Transcripts
1. Trailer: In this art composition lesson, we're going to take a
look at shape design and how to use it as
a design component. Shape is a lot more than just circle squares
and triangles. It's a valuable tool
that can help elevate our compositions to
a much higher level by creating greater interest, structural stability,
and even meaning. We'll start off with
a lecture and then we'll do a demonstration
with a fantasy character, where we'll incorporate
all the aspects of shape design that we'll
learn throughout the lesson. If you're ready to elevate your composing to
the next level, then shape is a tool that is going to help you
out. Let's begin.
2. Shape As A Design Component: When we start learning
about art composition, we tend to learn a lot about creating a focal
point for our image. We also tend to learn a
lot about value and how light and shadow helps to establish the mood
for our arrangement. And then of course, there's
color and how we go about balancing those warm
and cool color temperatures. These are the main
components that we have in our mind when we
think about composition. But an area that we often
don't think about that adds an extra layer to
these concepts is shape. When we hear the word shape, we logically think
about the basics like squares, circles,
and triangles. Pretty much any type of two dimensional design
that you can think of. And it's not an
incorrect answer. In fact, it's the right answer in the most literal of cases. But for composition,
shape is much more than just the outside contour to
a flat piece of geometry. In art, shape is something that allows us to create
a sense of movement, a sense of contrast, a sense of depth, and
even a sense of meaning. Within our work, that meaning stems from the world around us. We subconsciously
associate certain shapes with certain feelings
and emotions. If we look at this
square, for instance, our minds observe
the straight lines and 90 degree corners. And intuitively
interpret this structure as having a lot of stability. So shape plays a pretty big role in our understanding
of the world. More so than what we
probably realize. This lesson is going to take a look at what shape is and how to use it to create interest and meaning in our art composition. So let's start to
break it all down now.
3. Shape v Form: Let's first define
what shape is. Shape is merely the outside
contour of something. It can either be a positive
or negative shape. It can either be
cornered or organic. It can be emptied in its interior or be
fully silhouetted. In simplest terms,
it's a flat area of space surrounded by some
type of boundary line. In an artistic context, shape is the two dimensional
counterpart to form, which is three dimensional. The square is the two D
equivalent to the box. The circle is the
equivalent to the sphere, and the triangle is the
equivalent to the pyramid, et cetera. In composition. Both of these ideas are
the building blocks to creating all the components
within our illustration, shape and form relate to each
other in a pretty big way. And our key
foundational tools for creating structural integrity
within our designs. Now, there's a lot of obvious overlap between
these two ideas, but the truth is we
need to think of them as being opposing ideas. And that's because our mind interprets shape and
form differently. The more three D rendered
an illustration is, the more our minds interpret that illustration
as being realistic. When we see that beautifully
painted bowl of fruit, our mind easily becomes
fooled by that image. And if the artist has done a
fantastic job of that image, our minds will tell us that the fruit looks
good enough to eat. But the exact same
composition done in a more two dimensional style doesn't elicit the
same response. The loss of all those
subtle light and shadow changes takes
us out of the image. We'd still interpret
it as a bowl of fruit, but nothing in our
mind tells us we can reach in and pick up
that apple or banana. That shape based design has kind of now
ruined the illusion. We've gone from
something that is very realistic and literal to something that is very
stylized and design oriented. So despite there being a lot of commonality between
shape and form, they are very much two
contrasting ideas. Shape and form is
then not just circles and spheres, squares and boxes. It needs to be thought
of as the scale between realism and stylization. And if they are at opposite
ends to each other, it means that we can create
contrast between them. In the same way we can create
light and shadow contrast. Or warm and cool color
temperature contrast. Let's now take a look at how
to create this contrast.
4. Shape and Form Contrast: As mentioned in the last video, we can use shape to create
contrast with form. Let's look at how we do that. In this first composition, we've got a lot of flat circles all randomly
overlapping each other. However, we do
have a focal point with this center circle. There is a hierarchy
to this composition. It's not just complete chaos, but it's also not a particularly
interesting composition. It's not even really
a clear composition. Let's see what happens
then if we add form to our center circle and
turn it into a sphere. Well, all of a sudden we've created a far
clearer focal point. Our eyes are now naturally being pulled towards
this sphere, while the flat two D circles are no longer calling
for our attention. So we've created contrast
through shape and form. However, not only have
we created contrast, but we've also established a story from a
compositional perspective. We are now conveying
to the audience that this sphere is the most important aspect of
this composition, whilst the circles behind it are now a secondary component. If we go back to our
first composition, our center circle is sort of the lead character
to the story. But he's also not all that distinct from the other
circles around him. He's just kind of
blending in here. But by adding form in, we've now created a clear
distinction between our lead character and
our supporting character. But what if we flip
things around? What if we keep the
center circle flat, but surround it with spheres? Well again, our eyes can't
help but be drawn to this middle area that
clear contrast reinforces. This is the most important
area for the audience to look. It almost looks like there's
a hole that's been created. Now you might be
saying to yourself, this makes sense in all, but this seems like a
very extreme example. What practical use is there
for this type of contrast? If I'm a realist
painter, for instance, I'm not going to suddenly
be adding in two de, animated characters
into my landscapes. Well, whilst this is a bit
of an extreme example, any type of illustration
that we do has to be thought of like an image that's
been captured on camera. And if there's two dimensionality
in the real world, it means two
dimensionality exists within this painted world. And a good example of
where this applies is simply pattern the pin
stripes on a suit, the poker dots on a dress. The wallpaper designs
in our houses, the kitchen floor,
the checker tiles. Anything with a
repetitive flat design exists both in our world
and in the painted world. There can be also any number
of organic patterns as well, like wood grains or the
random spots on a big cat, like a leopard or a cheetah. And so we want to use these shape patterns
to our advantage. If we take a look at this image, we've got two
characters here that really aren't all that
distinct from one another. But the moment we apply a pattern to the
clothing of one of them, then we've suddenly created a dominant character
to our story. We can also invert this
and surround one of our characters with a pattern in the background to help
push her forward, just like we did with our
sphere example earlier. As we can see, shape
can be used to create contrast and focus in our illustrations in
a number of ways.
5. Shape For Movement and Dynamics: Let's talk about using shape for movement and for creating
directional markers. We're going to start with
our basic shapes of circle, square, triangle, each
within their own canvas. Now with these shapes, there's no real sense that
they're doing anything to help create movement
outside of themselves. Our eyes will naturally follow along their outside contour. But the shapes themselves
aren't really directing us to move anywhere
else within the canvas. Everything is very much
on equal footing here. Our eyes really don't
have anywhere else to go. We could make the argument that the triangle is
pointing upwards, but we could also say it's pointing to the left
and right as well. But for all intents
and purposes, there's no real direction
that's being made here. However, the moment we
create a long axis within our shapes is the moment we do create a
directional marker. This slight elongation to the axis naturally drags
our eyes along with it. The moment we do
this is the moment we create a path
for the audience. Let's take a look at these
examples In our landscape, we've got our triangular shaped mountains
in the distance, helping to move our eye towards the figure
in the foreground. Our second image has
got some nice puffy, egg shaped clouds pointing
towards our flock of birds. And the third image is of skyscrapers leading our eye to the alien ship
hovering above. Now, what happens if we reduce the long axis
of these shapes? Well, compositionally, everything still works
for the most part, but we've lost a lot of the
movement as a consequence. We've still got a focal point, but the shapes are now acting more like a frame than a guide. The images feel a lot more
still and a lot less dynamic. As a result, shifting
one access to be longer can go a long way to helping orchestrate movement
within the composition. The beauty of this is that it applies to every type of shape. There is not just
geometric shape, but it's not the only way
to use shape for movement. Another way to look
at it is through a gradation of shape to form. If we take a look at this
rough portrait sketch, there's a lot of light
and shadow going on here. A lot of form being created,
structurally speaking. There's nothing wrong
with this sketch. But if we look at
what happens when we flatten some of the
areas out with shape, then we've created a
greater area of focus. Because our eyes are
naturally following along with the transition from two
D shape to three D form. If we put both of the
images side by side, our second image feels
a little bit more interesting and even a
little bit more mysterious. Because we are gradually introducing more and
more three D detail. It's almost like the face is
emerging from the canvas. We can also have
this gradation take the audience deep into
the picture frame. If we're doing a
landscape, for instance, and we start to
decrease the level of form from the foreground
to the background, we create a path that
pulls the audience in. As things recede
into the distance, they become less detailed, their forms become less clear, contrast becomes less obvious, which means everything shifts to looking flatter and
more two dimensional. We can use shape
to not only move the audience around the canvas but into the canvas as well.
6. Pattern and Repetition: If there's one thing us humans
are good at and sometimes just a little too good at,
it's finding patterns. And as we've seen, they can be put to
good use in creating a dominant subject matter
in our compositions. But they are also
something that can easily make our art
look uninteresting. If it's over used, we need to think of pattern as not just two dimensional
shapes on our characters, clothing or the wallpaper
in the background. We need to think of
it as any type of shape that repeats itself
throughout the composition. As mentioned, we're pretty
good at working out patterns and we can prove
this with this demonstration. In this demonstration, we've got a very basic pattern of shapes with an empty
space at the end. Circle, circle, square,
circle, circle, blank. Now naturally based on what we see with the
preceding shapes, we expect the square to
complete this sequence, even if that pattern
is being cut off. We naturally make
the educated guess that this sequence of
shapes continues on. It therefore becomes
predictable. And the more predictable
something is, the more monotonous
and boring it becomes. And it becomes also a
lot easier to ignore. If we change our
original pattern and instead end it with a
completely different shape, then suddenly the
monotony is broken. We're going along as expected, wandering along the path
here before suddenly being jolted by something that has
interrupted the sequence. If we look at this example
of a city sky line, we've got all these boxy
buildings filling out the frame. We've got a little bit of up
and down movement going on. So it's not all the same, but they're all very
standard skyscraper shapes. However, if we
change one or two of the buildings to a
slightly different shape, then our city skyline now has a little bit
more character going on. Breaking patterns like this
is great because it again, helps to establish
interest and contrast. We've talked about contrast
between shapes and forms, now we're talking about
contrast between shapes. However, we don't
just want an even split between different
types of shapes. We want to establish
an overall shape key for our design.
What is the key? A key is just a
proportional measurement between two design components. And working out which
of those components is the dominant player
in a value key? It's the proportion of light
to shadow in a color key. It's the proportion of warm
colors to cool colors. For our shape key, we want
to establish which shape is going to be the dominant
one in our design throughout. If we look at our
interior example here, we've got a lot of
rectangular and boxy shapes. Throughout this sketch,
we can say that the key for this composition
is square dominant. But because of that
repetition of square shape, we've inadvertently
formed a pattern which has made things look
rather uninteresting. If we switch to our
second example, we've added a few rounded
elements into the design. An arch in the doorway, some circular frames
in the walls, a few other rounded
elements here and there. The square shapes are still
the dominant feature. But we've broken the pattern up with circles and oval shapes. So in addition to value
keys and color keys, a shaped key is a great
additional tool to have to create further
contrast and interest.
7. Demonstration Part 1 - Shape Key: Let's do a demonstration. And in this demo,
we're going to do a little compositional sketch featuring our beautiful
fairy character here. So before worrying about what's happening in
the environment, in the background
or the foreground, our first job is to
identify what her shape is, What's the average outside
contour to our character. And in this case, it's
pretty obvious that a triangle is the
best general shape. We could probably make the
argument that she's also a tilting box shape as well if we include the wings
and the leg here. But the main core of her body, alongside with how
her dress is placed, really looks more like
a triangular shape. She's also got some
triangular shapes happening in the wings as well. So we could call this our
starting shape overall. Now at present, she's just
hovering in empty space. So we're going to have to add in some environmental
components here that are going to draw the
audience's eye towards her. So we'll have shapes
coming from the top in the background and some shapes coming from the bottom
in the foreground. And all of that is going to lead the audience's eye
directly to her. Almost like it's an arrow
pointing straight towards her. So our fairy is a
triangular shape. We're going to have some
environmental elements that are pointing towards her. So we could say then that the composition is going
to have a triangular key. That's our primary shape. And it's going to be
reinforced in a few ways with both positive and
negative shapes throughout the composition. But we're also going
to contrast that with some other shapes
throughout just to break up that repetitiveness. Some circles, in some squares. In fact, let's do that now and give our fairy
something to sit on. Now, fairies generally
associated a lot with nature, so we might do something that is very nature heavy for
the environment here. And we might give
her a little bit of a tree branch to
sit on for starter. So I'll just grab this marquee
tool here and I'll start to map out just a rough
shape for her to sit on. Maybe it's the stem
from a plant or a vine, we don't know yet exactly. We'll make her a tiny
fairy surrounded by some large plants and maybe some flowers
later on as well. So this is our branch shape. It's going to be mostly
rectangular in its silhouette. And we'll just start to color
this in underneath her. Now, this class is not
really going to be about values or rendering
or anything like that. So we're not going to
spend too much time doing any real light and shadowing to any of
these shapes here. This is primarily going to be
about shape and direction. And using shape for
contrast as well. So just painting
in a little bit of a value here just to give
us something to work with. Now we're already
establishing a little bit of contrast within the
shapes we've got already. We've got a lot of angles and corners within the
shape of our branch, which is in contrast
to the curves and the flowing rhythms that are
surrounding our character. This will probably change as we progress through the sketch, but it's a good
place to start with. We are often much better
taking our contrast to a much more extreme
place first and then gradually
scaling things back. The shapes we choose will also depend on what we
want for our scene. So for instance, if
we're looking to create a scarier
looking environment, then maybe having
all those edges and corners is
exactly what we want. The sharper the shapes look, the more spikes and pointy things that are
around our character, the more we associate that
with danger for good reason. Because we all know from life experience that
anything that is thin and triangular in its shape has the
potential to harm us. And in contrast,
anything smooth and curved really doesn't look
nearly as threatening, but there are
exceptions to that. Of course, a sword,
for instance, is a very triangular shape and in the hands of
the evil villain, or the dark lord, in
our fantasy image, that shape in our
minds can cause all sorts of damage,
pain, and misery. But in the hands of the elegant knight in
the shining armor, riding his noble steed, Well, that shape now becomes a tool
for good, a tool for hope. So we're allowed to play around with these
ideas a little bit, but this shape is a pretty
good place to start. We'll more than likely
have to come back a little bit later on
just to refine things. Once we start getting
a few more of the environmental
components in there, we might have to change
some things along the way. Now automatically, this
one shape does two things. First, it begins to lock our
fairy into her environment. It's going to help to establish
her size and positioning. And it's also going to create
that directional path, the audience to follow. We've got our
rectangular branch shape with its long axis, which is naturally going to pull our eye towards our
focal point here. But we do need
something else to help reinforce that triangular
key that we set out earlier. So what we might do now is add in something
in the background. And the most obvious
thing that we could do here is probably add in some clouds and have them gradually move from the
top down towards her. I'll grab this 1 " brush
and I'll just start to map in some clouds in the background that
will shift towards her. And I'm not going to worry too much about the type
of clouds here, so this is just going to be a generic rounded cloud design. But if we are creating more egg shapes and more
circular shapes for our clouds, it means we've really covered the three primary shapes
already in our design here. We've got the triangular
foundations for the fairy. We've got the more rectangular
shape in our branch here. And now we're using egg and circular shapes
for our clouds. Now take notice about what our branch and our
clouds are doing. In particular, take notice of the negative space between them, despite the fact that they're really different shapes
overall the way they are designed and position is
helping to imply a triangle. We've got our triangular
shape in our fairy, and now the environment
is beginning to reinforce that idea,
our triangular key. We do have to be a
little bit careful not to be too obvious with
these implied shapes. However, because the boundary
line can become noticeable. So I'm just roughly following along with the path and
using these lighter, flatter shaped clouds to help hide that boundary
line a little bit. This goes back to early in the lesson where we talked about creating that transition from two dimensions to
three dimensions. The clouds closer to
the viewer will have a little bit more depth and
form the clouds further away will help emphasize that by being flatter and more two
dimensional in their design. Now I might just add in
a little bit more detail to these darker clouds, just again, to help create a little bit more
of that contrast. So we're using our shape here
to help create this depth. We want to do two things
with our compositions. With shape, we want to
either use it for creating movement throughout the image or creating depth within the image. Ideally, we want to do both. If we can get both of
those ideas across, then it's going to
allow us to create the most dynamic possible image. When we try to learn about
dynamics and composition, we naturally gravitate
to the obvious ones, like color, temperature,
and light and shadow. But we want shape to also be
part of our tool set here, because the audience will
intuitively feel it, even if they can't obviously see there's a triangle in
the background here. Or that the overall composition
is triangular based. They will be able
to sense some level of cohesion and harmony here. They might not be able to
express why that's the case, but inside, something
about this is going to tell them that
this all feels unified. Let's just do a little bit of a recap of what
we've done so far. We've established the shape of our character and made
her the focal point. We've established
the overall key for the shape of
the composition. And we've begun to create shapes that direct the
viewer towards her. So let's leave this
first part here and move on to doing a
bit more development.
8. Demonstration Part 2 - Creating Contrast: All right, we've
got a lot of empty space over here on the left, so let's fill it
in with something. And I think I might put in
some cliffs in the background. And I'll think, I'll make these a little bit squarish
in their shape. So that's going to run a
little bit contrast to our triangular key more
so than our branch. But that's precisely what
we want in this case. As mentioned earlier, us humans are pretty good at
spotting patterns. But they do become
boring very quickly, especially if they're
very monotonous patterns. It's like hearing a song with the same three chords being
played over and over again. So if we have, you know, say more mountainous
peaks in the background, like the Himalayan type
of mountain shapes, it could still produce
pretty good results, but it might not produce
as good a result. Our audience may
start to pick up that something about this is starting to feel a bit repetitive. So our rectangular cliffs
are going to break this up a little bit and hopefully
just make things look that little bit
more interesting. So I'll just start to
render in this shape here. We've got a little
bit of dynamic up and down movement
throughout our cliffs, But I want to add in a
little bit of form here. And I'm going to do
that by adding in some light value
shapes here and there. And that will be enough to
create the illusion of form. We don't need to render in every crack and crevice
into the rock surface. A few light and shadow strokes
here and there will often be enough to inform
the viewer that what they are
looking at has form. As long as we've got a clear distinction
between light and shadow, the audience is able to fill
in the blanks themselves. We actually don't have
to do as much rendering to create form as we think. We can kind of fake it a little bit through
light and shadow shapes. And a good example to
see that in action is if we were to create
a black billiard ball. If we take a black
circle and simply paint in a simple white spot, our minds automatically start to see the three dimensionality. So the further back into the
picture plane that we go, the more we want to use
those light and shadow shapes to create the
illusion of form. So I'm just creating some
zigzaggy light shapes across the cliffs
here just to make them look that a little
bit more interesting. And that might do
it for the moment. We may come back a little
bit later on to adjust them, but that we'll do for now. Now the question becomes, if you look at what
we've done so far, is have we now got too many rectangular
elements in our composition? We've got the branch, of course, we've got the cliffs
in the background. Are we starting to
create too many edges, corners, and straight
lines in our composition? Is it moving too far away
from our triangular key? If we were to sort of wrap
these shapes together. Now, is this really working as well as it could? So
what do we do here? Well, probably the simplest
thing we can do is to simply adjust the
shape of the branch. The cliffs in the background, they look nice and strong, and imposing, and offer
a nice bit of contrast. So that seems to work. So changing the branch shape
is probably our best bet. And we're going to do that
by softening the corners here in our shape to make them a lot more curved and organic. So this is an example
of why taking things to a more extreme place is
a better error to make. It sounds a bit odd saying
that there are good errors, but if we're too conservative
with our approach, it can become a little bit difficult to see whether
things are working. The better option is to make
errors on the other side. So making things
more extreme and then starting to
scale things back. So this is coming together. All right, but let's
take things a little bit further and let's make
this a thorny branch. Add some spikes here and there just to make it a little
bit more interesting. Something that looks
a little bit prickly. And so I'll add some
of those in now, just here and there throughout. And I might just draw
another one right next to her that's pushing
up ever so slightly. So another small little directional marker
here for the audience. So looking at these thorns, what are, Well, they really
are just stretched triangles. So we've shifted the shape of our branch from
being boxed in rectangular to now
having elements that are starting to relate back
to our compositional key. And it's these type of secondary shapes that are going to start unifying
things together. It's important to
make sure before we dive into the
rendering and adding in all the color that we think about these more
subtle relationships. We started with big
overarching shapes for our pose and our background, looking for that proportional
balance between them. And now we are looking to do the same for these smaller
secondary shapes. But again, we have to be careful not to overdo things here. So let's finish this off
here now and start to think about what we can put in for
our foreground elements.
9. Demonstration Part 3 - Repetition: So it was made,
mentioned at the end of that last video about
overdoing things a little bit. So let's just do an example of what that
actually looks like. So I'm going to put in some tall blades of grass
into this foreground. Just using the marquee tool here to quickly sketch that out. And going to make this a
slightly darker value as well, just to make it look as if it's coming a little closer
towards the viewer. So just painting this in here, and this is going
to act a little bit like a framing device here. We're not going to
get too detailed with these foreground elements, they're going to act a little bit more like a framing device. So I've got one shape
over here on the right, and we'll add in a second
one on the left as well, just to fill up the space here. So this isn't just going
to be a framing device, it's also going
to help establish a bit more size in relation
to our fairy character. In order to convey that
size that she's very small, we need objects in the
environment to help show that this is
more or less done. Although I might
fill in a little bit more in the center here, it's just looking a
little bit too empty. And that shape will do,
and I'll fill that in. Now let's just do a little bit of assessment
before we go forward. We've got our grassy blades, they're filling in the
area. Does this feel right? Well, we're probably going a little bit over the top here. We've got a lot of triangular
shapes with these points, but maybe things are just
a little bit too spiky. Yes, it's helping to reinforce
our compositional key, but we'll probably take
things a little bit too far. It's starting to get
a little bit too repetitive here and it's not
that interesting to look at. So just because something is in the foreground
or the background, an element that's of
secondary importance doesn't mean we
ignore its shape. So let's change this up
and add in some variation. And we're going to make a few
of these strands of grass. These blades of grass go in slightly different
directions and in slightly different shape. So let's add that variation. And we're going to also add in a couple of different
types of grass as well. So something that looks a little bit more
like a barley shape, I'd probably describe it as. And we can start to
see already how with just these few
changes things are looking a lot less spiky and probably a little bit more
organic and natural as well. But this is a, another good
example of just taking things a little bit too far first
and then scaling it back. We started with
very sharp shapes for these grass blades here, and now we're just trying
to soften things up a little bit and add a little
bit of variation as well. So another strand
of grass that's shaped like wheat or barley
or whatever it's called. I'm no botanists, so I wouldn't exactly know
what the terminology is, but we've started to see
how just with a few changes here and there some twists
and turns for our shapes. And it's starting to look
a lot more interesting, but it's also again, reinforcing our triangular keef. We were to sort of average out these blades of grass together, this group as a single shape. We're still getting that
sort of triangular shape, especially with that strand of barley or wheat
in the middle there. It's really creating
that triangular point with all those shapes together. This is looking
relatively okay now. So we might start to think
about changing the shape of things over on the
left hand side now because it's still a
bit too repetitive. So we're going to
have to break some of this repetition
up a little bit, but we still do want some of
those sharper pointy areas. Because as you might
be able to see here, they're pointing up
towards, again, our ferry. So we've got another set of
directional markers here. Throughout the
whole composition, we've intentionally tried to put as many directions for
the audience to follow. So we've got the clouds
in the background, we've got the branch, of course, that
she's sitting on. And now we've got the
foreground elements, which are all trying to guide us to this very specific
focal point. So our job as artists
is really to help tell the audience where exactly throughout the composition
we want them to look. And if we've done a good
enough job of that, then they won't get confused, they won't ask questions, and they'll know exactly
what your intentions are. If the audience isn't looking exactly where we want them to, then it means that somewhere along the way we've
made an error. The path that we've been trying
to create has either been interrupted or maybe
it's not 100% clear. Maybe we've got too many
conflicting elements throughout. Ultimately, the
responsibility lands on us to ensure that
clarity is present. Because the audience isn't
here to do homework. So this is why developing an understanding of
shape is useful, because it is so much more than just square circles
and triangles. It's really another tool in our arsenal that we can use
to help develop that path. And help develop
our composition in a way which produces
a lot of clarity. And the more clarity we have, the less likely we are
to lose our audience. Because we've only
got one chance as two D illustrators to be able
to really into our scene. Almost finishing off with this grass now and
just adding in a few negative ****** in between little bits of light poking through
here and there. And I'm pretty sure we
can all agree this looks a lot more interesting than what we originally started with. Things are looking a little
bit more interesting now. And what I'm just doing here
is that I'm just going to go over the top with some
slightly darker values, some darker value
shapes just to help give again that illusion
of illusion of depth. It's going to be
similar to what we did with the cliffs in
the background here. We don't need to
render again too much. Just enough here to indicate
a little bit of form. Now this is coming
together. All right? But it feels like there's
something missing here. At least down below here. And I'm thinking that
we can put something behind our fairy just to fill in a little
bit of the space, because it's feeling
just a little bit empty. So I'll just paint in a little bit more of
the mountain color. The cliffs color here. And what I think I'm
going to do when I'm finished with the grassier
elements in the foreground, I'm going to add something
here in the background. I think I'll add in a flower. And I'm not 100% sure
yet what type of flower, but I want it to
run a little bit in contrast to what's happening
here in the foreground. I might make it a flower with some nice big
rounded petals, and I'll make it a
decent size as well. I'll just finish off
a couple more of these negative shapes
in this grass, and I think that's looking
pretty well done now. There's not much
more I can do with this without going over the top. How big do I want this flower? I think this is relatively
okay in terms of size. We might have to play a round
of it a little bit more. I'll just grab the marquee
tool again and I'll start to just map out a fairly
generic looking flower shape. As I said, not going
to worry too much about a specific
species of flower, this will do for the moment, and I'm going to make this look as if it's sitting behind her, as if it's off in the
distance a little bit. So that means I have to make
it a slightly lighter value than what's happening on the branch. Just
getting that shape in. Again, not going to
worry too much about specific flower designs
or anything like that. So it's pretty generic
for the most part, but that roundness is
actually contrasting pretty well with those more
triangular shapes for our grassi elements here. So just because something might be a little bit, you know, boring in its shape or a little
bit generic in its shape, doesn't mean it can't play
a role in a composition. We've got a little bit
more chaos happening with the grassy
foreground elements. So this slightly more
mundane shape is, again, just helping to offset
that a little bit, creating that a little
bit more contrast. But it's also helping to convey a bit more of
the story about what this landscape is
like if we just kept a lot of those spiky
components in place. And if we didn't change the shape of that
grass a little bit, then it would start
to feel like this is a bit more of a
threatening environment. But by curving that
grassi element off and by adding in
our rounded flower, we've started to say something
about the environment. It doesn't look nearly
as threatening now, so our shapes here are
starting to convey meaning. We're looking at
all these shapes present and we're
starting to build up a mental story in our head as to what this landscape
is actually like. A lot of it is going to be
a lot of trial and error. So figuring out that
middle ground between our different shapes and really all of our design components, that's the real
challenge for us. There's no real
formula for creating that perfect balance
in our compositions. There's going to be a
lot of trial and error, a lot of mistakes along the way. So all we really have to
do is push through that. If we're working
on a composition, doing our little
thumbnail sketches, and something isn't working, then our best bet is to
just start from scratch. That might do us for this part. So just to do a little
bit of a recap, we've added in our grass
elements in the foreground. We've added in our flour to add some further depth and
stability to the composition. Let's move on to the last part.
10. Demonstration Part 4 - Pattern: All right, our composition is coming together reasonably well. We've got our directional
markers in place. We've got our variety
of shapes and forms, which are creating a
nice stable composition. And it's drawing a lot of
focus to our fairy character. But we haven't really
touched upon her yet. We haven't really
done anything to our character to make
her stand out anymore. And the most obvious thing
that we can do to make her pop out just a little
bit more is to add a pattern to her dress. And we've talked a little
bit about patterns before and in particular
about avoiding patterns. But in this instance
we're going to use pattern to just give that little bit more emphasis
on our character and to also just make her look that
little bit more interesting. Her dress is of a very
similar value to her skin, so adding some type
of textured pattern here is just going to help
separate those two elements. So I think I'll
do something that has almost a slight
sparkly effect here, but I'll just start in with some random lines to begin with. Now with regards to patterns, we can usually go
in one of two ways. We can either make things look really monotonous and boring, or we can make things look a little bit more unique
and interesting. The more unique and
interesting the pattern, the more it starts to stand out and the more it
draws our attention. So it just adding some
whiter highlights here just to give a sort of
sparkly effect to this. So as you can see, we haven't
done a lot here so far, but it's already making
a pretty big difference. We've got this now clear
separation between the dress tones and
her skin tones. So it's making her just pop out that a little bit more look, a little bit more
magical perhaps. Now, we might also do something for the wings as well because they're a little bit generic
and boring at the moment. They don't really look
like fairy wings so much. So I'll just do something
that's probably a little bit stereotypical
in its shape, But it's enough to get us
going for the meantime. So just adding in a couple
of these sort of vein like shapes into the
wings and that just adds a little bit more
character and again, a little bit more interest. Now we might just
add in a little bit of highlight here
just to kind of give off the illusion that the wings are
slightly transparent. So we've got a little bit
of light in the background. So if we've got
transparent wings, it's going to be a little bit of that light just
peeking through here. And a few lighter value shapes just to add a little bit
more sparkle and mysticism, I suppose, to our character. So she's coming along nicely. So what else can
we do with regards to pattern in our
environment here? Well, I think the
next thing that we can do is add a little bit of pattern texture to our branch
that she's sitting on here. Now we don't want to go too crazy with this because again, we don't want to lose focus
for our subject matter. So these lighter value shapes here on the branch are just
going to be very subtle. So it's only a slight
change in value, but it's going to
be enough just to give a little bit
more focus here. We don't want to go too
crazy with our textures because if we've got patterns
running all over the place, then they're going to
kind of cancel each other out and it's just going to become a little bit too chaotic. So we want to be careful
and really choose where those patent shapes emerge
from our composition. So again, this is coming
together quite nicely here. Just doing a little bit
more shading here with the branch just to give things
a little bit more form. Now, just looking at the
overall image in total. Here we've got a very
clear subject matter, we've got some very clear
directional markers here. And we're using our
patent texture as well, just to give a little bit
more emphasis on it as well. But is there anything
that's missing from this? Is there anything we can
sort of top this off with? And I'm thinking behind her that we can add in
one final shape. And it's going to
be the Moon that's going to be peeking out
from behind the clouds. So I'll just start to draw in a circular shape
for the moon. That circle is again going
to help create contrast. The moon's light, of course, is naturally going
to create contrast. Now it's also contrasting with the overall triangular
kenow composition. Now I could paint in a little
bit of texture on the moon, a few craters and few darker
areas here and there. But I think that might just take some focus a little bit
away from our character. So we'll keep it nice
and smooth for now. Maybe change things a little
later on and just add a few high lights around
the clouds as well. And just make it look a
little bit more like it's peaking out from
behind those clouds. So we've got this circle now, which is again, running
in contrast with our key. But it's also sort
of acting almost like a spot light, if
you think about it. It's also creating contrast
with its simplicity. Our fairy character. She's got a lot of bumps
and curves throughout here. A very organic design, a very complicated silhouette, whilst the moon is this perfect circle in
the background here. So again, we've got contrast happening between
shape and form, and we've also got
contrast happening in a couple of different
ways between our shapes. So just adding a little bit of highlighted
pencil here just to give a little bit of glow
to the overall composition. Just assessing things again, I'm starting to think that maybe the moon is maybe just
a little bit too small, so it might just make
it a little bit larger. I think that balances
itself a little bit better. Overall. I think this might
do us for the composition. So hopefully this lesson helps to show you how
you can add shape until your artists tool
kit for creating contrast, movement, focus, et cetera. And the more we use it alongside our other design components
like value and color, the more dynamic our
compositions will become.
JW Learning, Drawing the Body, Head and Hands
