are green-blue, and light-emitting diode lights are any color but most often white.
    • Most if not all artificial lighting flickers, with a frequency that renders the flicker visible or invisible.
    • Lowered brightness causes lower contrast but higher hue variation, while higher brightness causes higher contrast but lower hue variation.
    • Form suggests that there is more to an image that is invisible.

visual_study imagination movements motion kinesis mimicry kinesthesia sighting sight_line sight_lines intuition tonal_value tonal_values local_tonal_value intrinsic_tonal_value pigmental_tonal_value transitional_tonal_value middle_tonal_value corner plane geometry aerosol gas atmosphere atmospheric_gas atmospheric_gases

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