Landscape Techniques Vol. 1 - Methods for Mastering your Art!

1. Intro: Hello, my name is West Gardner. I'm your professional artist and illustrator and Art Instructor. Currently working as a freelance artist in the entertainment industry. I have credits that includes Star Wars or him or 40,000 Percy Jackson, Adidas, Universal Studios, Warner Brothers in many, many more. I am here to teach you about landscape painting, but more importantly, I'm here to show you some techniques. Instead, to break down any type of painting you might be working on into repeatable, actionable steps into one another. So for this class, we're going to be making a landscape painting from a blank canvas all the way to the complete finished, where you've picked your signature on it and shown off on socials are for a client or what have. This class is aimed at skill levels of all types. Because there's going to be little bits of information for every skill type. You're an absolute Art beginner. That's great. Welcome aboard because we're gonna be starting with a blank canvas and talking about creating images based on Ideation, shapes, values, colors, Rendering, edges, extra, a whole works everything you want in your painting. What we're going to be in there. Now if your intermediate, Let's say you're a hobbyist, you've maybe gotten a few client gigs before you've done commissions, something like that. This is going to be a set of techniques to help you streamline your process. I know Art can feel very overwhelming. This is gonna be a nice little map that you can follow to make sure you're checking all of the boxes as you go. And if you're a fellow professional, welcome as well. It's always nice to talk shop with other bros. You're going to find some tips and tricks from another professional, me, that's going to help maybe bring your Art to that other level or next level of eating might be looking for, Let's say you do portrait. You want to start branching out into landscape. Or you just want to find a way to refine your process, speed up the parts that you might still feel are a little monkey. Or just get your confidence level exactly where it needs to be before you start work with that major client. So without further ado, let's hop into this. All you really need is a device that can make Art, that can be a canvas, that can be a, an iPad or a scooter, or any sort of Digital Art tools that we'll talk about that and of course Overview. So without further ado, let's get started. 2. Course Overview and Setting Expectations: Hey guys, what's up? It's Wes, welcome to Lesson zero. I guess. This is more of an introduction video to set expectations and let you know kinda what you're gonna be doing. Over the course of this course. We're going to set up the expectations for the videos, in what order they're going to come in, the type of information we're going to go over. And also just some helpful tips and tricks before we get too far in the weeds on this. So let me hop over here. There we go. So yeah, landscape Techniques volume one. So this video is just gonna be the course Overview, your basic tips and Setting Expectations for the course. I just want you guys to know ahead of time what we're gonna get into before we get into this. But let me click over there. There we go. So here we go. Let's just start off to the races with the course overview. We're going to dig into the structure of this tutorial set. So the main goal of this course is to learn basic repeatable steps than ensure that we have the most opportunity for success when creating landscape paintings. And it doesn't matter what type of landscapes you're going to be making. The method that I want to teach you and I want to show you It's kind of a set of problem-solving tools that's gonna help you regardless whether you're making something from imagination, whether you're doing a master's study or like a photo study, or even if you're Painting outdoors in life. And this works with Digital Painting. It also works with traditional painting. But since we have all of our digital stuff setup, that's what we're gonna be focusing on, is the digital side of things. But I'm going to sprinkle in some knowledge, if you're working traditionally that this should maybe help as well. So who is this course for? Every course has a key demographic. Who are we really teaching too? Now, you can be at any part of your Art journey and hopefully you're gonna get something out of the course. But primarily, this is aimed at beginning to intermediate painters. So let's say you've been painting for a little bit. You've been wanting to get a little better at your landscapes, or you just want to get a little bit more refined on your process. Overall. This is probably where you want to be. In regards to this course, you're going to learn some techniques and nuances to make image-making a little easier. And we're really just using landscapes as the vessel or the vehicle to learn these steps. So you can even be a pro painter. I know I've learned a ton from other pro painters. And watching how they work helps me solve problems differently. So I'm like, oh, normally when I get caught up on a certain rendering thing or a brush stroke type of technique or whatever. If I see somebody else do it, it makes it easier for me. If you're in that camp as well. Hopefully there's gonna be something to light. So you can be an absolute Art beginner and still enjoy the course. So you're gonna go from beginning to end and you're gonna learn the steps to make a landscape. But we may be covering some topics such as color theory or value or something like that. I'm going to try my best to kinda repeat the fundamentals over and over because that's all that this is really, is, everything comes back to fundamentals. But you may, it may go a little quick. So I do recommend studying a little bit and maybe being familiar with some Art terms and things like that. So I put it here basically, if you're an artist who wants to Pinker first, serious attempts at landscapes. If you want to paint more refined landscapes, let's say you're already doing landscapes, but you want them to be a little sharper, a little better. You want to push your Art to that next level. You want to have a level up moment. Or if you've ever said, I'd love to paint backgrounds for my characters, but backgrounds are super hard, which I hear a lot from where it's students. This is for you. This is going to break it down in such a way that it's repeatable, actionable. You can remember where you're at any step of the way. You can really get the most out of your time whenever you're creating your Art. So how is this course structured? How are we actually going to do this thing? So this is gonna be broken up into a variety of videos, each that talks about one main topic. We're going to talk a little bit about every topic in every video. Because that's how this works. You always have to be thinking about the entire picture whenever you're making an image. But we were going to frame it around one main idea in focus on that idea from beginning to end, to push ourselves to completion of a landscape painting. So we will start with a blank canvas. We're literally going to be starting from nothing. And we're going to go all the way until you sign your landscape, until it is done. Paintings never really done. It's just either when you sign it or when you sell it. That's when it's finished. So we're gonna go from blank canvas all the way to signature The whole, the whole shebang. So each video will lead into the next. So what that means is whenever we do stuff for video number one, video number two is going to use the image that we made in video number one. Then video number three is going to use what are final was from video number two. Does that make sense? So it's going to fully lead into itself. Because the problem-solving steps are all connected. Trust me, we're gonna be hopping back-and-forth. We're gonna be doing a lot of stuff, but we're going to keep it very structured and very linear that way it's easy to replicate. So I will put this out there. If you're a more advanced painter, Let's say you're a hobbyist, you sell paintings. Even if you're a pro, you're gonna be very tempted to jump ahead to the render phase. Well, what, how does he render? I want to know how he renders. I highly recommend for your first go round. Watch every video in order. Because decisions we make it the very beginning will directly impact decisions, we make it the very end. And you're gonna notice that instead of like drinking from water hose, and it's all at once and all coming at you. As we start working on one thing, maybe color. We're going to realize, oh, maybe this doesn't work right, because our values are off in Values come before color will look at that structure here in a minute about how the videos are gonna be. But you're gonna notice that these are very deliberate steps in this process. But they feed into each other in such a way that you can always go back, do a correction and it feeds into the other one. So please watch from beginning to end for your first time. And also if you're following along, if you're making your own landscape as part of like a course project or something like that. That's a great way to do that, is follow along, do step-by-step by step. Then maybe I have to jump back to previous step, but you don't have to. That's fine. We all have our different journey to get to our destination. But major, major decisions we make upfront directly impact stuff we do later on. So if you're if you skip ahead and you're like, Well, why did he do that? Well, why did that doesn't make sense. Why did he do that? I probably answer it in a previous video. Does that make sense? So yeah, trust in the process. Trust me. The process works. You just gotta believe in it. You go through the ugly phases of your paintings. It's fine. We'll get there. We will get to our destination. So our task over the video lessons will be to create a landscape painting that acts as a sequel to this painting. So this is my goal. As I work through this, this tutorial, as I teach you all this method, I am going to be making a sequel to this, which is cavern camp. I've made this about a month-and-a-half ago, got real big reactions on social media. People seem to really enjoy it and love it. I loved working on it. And I use the method that I'm using in this video on this image. So this is the type of final that you're going to have. Now I will say, I do have for my Skillshare students, I do have a course called traditional looks for Digital Painting. Miles off some YouTube stuff that talks about this to get the painterly look, but we'll look at that as we work. So, yeah, making a sequel to that. So before we get into foreign in the nitty-gritty and really breaking the course. Now, let's talk about some tools of the trade, okay? This is just gonna be stuff that's gonna be helpful. That way you can follow along or find some good resources. That way you're kinda set up for success, okay? So you needed a device and you need software. Now this could be a tablet of any sort, like a touchscreen, or it could be a pen tablet that you have. You can work with a mouse. I mean, I'm not your parent, you can do whatever you want. But I do recommend getting some sort of touched device to make it a little bit more natural. In that brain mentality of the stroke that you put down mimics a paint stroke or a pencil stroke. You want that as close to one-to-one as possible. But yeah, you can make Art with a mouse. Pretty easy. I know one of my favorite artists ever, his name is Craig Mullins. He's the godfather Digital Art. He did some incredible, incredible paintings, just all the mouse for years. They didn't really have pen tablets when they first made Photoshop. So he just used use what he had. So yeah, use what you have, but I recommend having a device. It doesn't whether it's an iPad and Procreate, anything like that. There are some paid options for painting software. So of course, photoshops and industry standard. You also have Corel Painter, Clip Studio Paint, or some big ones, but also there's some free options, some non-cost options, such as Christa Metabolic paint. There's a few that you can use of no cost to get started on your, on this lesson and on your Digital Art journey. And also there's some paid options for mobile, such as, I really like Art Studio Pro, I really like infinite painter, procreates. Awesome of course. So there's a lot to really what this means is you don't have to follow me exactly based on what my program is. You can use your preferred program. Just hear some options if you don't know where to start. Here's some options to look at. Yeah, and I do highly recommend a tablet or a touchscreen as well. So here's some helpful resources to make your life easier, okay? So I will be using something whenever we make our mood boards and whenever we actually use reference later in the rendering process, I use something called pure ref. It's basically a, a free to download deal for desktop computers. So Mac and Windows, I believe Linux as well, to where you can literally have your set of images and keep them over top of your Painting Program. That way you don't have to like keep looking at different I have three monitors. But the goal is to not really look at the different monitors, to really be able to zone in and focus. So this allows you to mix and match up your images. You can spin and flip your images. Another cool thing you can do with pure ref is you can make things grayscale. So you can strip away the color and work specifically in value, which is supercritical. We're going to talk about that during the course of the lesson. But yeah, there's other things like viz REF. Ref is a great one for mobile. It works a lot like pure ref does. I don't know if it's by the same people, but if you just search on your App Store viscera, if it's going to pop up. Then also references let me, let me hide me real quick. Um, so you have for your references, references are gonna be a topic we're going to cover in very big detail. But just know that there are places where you can freely use references. But some of them are going to have to have like attribution. You're gonna have to attribute it. You're gonna have to give credit where it's do what you should anyway, even if it's not required, you should give credit to the artists. In this case, photographers, that allow us to use their materials freely. Okay? So they're gonna be a lot of light Creative Commons, zero attribution licenses. So a few websites you can check out for that. Or like Pixabay, Pexels, Unsplash, sketch, daily, Morgue file, public domain archive. There's also paid things that you can get. So for landscapes, for instance, I put some of my favorite ones here. Graph it's Studios has incredible landscape things you can buy. Tom Lopez, Jonas, Ronald guard and Setting Zillow, Mel's knee in and Aaron Miller, There's dozens of artists. If you have a favorite photographer that makes some stuff, email them. And it'd be like, Hey, I'm working on some paintings. I love your stuff. Can I buy the rights to be able to use some of your Art as a reference, not copy it, not unless you're doing a master's copy and on that, I recommend doing a true master's copy. And Albert bird stat, some of the Hudson River School painters, classical painters. And then you still are a very upfront about it and say, Hey, this is a master's study of this other person's work. If you're sharing it on social media or something, but always give credit. And if you can, please support your fellow artists by references, by them, yeah, you can use them for free from these other websites and stuff. But if you're able to purchase a pack, a lot of times these photographers will put a pack of six to 700 images for like five bucks. Absolutely. Sign me up, man. Then you're off to the races there. So yeah, support your fellow artists. That's what this is all about. So now let's talk about the video structure and Overview. Okay, So this is just a review of the videos we're going to be doing in this set. So funnily enough, I have not recorded any of the other videos. I'm actually recording these in order as well. So it's not like I came back after the fact that did this video. I'm doing this one first. Then we're gonna do video number one, Number two, number three, all that stuff. So volume one of this Landscape thing is gonna be taking a landscape from beginning to end. It's gonna be broken up into four main topics. And these are repeatable steps, actionable steps that you can remember. And we broke them down in such a way that they naturally feed into each other. So the first one is gonna be over Ideation and Shapes. So getting the main idea of our painting, What's the mood of our painting? Blocking out basic structure and composition elements. But we're not really worried about what the thing is. We're just putting in shapes to see if we can make something that looks appealing to the eye. Number two is gonna be value. Now we're going to talk about this and the value video. But in my opinion, number two, value is the most important part of any image. Doesn't matter if it's a portrait, if it's a poster, if it's a, you know, if it's a illustration for a children's book or a card game or whatever. Doesn't matter, value is everything. We're going to spend a lot of time discussing value. So that's blocking in the readability of our landscape through value control and silhouettes, really, values come down to light versus dark. What is dark? What is light? What is in shadow? What is enlight? We're gonna be playing around with that. Number three. After we work on our value, we're gonna put color on top of it. So color, this is exactly what it sounds like. We're gonna be applying color overlays to our value painting to nail down a mood, to really feed in to the mood that we establish on the ideations and shapes to really get that mirrored in and get us excited to push to the final step, which is rendering. Rendering takes a lot of time. But all these setup steps, number one, Number two, number three to set up before Render are going to help us make that transition as smooth and easy as possible. So once again, I put the tip down here. Please watch this in order for your first time. And you're gonna notice after the fact that Let's say you watch through it, you follow the steps, you make your landscape project, you're excited about it. But then you want to come back six or eight months from now. Revisit this series. Yeah, feel free to jump wherever you want because you're gonna know what steps you need. That's part of this as well. If you can break down your steps easily into repeatable patterns, you're gonna know the step that you're going to need work on, or that you're going to need to practice more. Just like anything else. Before we begin. Here are some helpful tips and just things to keep in mind before we get going. So my goal as your Art instructor is not for you to paint like me. That's not interesting, right? My goal as an instructor is to help you solve problems. So you can paint like you. Everybody has their own distinct style. And it's just like handwriting. Who taught you to do your handwriting? Maybe you practiced it in school, but your handwriting, this difference from somebody else's, it always will be, right? So we're going to embrace that. And we're going to do these steps in such a way that I'm not telling you how or what to paint. I'm showing you steps that you can repeat to make your paintings go easier so you can really enjoy that process. Okay? So something to keep in mind, there is something called the rule of cool. We're making images. We are visual communicators. Above all else, we want our picture to be interesting. We don't want it to be boring. I mean, there's a time in place for one-to-one exact replica copying. But if it's not a unique image, there's not really a lot of point rather than just the dexterity of it, right? Of physically learning how to see and then implement. But the rule of cool is very powerful. I work in games, I work in entertainment. That's it. We need to make stuff that cells, we need to make stuff that gets interests that maybe a buyer, if someone, if you made traditional paintings, you want people to buy them, right? So you want to build that rapport by the rule of cool. You want your images look cool, right? That makes it FUN to work on. It makes it funny to look at. And then people are gonna be a fan of your work because they know every time you do an Art drop, every time you show off something new, it's gonna be something fulfilling and visually interesting to look at. So if it looks good, it is good. That trumps everything else. If it looks good, it is good. Even if it doesn't follow realism or whatever. We'll talk about that in Ideation and stylization. But something else that's very important if you find a technique later on down the line, or if you already know a technique. And it completely contradicts everything I say, use your method. Which is weird thing for an instructor to say. But the whole idea and this comes back to style. You're going to have so much information in your brain about how to process information. Pick the one that resonates with you. Pick the one that works for you, pick the one that makes you excited about painting and learning. And if it contradicts what I'm saying, all the better, that feeds into your style. Style are decisions that we keep, problem-solving, things that we keep, and also which ones do we throw away? Which ones do we not need? Alright? So even if what I teach isn't exactly what you're looking for, hopefully, it gives you a perspective of what you don't want that's just as valuable, if not more valuable in some respects to your learning process. So Art is definitely subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder as it were. But there are certain things, especially younger artists don't leverage. But these are objective truths. These are things that you cannot change. The laws of physics exist. The way light works, light cannot bend around a surface. Light is a straight line. That type of stuff doesn't change. But that actually helps us whenever we're making an image because we can use the rules that are already established and they are rules, they are laws, man, you got to follow these. These help you make your image better because they're more believable. They follow the rules that we're used to as human beings. We resonate better with the image. So why are we trying to redefine the wheel? Whenever color theory exists, the color wheel exist for a reason, which we'll talk about in the color section. Values and light and the way light works and the way our eye focuses on information. These are scientific things. These are things that have been proven over and over and over. People way above my pay grade over the course of hundreds of years have figured this stuff out. So let's use it. Let's take that and let's utilize it to make the best image as possible. Okay, Then let me hide my mean mug right here. Most importantly, have FUN. This whole thing is supposed to be enjoying yourself having FUN. Really learning the new beautiful experience of bringing your landscapes or any type of painting to life. But learning is improving. And if you're improving your always morning, okay? So enjoy the process. Just enjoy yourself. Give yourself some grace. It's gonna be hard if you're really trying to push to that next level. If you're somewhat of a beginner or hobbyist and you really want to improve. Give yourself some leeway, man. This is hard stuff. You're inventing something from nothing. You are an actual magician, right? You are conjuring stuff up. It's you. You are providing the world something that has never, ever been seen before. Think about it. That's impossible. That is an impossible ask. It's an impossible task. It's mentally exhausting. Please be easy on yourself. Have FUN with this. Enjoy yourself, okay? But guess what guys? It's time to get started. So we will see you in, we will see you in video number one where we talk about Ideation and Shapes. Let's start getting stuff on the Canvas. Let's start this process off with a bang. Can't wait to see the next lesson, but until then, take it easy 3. Lesson 1 - Ideation and Shapes: All right gang, Welcome to the first real video. Hopefully you watched less than zero, the setup and stuff to see how we're going to structure this course. But now let's just get to it. We're going to start making our landscape. And I'm going to hop over. Just like video is zero. We are going to do a quick little PowerPoint style presentation first, kinda cover what we're going to be doing and then we're going to just jump right into it. So I'm a big fan of doing the stuff. There is something that tattoo artists always say that you get better the more time you have under the gun. Meaning as you're doing the process, you're going to improve faster because you're solving more problems, doing the actual movements and doing the actual dexterity of creating something. So that's what we're gonna do. We're going to take a look at a few little tips and tricks and some definitions of stuff. And then we're just going to hop over and start making some ideations. So this is Ideation and Shapes. And basically we're going to talk about what this is. In my opinion, It's always good to start off strong. And really as artists are, one of our main goals is to have something evocative and emotional. Have a viewer having emotional response, whether it's good, bad, very cheery and majestic or somber and sometimes depressing. It depends on what you want to get to your viewer. But we're going to talk a little bit about that and then about how shapes can influence that a little bit. So this is also called the blue-sky phase. Okay, so we're going to capture mood, we're going to find reference, we're going to do all that stuff. So Ideation, what is it? The Oxford English Dictionary defines this as the formation of ideas or concepts. And they put the deal that it doesn't already exist. Like it's something from nothing, right? So the way we as a visual artist and landscape painters approach this is by asking ourselves some questions, okay? What or where is our location? Like, what do we want to paint? I know that sounds very obvious. You have to make the decision. But that decision is a pretty big one. What do I want to paint? Isn't a mountain is at a Cavern. Is it? Like a vista? Like do I want to beat side? A sunset is at a ranch with cattle. Is it nice planes and fields and hills? And you get your very general idea. That is your starting point. The old saying is you cannot edit words that aren't on the page. You have to have something to work with. So yeah, what do you want to paint? You want to paint a farmhouse like any type of landscape or, and this goes for portraits and characters and all that stuff too. But really for landscapes, what is it like? Where is it, right? It can be an, like I said here, this can be very basic or it can be really complex. So depending on how your mind works, There's no wrong way to do this. So it could be like, I want to paint a mountain, done, great. We solved it. Or I want to paint the sci-fi alleyway. It leads into an underground train station, kinda like the matrix C vibe, but it's Cyberpunk like Blade Runner and it has a nice like rainy see, you can get very invested in what the idea is and that's the whole point of this step. Get engrossed in the decisions that you're making. There is no right or wrong way to do this. So I'm not gonna give you have to do it this way, you have to do it this way. There's no right or wrong way. However, your brain works the best. This is also known as the blue-sky phase. So in production Art and making films or tabletop role-playing games or commercials or whatever. The blue sky phase is kinda like navel-gazing. It is looking up at the clouds and anything is possible and you get that very triumphant. Like I can do anything. I'm going to soar through the clouds like Superman or whatever. Like. No idea is a bad one. Blue-sky phase is very important because it lets you just discover and imagine and try to get yourself into that place of creativity. So for this painting, I wanted to define what mine is. This is going to be a continuation of the underground cavern system that a group of fantasy characters in a role-playing game can explore. So it's pretty specific. Like I'm very inspired by really old school role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. But specifically I grew up on the video game side of things. So I'm a big fan of games like never winter nights and ISO and Dale and boulders gate and boulders gate three just came out. So I mean, there's all these amazing like World of Warcraft and EverQuest. And there's a ton of games in this style. That really base themselves on Setting a mood and exploration and discovery. I'm going to places you've never seen before. And fighting big monsters are getting amazing rewards and treasures. And I like that since I grew up on it, I'm going to style joke about it. So it's a lot of PFK-1 to tap into that whenever I'm making a landscape. So the other main question, so we have our object and like where are we? What is it? It's a mountain, it's a river, it's a forest, whatever. But now, here's the part that I think is even more valuable. What is the mood? Now? Mood, I'm a big mood painter. I paint mood out of all the things. Some painters say they paint a light and dark and shadows and all that stuff. I'm a big fan of mood. How can I feel a feeling and then have the viewer feel the feeling as well? Alright, it's a 5050 split. It's a give-and-take between me and the audience. So how do I want this mood to feel while I'm painting it? By, how do I want to feel? But can I get some of that energy into the painting itself? So, yeah, do you want it to be majestic or apocalyptic? Try your best to channel something. It probably part of your idea. Like, oh, I like the big open plains and the ranch and there's a barn on the side and the cattle, there's probably something that you're thinking of, whether it's a movie scene or a song on the radio or maybe it's a core memory that you have growing up on a ranch or something like you have that nice warmth of the returning home or like that's what we're getting. Because whenever you start channeling stuff like that, now you start getting into self-expression. And that's where Art just becomes a whole other thing, right? And that's what really connects with people, people like connecting with other people. And through Art, we hopefully give a visual stimuli to do so. So really channel it. Don't, don't feel embarrassed, don't feel basketball. Like if you have a landscape in mind. Let's say you're painting on plain air or outdoors. Life painting. Well, there's your mood. How do you feel right now? You're looking at this grand vista or you're looking at the forest or the trees or whatever, how do you feel? Like try to capture that in your painting. Okay. Yeah, I like to put mood music on. I like to have mood boards. I to have all that stuff, so to speak on mood boards. I actually made a mood board right here that we're gonna be using on the landscape. I'm going to be painting. A mood board is inspiration. A lot of people use Pinterest for this. If you're a big fan of Pinterest and how they have boards that you can make things and save images to certain boards. That's the entire idea. It's like a pin board, that's like a mood board. So this can be anything. This could be shapes and designs, this could be colors. This can be still shots from movies or music videos or anything that gets you in that headspace of what you would like to achieve. Now, you'll notice on mine, I actually found quite a few. It's all based on like fantasy Art, kinda Dungeons and Dragons stuff. I think there's some stuff for Guild Wars and World of Warcraft. There's one for winter nights in the middle. See, the one in the middle doesn't quite fit with the same thing because that's a city and the rest of these are dungeons. But I put that one in the middle because like those are the games that are used to play. So to get there to see that screenshot and be like, Oh yeah, I know where I'm at now. Kinda pulls it all together and that's a super important part of this. So this can be reference images you have, this can be reference packs. If you have this, if you're doing a master's study, have not only the master's study that you're doing, but other paintings by the same artist and see how they solve different problems. So that's why making a mood board is such a great idea. For this mood board. I did use pure ref. We talked about that in the preliminary video, lessons zero as it were, but we're going to take a look at that here in a second as well. I love using pure ref as my mood board. I love it. So of course this, I'm making essentially a sequel to this image. I'm making part two of this image. We're gonna go further into this cavern and see what it looks like. Okay, so having this image readily available is great because I can see, oh, I had the warm oranges, I had the nice kinda cyan almost magical water puddle type things and these rock formations that the person or player or viewer has to step over. This is still giving me ideas while fitting within the mood. Okay? So that's reference you want to find. You want to find reference that gives you a lot of information. Packs quite a wallop In one single image. But then if you have 13 or 14 of those images, now you're cooking, now you have a lot to kinda go off of. So I do want to do some notes on reference, okay? So reference means different things for different people, especially if like where you are in your artistic journey. If you're a new artist, use tons of reference. Oh my gosh, get as much reference as humanly possible. Bind every good picture. Let's say you're painting a mountain. Find every picture of a mountain that you like on Pinterest, Google like whatever. Make a mood board and look at it. Really look at it and be like, Oh, that's what are these shapes doing? What are, which we'll talk about? But what are these shapes doing, or these images composed a certain way? There's the mountain always on the left-hand side. Is it on the right-hand side? Start noticing traits about these images. Whether it's the colors or how vibrant as the light, or really find out why Europe peeled to a certain image, like out of all the images on the Internet, you chose specific ones. Why? Okay. Yes. Too much reference is a good thing. The artist's young artists, even, even newer artists, they had this weird idea that Art has to come purely from your imagination all the time. Or you're not a real artist. That's not true. In fact, all of the professionals I know myself included, use references religiously. We have to know how things look. How can you paint the tree? If you don't know what a tree looks like, it's a mind-blowing idea, right? But you need to look at the thing. You please, I'm begging you. Please look at the thing. If you're painting a rock, find images of rocks and see what they do and how it does the weathering make sharp edges and rounded edges. Please use, use more reference and you could possibly imagine. Okay, Now, don't straight up copy. Unless that's part of an exercise you're doing. Don't, Don't be a copy machine, but look at stuff, really start to build it. And what you're gonna do is start building what's called your visual library. And that is how you start working from imagination. Because if you see 5 billion rocks, rock looks like you can paint a rock from imagination. Like you have to put that time and you have to look at the stuff. You have to do studies, then you have to figure out how these things work together, okay? So, yeah, you're building your visual library for your beginners. Just get your reference, make a giant mood board and look at it. Have it available all the time. If you're more of an intermediate, Let's say you take commissions. You are an artist, you are working artist, or you're wanting to make that leap to be working artist and you want to work with clients, you're taking commissions and all that stuff. A good exercise is to take multiple references and blend them together in your mind to make a new thing. So good way to do that is called photo bashing and others. A lot of tutorials out there about photo bashing where you take photos and then you compile them and composite them on each other to make one cohesive image. That's a great way to start thinking. As far as making an image rather than painting reference. Does that make sense? There's a difference between having a reference images that you look at. Can you try your best to copy and then making your own thing utilizing that reference, utilizing that reality. So photo bashing is a hard thing. It's whenever you're taking photos and then you erase some of it and put another photo next to it and erase some of it and try to blend them together and make it look realistic. It's way trickier than you think, because every image that you're going to find is probably LET differently. It probably has different color. It was probably taken with different cameras, with different lenses. So the perspectives off, it's really tricky to blend these things. So that's your intermediate. I do think that kind of getting that stuff together and trying to make a brand new reference image out of multiple reference images. And combining them together is a great exercise because it's going to show you what works and what doesn't. Yeah, you'll no real quick if something fits really well or if it doesn't. And that's also training your brain and training your eye to see if things work together in a cohesive whole for your painting. Okay? But now if you're advanced, if you're on that pro-level and you probably already know this. But a great way to use reference is to not, not until you need it. Don't even have a mood board up, don't have anything up, or you can have the mood board up. Sure. But don't really rely on it. Rely on your visual library, rely on your years and years of training. Make something that you think looks cool. But then if you need some, let's say you're painting a barn. Let's say, Yeah, let's say you're painting a barn, you had the field and that's figured out and you need the reference for the cows. They've tried to get the shape of the face right, that's great. But let's say you're painting the barn and you had the shapes down well, in the forums looking good, the colors good You can't quite nail down. Let's say that there's a tin roof and it has rust on it. You want it to be rusty and you have it, you know, it's a brown, blackish, yellowish color and around the outskirts is brown and you have a vague idea of what Rust is. Go search. Nothing but rust. Look up Russ, to tinfoil rust, aluminum rust, whatever in, find the one that you like and then notice the pattern and be like, oh, it, it starts off almost like mold and then it grows out. And then on the outskirts where it decays stuff less than you're doing this and then toss it away. Go back to your painting. Oh, I get it. Now. It's going to click for you. Okay. So references depending on where you're at in this and you might fall a little bit of everywhere depending on what the thing is, depending on what your landscape is. Let's say you, you are a pro at painting beaches and in the ocean, waves and stuff like that. And you've done it and you've made a career out of it. Well now somebody commissioned you and they want you to paint the city. You think, you know what a light post looks like. You think you know what a stop sign looks like, but you need to reference like you need to grab that stuff. So very much be a beginner. If it's a new type of thing you haven't tried before, get all the reference and try to absorb as much as possible. I hope this makes sense depending on where you're at here. One is not better than another. It's just the more you do it, the less you'll have to rely on reference to get you started. Does that make sense? You can work from imagination and then you fix the stuff that doesn't look right based on looking through observation. That's a great way to do it because then all of your ideas are really your own and then you're using real life to just kind of accentuate it, make it a little bit more fulfilling to yourself and the viewer. So shapes. Let's talk about this real quick. Going back to the basics, man, this is grade school stuff. Yes. Those shapes. Those shapes right there, the square, the circle, triangle, the stuff that you drew in kindergarten and first grade, is the paramount of making good images. This is it. I always have family members whenever they know I'm an artist or they see my work or whatever. Like Man, that's amazing. I can't even draw a stick figure. Good news. Stick figure is the basic thing for everything. Like if you can put a little circle and some lines down, you can be an artist, I promise you. And I would argue the first for shapes and this image. If you look at the square, the circle, the triangle, and the rectangle, every other, every other shape on this list is made up of a combination of those four things. So you know how we talked about taking different references and putting them together. Now you're taking a circle and a triangle. In you're making. Your tape may dig, had taken the rectangle and the circle and you're making a hexagon. You know what I mean? Like you're taking triangles and you're taking the different triangles on a square mixed pentagon. You're taking the shapes and you're developing different customs shapes based on it, but it all comes back down to shape. If you're shapes read well, if it's easy to tell what the shape is, you're good to go like. Okay, bottom, bottom row, the heart. Everyone knows that. That's a little icon for a heart, right? That's almost like a hieroglyphic of a heart. We all are familiar with that shape. Does that actually look like a human heart? No, human hearts us weird, bulbous and it has valves coming up and you have the aortic blood while and then chambers and the like. It's a whole different don't look like that. It looks way different. You know what I mean? But we have this intrinsic understanding through visual communication that, that little icon right there, the two little circles on a triangle on the bottom. That's a heart. You know, emoticons, emojis, what have you. These are ways that we communicate. We can use this to our advantage. Okay? So remember, shapes are literally the building blocks. You remember Legos and play them with those. That's what shapes are. Shapes. Build your image, okay? The more basic you can keep your composition with the shapes, the better and easier the more advanced steps become. Because once you block in your silhouette, your shapes and how they relate to each other on the canvas. If you stay within that silhouette, if you don't break the boundaries, very much you can look at that. But if you stay with your shapes being solid, your image will always work. Always. If it's easy to read, then you, when you get the point, you know what I mean? So like my job I work on card games, like trading card games? Some of the artwork is only like 2 " by an inch tall. But not only do we have to make sure that the Art reads at that size, we, as artists for these card games, have to make sure that they read upside down as well. Because you're playing the game against a person. They, whenever you put your card down, they, your opponent, or seeing the card upside down. So they have to know the moment it drops, what that is. There has to be pattern recognition. And the only way we get that done is by shapes. That's it. Okay, and we'll take a look how Shapes feed into form. Form feeds into value, feeds into lighting. Lighting feeds into color. It all like we talked about before, it all works together. Okay? So once you create a good silhouette, stick with it. Strong shapes always make for good paintings. Always. I don't care if you're traditional artist, digital artist. Your watercolor is YouTube, pencil sketches, shapes are everything. And then when in doubt, if you're ever running into something and stuff is getting too complicated, simplify. It turned the weird shapes back into a rectangle or a circle in C and pivot them and see how they work. Okay, so Let's do this quick review, right? There is no right or wrong way to block out a composition. Some artists use very basic shapes, so they literally draw circles and squares and they get a collection of them and put them across things almost like they're magnets on a board. And then they step back and they're like, Yeah, that looks pretty cool. Yeah, we could work with that. Or you can really dig in and do pencil sketches. And like some people like to use graphite, you really dig in there and you start making the shapes. Oh, we're making a mushroom. Let me try to make that hieroglyphic of a mushroom. Whatever works for you, do it. Okay. But I will warn you do not get bogged down in the details. That's not what this step is. Details come later. I promised you some details come at the very end, literally at the variant before you put your signature on. In fact, this is the Ideation, the dreamscape, the head in the Clouds, anything is possible part. So your intent is to keep your energy up. The best way to suck out energy, right? When you start making an image is dark. Worrying about details. Do not worry about details. I probably won't worry about details and the real-time painting for a good two-and-a-half hours. Easy. And that's if it's a quick painting, you know what I mean? So we'll take a look at that type of stuff. But what we're going to actually do is make some thumbnails. Thumbnailing is a great way to get a lot of different compositions. Try to see stuff to get you warmed up. And it gets your mind in that headspace of making things happen, okay, and making an image come to light. So the later steps would deal with details. So don't worry, trust me right now, it won't look good, but it'll give you a little spark of something that's enough fuel to energize yourself to push onto the next steps. Okay? So yeah, we're working to lose. We're gonna make the thumbnails. So here's a pro tip. Here. Here's a little behind the scenes curtain thing. Whenever I work with a client in this could be just a general client. They just want to sketch of mine. They want an original of mine board. This was for Star Wars and war hammer and all that stuff. I always give three sketches per prompt. Because that allows my client to look at a variety of options and be able to give their input very early on. That way they trust in the process, they're part of the process. They share in that creativity. And it makes your life easier. There's nothing worse than spending a bunch of time on a piece and then you send it in and it's not quite what the client wanted. They still grateful when you got paid and all that stuff. But there are a little bummed out. Nothing feels worse. So you want them part of that process? Okay? I usually do three on this we're gonna do for, I have some ideas, very vague hese things and I want us kinda sort them out. So I'm gonna give myself for little thumbnail positions. That way we can kinda look at them. So hey, let's get painting. Alright, let me check my phone real quick. Alright, cool. So let's get painting. So this is going to be right here and let me move my move this stuff over. I have three monitors by the way. So I'm gonna be looking and all sorts of stuff. So this is what we were talking about earlier, which is pure ref, okay. This is my mood board. I'm able to zoom and look at things and details, and let me set my pencil down so I can do some of these hotkeys. So real quick, I'm zooming with the Zoom with the mouse wheel. You can make words on here by right-clicking and going to note Hi, I'm a note. Then you can move that. You can re-size it, all that stuff. So let's say you like this one, I like this. So this is option a. You know what I mean? Like in you can hover this over right here. So what's also really cool is you can do some image manipulation. So we can select an image, you can make it bigger or smaller if you go and rotate it here. But my favorite one, if you hold down Alt and I believe it's Alt and Shift. So instead of Alt on a Mac, I want to say it's like maybe I don't have a map, sorry. And then you hold down the Shift and Alt button and then you click and drag, you're going to flip the image horizontally. Then if you drag up or down holding the same hotkeys vertically. Very cool, very fast. Now I like the mouse Zoom of course, but here's the real kicker and we're gonna, we're gonna talk at great length about this later. If you right-click, you go to, well, first off mode, you're going to say you can overlay the selection. You can make it transparent here Mouse, meaning your mask can click on it anymore. I'm always on top. Always on top means that while I work, let me move this right here and I'm gonna move this. While I work in Photoshop. This is always on top of my screen. Very, very cool, right? Because if I turn that off, always on top and disabled, then I click Off, you go, see. So it's always good to have that always on, always on top on whenever you're working for reference. And let me move back. Where's my Photoshop? The last main one, the last main thing. The reason why I love pure ref and viz wrath and all the programs like this. Dearly, if I right-click, I go to Canvas and I click Grayscale. Now, everything on this canvas, all my mood board is now put on grayscale. So this was whenever it's gonna be invaluable when we're working on our value passes. Okay? So and I also have my piece right here. It's always good to have it. I'm just going to have it on the side. But really what I'm gonna do, I'm going to move go to Canvas preschool. Okay. I'm gonna move this. I wanted to show it to you, but I'm gonna move this over to this monitor right here. So I'm working over here on my Art monitor. But then this monitor, my mood board is gonna be over here to the side. Okay, so now that we have that setup, I am going to keep glancing over because I want to see what my cosine, if I bring this over here, I'm going to have this. And if you double-click on an image, it scales it to the proportion that Puritan window is. I'm going to have this open. And really I'm looking at just some of the stalactites. Right. Is that right? The cavern stuff coming down? How did I format some of these rocks? Just basically looking at this basic composition to try to make a sequel. So I'm still going to have the pointy shapes. I'm still going to have it go lighter as it gets further in the background, in, as it gets closer to us, it's gonna be darker. So we're talking about that at great length next video. But just to give me some basic, let me actually change this over to Canvas grayscale. That way I don't try to get hung up on the colors yet. Okay? So we have all these, and I will have this template right here, this thumbnail template Save. It's going to be part of the extras that you're gonna get with the course. So I'm just going to be using, let me just use, I'm going to use the straw blend right here. And then I have a layer called draw here. So that's what I wanna do. I am just going to get this, if this pretty small, and I'm just going to start with shapes. Okay? So like something right here. Then I know we had stuff like up over. So maybe nice triangle. This is a repeat of the same composition, but I want to show this to you just, just to kinda show it. Okay, Then maybe more stuff right here. Then. A nice secret to getting debt is to do what's called the Z line. If you just write as Z here, it looks like you start off at the front of a trail and then it goes into the background Just make, make sure the top of the Z is narrower than you're automatically get a really cool look if we have that and then like if that's part of the cavern, seeing you can see I'm just doing some messy, messy, messy stuff. So really those are a little bit too symmetrical. So I'm going to break up some of the shapes right here. Feel free to get more stalactites coming down. Maybe those mushrooms right here, something like that. Maybe the opening. Okay. There's one. It's not very pretty, but it doesn't have to be. That's, that's not the point. Okay. Then erase some of this right here. Give give my eyes something to kind of yeah. Like give my eye a little bit of something to look at and kind of infer information instead of directly telling me exactly the information. So like we said, details at this point, not important. I'm doing a lot of light diagonal shapes. I really like triangles, triangles out of all these shapes, I like triangles the best because they have a flat side and then tilted side to direct the viewer's eye. Okay, so here's one, maybe that's a big column for something that comes up. So let's just start on maybe the second one, the second one, Let's make this one a little bit more open. So let me put this the lag tight like the triangles stuff in the corner here, like it's in the foreground and we're looking through like almost like we're like climbing through the cavern ourselves. And then we've seen this big, I don't know, open thing, the thing we were looking for, big treasurer or something. So we have this and we're kind of framing it right here. We can even put these shapes like triangles to face inside to keep the viewer's eyes in. Then let me sort of oval this out, almost like it's a clearing that we've gone through a tunnel. And light tunnel could have like spider webs or something in it. Then. But now we yeah, now we see what we were looking for this whole time. So like what if it was just a big like weird structure? But then the structure, if there was sitting here, maybe the structure, Let's do, let's do that Z tricky in that structure. Like a square, but then you have some pointy stuff coming out of it. Maybe it's like a beacon of light. Like light is coming through, like shining across everything, kind of how we did the light on the first thing. Then maybe or sense of scale. We have some other mountains removes or something. We have that and then some more stuff, just a little cubby hole type things kind of escape into. Okay. So we can some of that right there. Okay. He's don't have to look pretty. That's the whole point that we're, we're gonna get to the pretty stuff. This is just to get our mind going and get us into his own, right. So let's do. So. We have a big structure. We have kind of the tunnels that feel a little more claustrophobic. Let's do another sort of claustrophobic E1. Um, yeah, and then we can do just a weird one at the bottom. So let's do a Let's do one like we're in we had walked in and the roof is kind of low where we're at. But then as we get further into it, it's kinda like opening up almost like a mall, like a big like a tunnel. Yeah. So yeah, let's actually do that. So if we start like right here as a circle, then that gets progressively bigger. Have marked on that one. That's fine. We can use these shapes to give us a perspective. Now you'll notice I haven't talked at all about perspective. We will, we will at various points of the piece, just know that a lot of these, you're going to be one-point perspective paintings. There's going to be one point of interests. So there's a technical term for perspective. How many vanishing points do you have and where's your horizon line? We're gonna talk about that. But that's a little bit more academic. Then Because you can get lost in the sauce if you do just, oh, I'm gonna follow this and it has to have this and the perspective has to be perfect. It's great and it's a very, very good skill to have and we will be covering a lot of it during the process. But notice, I'm not making it. My attention, my attention is about the mood and the image. The mechanics are gonna be up to you, whatever you feel comfortable with. But just know these are gonna be more like one-point perspective type of pieces. That's going to make it easier for us to, to just kinda get on with it. So if we do this, maybe that one's there. So maybe these rocks, maybe, maybe this one's a little more flat. So these right here. This one's kinda flat too. But this one is going to have just a slightly different vibe. I liked the idea of that pillar right there, but let's push that pillar back a little more. And then it kinda feeds in two. Then we can kind of repeat the shape. Something like this, right? And then we can have our main idea be right here that we're looking at. And then let's say we liked that water, that nice cyan blue water that we had the puddles. So if I just make some rocks right here, something like that. Pretty cool. Okay. Yeah. A good one right there. Then what I can actually do, what we kinda follow those lines right there. Then that wound. Actually, we will keep that one. You'll notice that it still works even when we get rid of the circles right here because we're, we're staying within the silhouette of those shapes that we've established, right? We're, we're, we're following the rule of the surface as the spiral goes further and it keeps it kinda tunnel. We're staying within that tunnel, as it were. It's a little bit more direct, but it's also a little more imposing. It's like do you want to go and look at that tunnel? Do you want to go see what's at the end of it? Because there's a lot of room between yourself in whatever your goal is. Do you want to take the steps? Do you want to take that leap of faith and hope that nothing gets you on the way here. Because we want this to be majestic but also a little bit dangerous. That's the whole idea of this type of deal. And then this last one. We haven't everything's kinda flat, right? What if there were like walkways up? Like what if we had this stuff down at the bottom, kinda like we normally do. But then what if there was a series of just walkways and paths that you could take up to add some verticality. So even though this is a one-point perspective, what happens? Okay, Let's say the floors right here. Then we have like our stuff right here. What if it was like will do the diagonals again, right? One, if this was like a walkway, we still have that. Maybe we still have these big ones in front. Right. Then maybe there's like a little roost or something right here. This is all rock. This whole thing is a piece of rock and it's like coming towards us or what have you. Then? Maybe if there's like steps here, every cool, then maybe our main event is right here again. Will there still some light or something up here? Maybe we want to explore that may be, you know, maybe the thing we're really after assurance right here. But there's other stuff to look at two, and if the whole idea is to build adventure and to build that sense of wonder and exploration. We should probably give our viewers a place to explore, right? So let me do that again. Basically I'm just using these kind of shapes. Once again to structure in to vignette. A little bit like vignetting is when you take yeah. So vignetting is when you take The edges of something that make it darker. And what that does is that builds the focal point on the part that you can 4. Lesson 2 - Values: Hey gang, Welcome to video number two, all about values. So before we get too far into this, I do want to really hammer this home out of all of the steps in this tutorial. This is the one, that one you're going to return to a lot during the whole process. But this is the most pivotal. I don't say it to mean like really high pressure on high-stakes. But all of the work that you put into this portion of your image-making is going to make the other parts easier, okay? I say this to every Art students that I have. Whether I'm working one-on-one or in a class setting or mentor mentee type stuff. Value is the most important part of making images. Period. It answers every problem you might have. And it does so quickly, repeatably and easily. Okay? If you have a problem with an image that you are making, it comes down to values 99% of the time. Okay, So let's talk about this. Let's do the lecture. Then we're going to hop over and we're gonna do a value passed on our, on our painting. Okay? So landscape Techniques, while you want values and the beauty of grayscale, values, lights, darks, and how the eye works. We're going to start getting into optics. This is really going to really take off whenever we start digging into maybe some of the details or we start making corrections and things like that. We're really going to utilize the science of how the eye focuses on things. But values are a massive part of that. So what do we mean by values? Okay? So we define value on how light or dark something is. How light or how dark is it. Okay? Then it goes from a scale of pure bright white, like big giant flashlight, what you blindingly white to pure black. Okay? So in science there are millions of values. Millions. Our eyes are pretty good at seeing small nuanced details, but they're not that good at it. So if we have, on a light spectrum, if we have millions and millions, if not billions of tiny microscopic transitions between pure white going all the way to pure black, the human eye. Even perfect vision, even even like enhanced vision, if you have like a cybernetic or something like that in your part machine as well. You can only see about 1,000 out of millions, if not billions, the human eye can really only distinguish about 1,000. Okay? Artists, our job is to simplify. So we're taking, we're gonna be taking this thousands or thousand that the human eye can see between darks and lights. And we're going to compress it to nine. Right? We talked earlier about ideations and Shapes and how we simplify going 1000000000-9. Pretty simple. You know what I mean? Value is actually a component of color. So it is a part of a recipe to get you a color. So color is made up of hue, saturation and value. Also chroma, which we'll talk about a little bit, but that's a whole different lesson. We're gonna talk about color theory and all that stuff and the color lesson. But here, just know that value in my opinion, both my professional and my personal opinion. Value is the most important out of all of those components to making an image read well, okay, so don't worry about the other stuff and the light reds and dark greens and stuff that, that's part of the definition. But really right now we're just worried about the dark and the light. That's it. Okay. So many words. Think of this step as painting in gray scale. You're just going to use black, white, and all the grays in-between and paint. That's all we're gonna do. We're painting in black and white. Okay? This is what is our value pass. I'll, I'll start referring to it as our values or value passed. That's what we mean. Just worry about the blacks and whites medium it. Okay. It's helpful to think about it on a scale. Literally there's a thing called a value scale. So a value scale, I like it having nine steps. And the reason why is five is right smack dab in the middle. Alright, you got 12345 in the middle, 6789. So you have four on each side, five in the middle. It really helps us whenever we go and start painting, you're gonna know why? Because I start with a background that is 50% gray. It's smack dab in the middle, and then we work lighter or darker dependent. Okay. So Working on gray scale, purely gray scale is a critical idea. Once you get used to this and the sounds crazy. And when I tell my wife this and when I tell other Art students this, they think I'm nuts until it happens to them, until they're able to do this as well. And that is, I can physically, or I guess imagine narrowly, but I can put like a filter over my eyes right now and know, okay, that's the darkest to lightest the world around me at any point, I can snap my brain into value mode in see the values. Oh, that's darker, that's lighter than the light's coming from that way. Once you start practicing this, you'll be able to have that ability as well. It sounds like a superpower or something in some ways it is because it helps you simplify what you're looking at. Okay? But just know, just get this idea that there is a value scale that you have your bright whites and your lights. And then you have your really dark blacks, your darks, dark grays, all that stuff. And then there's a smooth gradient or a transition from one to the other, from one side of the other. Okay? So instead of seeing the image for everything, it's worth looking all the details, look at all the nuance and all the cool control and stuff. Break it down. Try your best to see it in black and white. Okay. Some of my favorite movies of all time or black and white movies. I like. I love Akira Kurosawa, samurai movies, movies like Hidden Fortress, Seven Samurai, your Jimbo song row. All these like samurai films are beautifully shot and they're timeless. They don't age because how well the value control is on the screen, how well are the lights and darks and the contrast and that type of stuff. What makes it readable? And you can see it clears day. And that's what our goal is here. So readability, What is our intent? There's nothing worse as an artist than having something in your heart and you want to paint it out. Then you showed off, you know, how finally you've got this done. And then everybody kinda has the moment of like, that's cool I guess, but what is it? Like? Nothing's more disheartening, right? So value control allows us to make Shapes. Going back to shapes and Ideation, more clear in the intent as the artist comes through more. Okay? So some key components and there's quite a few slides like this. So I'm going to try to break these down as best I can. Value only has meaning in relation to itself. So something, instead of thinking, we're going to talk about this in colors as well. Instead of thinking about white or black or gray, or dark gray or light gray, don't think of it in very absolute terms. Think of it in relation to stuff around it. Is this lighter or darker than what's around it? This way? Lighter. There's a sun coming through. Is it really burst of light? Is a way brighter, is a way lighter. Is it really deep dark shadow is way darker. That's how you want to start building that relationship in your mind, is it's all relative. I'm a big fan of the artistic laws of relativity. Everything only exists in relation to stuff around it. We're really going to dig into that to color some of that system. Boy, your mind. I knew it blew my mind whenever I learned it I was or what. But with values it's the same thing. Don't think of an absolute. You can a little bit whenever you first block stuff out like okay, this is a value of 28 using that scale. But then once you start digging into the image, it's all in relationship to itself. Is this lighter or darker than the stuff around it? So if you ever hear something having high contrast, if you ever hear that, maybe it's a movie, maybe your television Setting has a high contrast mode. What does that mean? That means the variance between the amount of like the brightness of the whites and the darkness of the blacks is greater. The difference between the two is way greater. That scale is bigger. You would think that would be a lower contrast because you have more steps in-between. But really high contrast means you have a bright white next to a dark black, right next to each other, they really pop out from each other. Okay? So you might even hear something about high dynamic range or like HDR on your TV. If you have a newer, cooler fancier TV, it can have an HDR mode that deals with the dynamic range or your value range on how much light and dark comes through the picture. So areas of low contrast are closer on that scale. So we have this scale right here. High contrast would be like going immediately from number two to number eight. Number one to number eight, low contrast would be going from number four, number five. For number five to number seven. You can still have a big, like a larger contrast. If you go 3-7. That's a pretty big leap as far as darkness and lightness. But it's not as big of a leap as one dynein is. That would be our highest contrast. The biggest difference. So once again, work in relativity is a leap 3-7 or three to eight a big one? Yes, it's a huge one, but it's not as big as one denied. So as it starts getting, you're going to start seeing almost it's like a puzzle piece, start coming into play. So, yeah, think of it. How dramatic is the leap between your numbers on your value scale? Okay? So the best way to draw attention to a painting is by making it higher contrast. Make it something very dark on something very light, or make it something light on something very dark. Okay? In fact, this PowerPoint, little PowerPoint deal that we have is pretty high contrast. I have darker grays in the background and I have pure white text and it makes it easier to read. Okay, so just think it doesn't even have to do with just painting. It can be photography, it can be making PowerPoints. It can be anything higher. Contrast is going to be more eye-catching. It's gonna be easier to read. Okay? So working in values allows us to focus on what I consider the important stuff. So your composition, your mood, your shapes or forms, your light, shadow. And you don't even touch details. You don't touch color. You don't touch any of that stuff. It's just value painting in black and white allows you to solve so many problems. Early. You get, you shake those cobwebs out and you get stuff on the panel, you get stuff on the canvas. Then once again, we talked in the first video, like writers have a saying that you cannot edit words that are not on the page. This allows us to get our stuff on the page. You know what I mean? So everything else is just bonus. If your values are right, everything's right. I know it's a big claim. But so here's some just exercises. Now, we're going to talk about this stuff in real-time. I just wanted to show this just to get your idea, your head spinning on what we're meaning when we mean exercises and value. So if you have a tube of black paint, in a tube of white paint, you can make your own value scale. You can see what the relationship is and how much white do I add to the black to make this more gray? You can start doing things like that. And it's going to teach you about those relationships. And those relationships. Once you really start fine-tuning your value structure, even little nuance brushstrokes with a slightly different change in value are going to be lined people's attention relatively, right? So that's why on, then you see on this right-hand side, you can break down paintings that you enjoy, even your own work into your basic shapes in your values. So as you can see here, it's just a collection of paintings and then just some shapes in various values. What's a little darker, what's a little lighter? You can see though, that those grayscales, the value passes the value studies still read well. They show you the gist of what the images you get. That top one is a mountain. And then it kinda looks like a mountain that kinda looks like clouds. That's our only goal for right now. We want it to look like something. Right now. You can dig all in and you can really paint and really refine edges and details and you can dig into that and your value pass. But the main intent and our main goal for right now is to make it look like a thing. Give you that, give you that Ideation. Once again, we go back to the Ideation and Shapes. We're using Values and shapes to build on the idea. You see how this is all starting to connect. A little bit. More quick tips. I just wanted to throw up here. You're gonna notice there's parts of your painting journey for every painting to where you're gonna be like that this part isn't working. Something's not right. You're going to look at whether it's digital or on Canvas or whatever, you're going to look at it and be like No, something doesn't feel right about this. Something's off. Check your values. Check your value. That's why that weird superpower of being able to light gray scale your vision. It's really important. It's a cool skill to know because you can quickly check your values and be like, Oh, that's off, that's too dark compared to this other stuff. It's strong, too much attention. Let me buffer it out. You'll be able to quickly jump on stuff like that. So your goal isn't artist is to always make your images appealing to look at whether you're doing it for personal pleasure and you'd like showing it to your friends or family members, loved ones. Or if you do it for big business. If you do it for huge clients, you want the image to not be boring. Right? Like your intent is to have something cool and exciting and interesting to look at Values As a great way. In fact, the biggest way to do that. I always tell people if they're taking like still-life course or something like that. Your still-life painting of an apple on a table. Even in black and white. You just use black and white to paint that Apple on the table. Your goal is to make that as interesting and awesome to look at as possible. Okay? And values a huge part of that. As much as you're going to want to. Do not worry about colors and details in this phase. Don't do it. That's gonna be for later. You're gonna notice all the work we put in here is going to help you solve those problems of color in detail later. This, if it reads in black and white, it reads, well, if your value is right, you can use any color and it will work. Alright? I cannot overemphasize the importance of value. Like value chains my whole life, it gave me an Art career. It didn't like it. Let me see the world. It's like peering through the matrix or something. Once you understand the relationships of Shapes in regards to value, the sky's the limit. Alright? Our main goal for this part and for a landscape painting in general, is to provide depth. How far in the distance as it a big epic Vista is. What's our range look like? How close are we to something? How far away is the goal? Do we want to travel? That's all controlled by value. So that's why early on the Ideation and Shapes phase, we made it our main topic or main focal point to think of. Okay, where are we? Is it a mountain range? Are we looking at a valley? Are we looking at are we at a national park and we're looking at the Grand Canyon. What's the scale of where we're at? Are we on a planet? Are we on Mars? Or wherever you're thinking about painting? There's going to be an intrinsic depth. How far can you see in the distance? In value is going to be the way that we communicate that. Okay? Our goal is that we want our landscape to be able to be traveled through by the viewer. Meaning that they could put themselves in that area in feel like they can travel through it. Okay. Especially since my goal is to make a fantasy role-playing game exploration adventure area, I want you to feel like you should explore this area. I wonder what's in there. Let me find out what's behind that rock. Like. That's the vibe I want to give. And that goes back to the Ideation and Shapes. Alright, we're fulfilling the promise we made in that part. In this part, right? You'll find values in recipes, meaning like, I like going from on the value scale from number two to number eight. I think that's a cool look if you put those right next to each other, remember those. That becomes part of your style. Alright? You'll just start absorbing this in. The more you paint, in, the more you put stuff down, you're going to build those relationships and what you like and you don't like in your mind and you know what that's called. That is called taste. And taste to something that will get you very far. Everybody has slightly different taste and that's a okay, that's part of your style. But you want to realize and you want to start understanding what works for you. Then utilize that in your own work. Alright, so we're gonna talk about some rules. Hard rules, you can't break them. Know, you can break them. But these are going to help us while we're painting. Alright? And here's a Fun fact. These rules, I follow all the time, all the time on every single painting I do, whether it's a landscape or characters or whatever. Master studies. I follow these rules every single time and I made a career out of it. So people that say, oh, artist subjective, There's no rules, man. I'm not a big believer in that. Yeah, sure. But if you're making stuff that's not appealing to a viewer and they don't understand what they're looking at. I don't buy it. Now, I'm a big fan of abstract Art. I really like inferring your own relationship to stuff, but even that follows these rules. Alright? Jackson ******* stuff kind of follows this. So the two main ones, and I put these up top for a reason, bake these into your brain. This will be the thing. If you've had trouble with value before. These will be the two rules that will change your artistic life. I know it sounds dramatic because it is dramatic As something gets closer to you on your, on your image. If you want something to get closer to the viewer, make it darker. As something gets further away into the distance, make it lighter. Band. If you don't remember anything else out of this whole course, really. Remember those two things. If something is closer, it is darker. If something is further, it is lighter. Period. I want to hop back a few deals. Okay. Check this one out. You see a middle one, you see the top one, you see the bottom one. Top one's a little weird because the light is hitting the ground. But look at how bright those clouds are compared to the mountain in front of it. Right? This is my painting. As something goes further away, it gets lighter closer to white. As something gets closer, it goes darker, closer to black. That's why those stalactites upfront look like they are upfront because they are darker. Alright? So hopefully this is starting to kinda connect. The closer the darker it is, the further away it goes, the lighter it gets. You can break those rules as you see, I do a little bit here, but there's a reason and we'll talk about those reasons. Okay? But just get that in your mind. Darker, closer, lighter, further. Alright. So each plane and not playing as in my room airplane, but plain as in the side of a shape or a form, the planes of a shape. Each plane of an image correlates to a value on the value scale. So your foreground could be dark, it can be an eight out of nine. Really dark. Your midground, the middle of the picture, could be a five or afford in the middle of that scale. And then your background, your very, very back could be a one or two, very bright, very light. Right? So you're mapping, I call this value mapping. You're going to map what value each area is. You have nine to play with, so you can kinda play with them. And then once we start doing some brushwork and my blending and stuff like that, you're going to see a really start forming into a cohesive piece. But you can break these rules. But there better be a good reason. I can tell you right now. I know for a fact the rule I'm going to break as something that's further away. It's a lighter, that's gonna be absolutely true. But the focal point, the thing in the middle is going to be dark because I want it to pop out more. Have you at higher contrast, which draws the eye. I'm going to have that pop out more against the really light background. I'm going to have something dark. So that way your IB lines into it. But we'll look at that. Okay. So remember high contrast, bigger leaps on your value scale. Draw the viewer's eye. Use this to your advantage. Where do you want your people to look? Where do you want your viewer to look? Make that higher contrast, make that a bigger leap between your lights and darks. Okay? If you want to blend something in, or if something in your image is like drawing too much attention to itself. Make it, but it's probably because it's too high of contrast, too high of contrast around the stuff that's around. So blended in, blend that contrast or blend that value in with the values that it's surrounding. So let's say you have a bunch of white 4.5 midtones. But then there's something that's a one. It's really bright. And you didn't mean for it to be really bright in the middle of that. Make that one go to a three or four. Because then it's less abrasive, it's less of a change on your value scale. Okay? So whenever you want to smudge something out or make it foggy or misty or whatever, really blend in those those values together. And you're gonna make this muddy thing. We're also going to talk about muddy colors. Mix these colors and made muddy colors. That deals with the value you lost, the values intrinsic to each color and hue. But once again, it's advanced stuff. We're going to talk about that later, right? So let's look at those value rules. Controlling your value range. Meaning if your whole painting only has like four or five steps, you're going to have a more somber kind of painting. It's gonna be very relatively low contrast, as you can see to that painting on the left. But The higher contrast if you're brighter or brighter and your darks are darker, you're going to get more of a push, right? So there's a high-value contrast versus low value. It impacts the mood of our image. Photographers call this key like high key or low key. What is their exposure set for? Is their exposure set for the light, how bright everything is? Or are they set for the shadows to where you see all the details in the shadows. That changes the mood. Once again, Ideation and mood. It changes the mood of our piece. If you want something to be a little more stoic and a little more warming and inviting, less bombastic. Make it lower value range. Use less of those numbers on that value scale and make sure they're closer together. But if you want something to really pop and be eye-catching, use high contrast and use everything in that value scale. So you can see the waves on the right-hand side. The closer they get, the darker they get, right, the further away it goes towards the horizon line, the brighter it gets. And once again, darker is closer, lighter is further. So caravaggio is considered the master, the absolute master of light, shadows and lights and all just beautiful compositions. This is 1 million% because of his value control and his shapes. That's it. This is the Calling of St. Matthew from 1615991600 around there. It's nothing but shapes. Look at, look at the window. Look at, look at the window up there. It's a dark rectangle with four lighter rectangles inside of it. Look at that beam of light coming down. That pretty much makes a triangle, that bottom dark triangle that you can see. Then the higher contrast, you can almost make little rectangles out of those bright light, bright white light that are in the dark shadows. You see what I mean, like, once you start seeing the shapes and once you start seeing the value, how ****, how light or dark something is, you can see how the composition works. He's building an image based on shapes. So whenever you hear about somebody Mastering light, oh, what a Master of white. Notice that the colors are kinda just yellow. They're more brownish, three ogres, their numbers there, those sort of like warmer, less saturated. The color is not as important as the value is. The values and the lights and the darks are. That's the thing that captures your attention and really draws your eye. A perfect example if you see in the shadow, like right directly under where the libc and I would point out deep, right directly under the Window is where that harsh line of the light and shadow. But you see directly under that is a very bright pointing finger. Right? So that's makes you want to look, what's that guy point in that? Because that hand is catching, you know what I mean? The hand is catching that light in a place of shadows, so the contrast is super high. Capture your attention. So final thoughts before we start actually digging into painting. Okay, I know this is a lot that's kinda heading material. Especially if you're not used to thinking just purely in values. But the more you do this, the easier it gets and the better it gets. So you will struggle with this at first. I promise. Values are tricky. It seems easy. Oh, is this black or white or is it somewhere in between? Yeah. You can simplify it that way, but seeing it is much different. So you ever hear that term? What's the term? And like Art School people say this. Don't paint or draw what you think you see. Paint or draw what you see. So don't, don't paint what you think you see. Paint what you see. What that means. Or some people call it like opening your third I like seeing your artistic eye. What that means is don't put something or put information where it doesn't belong. If you're painting a television, like for a still-life or whatever, It's a big black rectangle. That's it is. Alright, you're done. Like it's a red. Just look at it. It's a rectangle. Is this a circle? Is this a square? How light or dark is that square or circle or rectangle or parallelogram or whatever. You can see, as we simplify things, we cut to the core of them. We just cut to the chase. What is it? Is a lighter, dark. What shape is it done? Once you nail that down? Making images becomes way more pleasant? In way more interesting, because you start with a solid foundation. Alright? The contrast and the alignment and the repetition and the proximity of stuff like all of those design elements, even in like graphic design, all deal primarily with your controls of value. What are your shapes and how do they correlate to shapes around it? Right? But remember, if something looks good, it is good. We are visual communicators. This is what we do. If it looks good, it is good. If you're breaking a value rule, know why you're doing it. Have intent on why you're doing it. Because Art is the choices we make and style are the mistakes that we keep. Alright? So keep that in mind. Keep in mind if you're going to break a rule, do it for a reason, otherwise, follow the formula. It might be boring, but I promise the image is better because of it. So we're going to revisit values every single step of the way. When I say values, make an image, I think kid, we're gonna look at Values during the color phase. We're going to look at Values during the rendering phase, during the finalization phase, or even an a look at values when we put the signature on, how bright or dark should the signature be in correlation to the stuff around it? I promised you value as everything. I cannot stress enough. This is, this is all of it. If you take one thing away from the whole course, value is everything, okay? So when in doubt, use higher contrast between your shapes. You want to make sure that your things read separately. Then you can always come back and lower that contrast or blending your values to make something less important. So it's good to start with high contrast and then work your way to more subtle. Okay? Because yeah, once again, you want the viewers to know what they're looking at, that that helps them. Except the reality that you are providing to them in the payment. So values lead to good color control. So we're going to talk a lot about this in value or in color. If your values are right, your colors are right. You can use any color on the planet. If your value is right, the color is right, period. You're going to see the power of that. Once we splash color over R value pass, you can change the mood instantly by changing your colors because your values are correct. And we're gonna look at that technique. Okay. So without further ado man, Let's get painting, Let's get started. I'm super excited to start this part. We're going to hop over here real quick and we're going to make a new canvas, kinda make our canvas the way it means to be for the final, like the sizes and stuff. And then we're just going to take that little sketch. We made an Ideation phase. We're going to blow that bad boy up. We're going to refine it a little bit. But we're going to start putting down values. And we're going to narrate through that whole process. And I like to render a little more in my value phase just to really get a good separation. But you'll see what I mean. I don't get into the details. I just tried to really make sure that my shapes are read okay, the way that I want them to. Alright, so, yeah, let's go, Let's get painting. Alright, so we are back here in Photoshop. Let's okay. Yes. So I have my mood board still here. It's in grayscale mode, of course, because we're working in grayscale. But let's make sure that's good. That's good. I'm just going to bump this out of the way. But yeah, so we can see basically, remember wearing it. My intent right here is to make a sequel to this image. So we have the warms and all that stuff, but we don't care about that right now. That is not our intent. We go to Canvas, grayscale. This is what we're after. So like we talked about in just a few minutes ago, if something is closer to us, it is darker. If it is further away, it is lighter. And that's the rule we are going to do as we block in our new painting. So let me move this over here on my other monitor. Yes. Okay. Cool. So basically now we're going to make our canvas, Okay, so I want this to be four K resolution, like as far as the screen size. And then I'm going to make it just 72 pixels per inch or dots per inch. There, kind of interchangeable when you're dealing with Digital Art. But we're 72, I'm just making this for the web. I don't intend on printing this. Yeah, not, not really. If this is just an exercise typing for me. So we're gonna go to File New and then we have deals right here. So I already made one. This one's at 200 Pixels per inch. So let me just do 72. Adjusting your pixels per inch or dots per inch when you make something, he's just gonna be a little easier on your computer. It's gonna be less processing that it has to do. So for me, I like doing this, especially while I'm recording. I have the microphone up, I have all this other stuff that I want to make sure that clarity is good. So this, I just make the size of the picture a little smaller. But on a screen, on a digital screen, 72 PPI or DPI. Completely great. It's actually the standard. So it keeps your file size small tube, which is nice. So we're gonna do that. Great. I am going to get this draw here, right here. Take my selection box. And I'm going to go edit, copy. Just going to copy the information that's on this layer. And then we're going to edit base tiny it is. Okay. So I'm going to free transform this, which means I'm going to scale this up to make it a little bigger. So Control T. I'm going to grab this, bring it up to the edge. I'm going to grab this marine down here. Cool. Perfect. That looks really bad. Scaled up like that. So what we're gonna do, let me go ahead and refine this sketch a little bit. Okay, I know we put down the shapes and we're going to work about values. But like that's kind of an eyesore right now. And I want to clarify some of what the ideas are first. So a great way to do that. I'm gonna make a new layer on top of all the layers, but the layer we just copy and paste it down. I'm going to turn this down on the opacity light. Yeah, like yeah, like right here. Okay. So let me come in with a more accurate here. I'm just going to use the draw blend brush on my brush pack. Then I'm just kinda, kinda sketch over, I guess. It makes the makes us shapes easier every Let's do that one up. This one back. So yeah, I liked this idea. Maybe if it this ramp kinda comes up, then does like a cool dip down for something. I'm looking at my other piece just to kind of mimic some of these shapes. That way you can tell that these are definitely connected in regards to they are the same place. Okay. There. And that's going to actually come up in there. That's kinda like a stepping stone. We can maybe make that a mushroom or something. This kinda comes back here. Then this will be in front to give us some of that debt. Still looks like a mess right now. But I promise once we start getting our values in, this picture is really going to like come alive. And you're gonna see it. You're gonna be able to start seeing it almost immediate, which is, which is really cool. Then we have that. Yeah, so our main area right here, we're going to mimic what we did in the other piece. We're gonna have kind of a rock structure here. Maybe some rocks here. Over here. Main area is gonna be here. We have main event, like right there. A main focal point is going to be right here. We're going to keep it. Then just more craggy stuff. Okay. Maybe do some lines to maybe point because we had those, those God raise those, those light blooms coming through and do something like that. And then these can kinda go back down. But you'll notice we're going to put these shapes back and put this sketch back in just enough for us to be able to put in, maybe define that shape a little better. The values are really going to be the thing that defines what this is. And we're not really worried about details yet, just because our values are going to let us start seeing patterns and seeing things. So we have this, right? Let me bring this down a little more. So once again, quick sketch Once we start really getting in our values, it's really going to come alive. So let's do that. I'm under my sketch layers right now. Okay. Let me make a new layer. I'm going to edit, fill this layer with 50% gray. Okay? 50% gray. Another way to do this. If I hit Okay, 50% gray, and now you can see those dark lines are above it and stuff, it automatically changes the mood, which is pretty cool. But another way you can do this, if you look over here at our make sure that this is recording, right? Yes. Okay. If you look over here at our value, you have hue and saturation and value in our PowerPoint, we talked about how value is a part of color. It's part of the definition of what makes up a color. So you'll see this slider right here. Mine says 15, which means I'm 1-2 on that value scale, one being ten, into being 20. Pretty dark. 5. Lesson 3 - Color: Alright, gang a. So we are hopping into the color phase. We just wrapped up or got at least to a good stopping point on our value pass. Now we're going to move on to what a lot of people consider. One of the trickiest parts of all Artwork, not just landscapes are Digital Painting or traditional painting or whatever, but of anything, any kind of visual communication. Painting and Artwork definitely be part of that is color. Okay, So quick little disclaimer before we start getting too far into this, this one, the color topic and also the Rendering topic. We're going to have a little PowerPoint. We're going to have the little discussion about it. But primarily we're a lot of the really good tips and tricks and foe is going to come from, is gonna be from the actual painting part that we're gonna be doing. So this is where you start getting into the experience of it. What does it, but if you're doing something over and over, you're bound to get better at it. Just that's the way it is. So using some of these more advanced tips and I'm going to get in the PowerPoint presentation, we're going to jump right in. We're gonna start messing around with stuff. But hopefully what you're going to see is how the method that we're going to use is going to make the whole thing really start to come together and make our rendering phase that much more enjoyable. And where you'll probably end up spending a majority of your time. There's what's called kinda the at 20 rule in Art. And it's the first 20% of what you get on the page is usually 80% of the way they're like you pretty much have what you're looking at. And after this phase, you're definitely going to see that. But then the last 20% of your painting takes 80% of the time. Okay, so that's just a weird thing to discuss. So let's get into into the deal here. Let me, there we go. Yeah, so we're going to talk about color, temperature, and relative relationships. So, you know how in the values video we discussed if something is lighter or darker than something else. That same rule applies when we talk about color. Okay, So let me click over here. So we're going to define what makes up a color. Then we're going to simplify the color wheel. Now, like I said, color is such a huge beast. That being like, Oh, I'll cover all of color in 20 min is ridiculous. Like it takes a lifetime, many lifetimes. In fact, he kinda figure this stuff out. And it's always going to be something that's on your mind. The color phase is never easy for me. I really enjoyed the value phase. That's where I like to actually spend a vast majority of my time is getting my values right. But the reason why I wanted to jump ahead into the color phase a little before I was ready with my values, is I want to show you that you can mix and match these steps depending on what you like. I know we talked about that earlier in the course. But if you like the value Phase, spend more time there. If you really liked this color stuff that we're going to start doing, spend a lot of your time here. Whenever you find the most enjoyable is the right way to do it. Okay? So once again, this is just gonna be a quick crash course on color just to get you started and start playing around and hopefully relieve some of that pressure. Because I know color, a lot of artists, even pros we discuss a lot like, oh, is this the right color for this? I don't know. Should it be this color? It's a thing, right? So it's major decisions, but we're going to try to take that the weight of it off your shoulders. So whenever we say color, what do we mean? We have to define what we're talking about before we move on to tactually utilizing what we're, what we're talking about. So color is actually a term for a multitude of variables to define a pigment. Okay. Now it sounds a little weird and wordy, and it is. But it's basically broken up into three different categories just for simplification. So you have what's called your hue, your saturation, and your value, okay? Sometimes the values called lightness and they are very, very similar for what we're using. We can use the words interchangeably, but there is actually some math because you're dealing with light, right? Like literally your digital screens, especially in Digital Art, you're dealing with something that's doing additive color theory, which is the more pigments you add on top of each other, you're adding light, meaning you get closer to white. But then if you're using pigments or ink, like your printer, or you're using traditional paint. The more paint you start stacking on top, and the more pigments you start mixing, the closer you get to black, meaning light cannot pass through to differentiate what color it is So that's called subtractive color theory. I tell you I can talk about this for 5,000 slides, but just know that lightness in value regarding the way we're defining it can be interchanged. They mean the same thing, how light or dark is something. So it's very simplified by just thinking about how light or dark, okay, That's your value. So your hue is what people usually think of when you say the word color. What color is that? Oh, the sky is blue. The apple is red or green, or the school bus is yellow. That's actually defining the hue. But a lot of people interchange the term Q in color. There are different. I mean, color is all three of the things right? Hue, saturation, and value, because you can have a dark red or a light sky blue or, you know what I mean? You can really start finding these nitty-gritty ways to define these things. But just know that color has to involve all of them. So once you start thinking holistically like that, what, what am I really discussing when I say that the tree bark is brown, what does that mean? Is that a desaturated orange or is that fully saturated? Yellow but just darker on the value scale? What am I talking about? You start defining these things. It makes it sound more complex, but in a weird way, it actually simplifies it. So if you think of like Roy G Biv, you remember like, oh the rainbow Roy G Biv, that's your hue. Saturation is the amount of the pigment or amount of hue present. So the higher the saturation means, it's like very red, like it's candy apple, blindingly like laser pointer read like, whoa, like a stop sign, very red. But then if you have something a little more, Let's say you have a red t-shirt and you've had it for years and years, and it's faded. It's now more kinda like the pink. Really worn out, muted red. That is low saturation. There is a low amount of that queue present, meaning that the saturation is low. Hopefully that makes sense. And then value, we had a whole course about value. How light or dark is it comparatively. Now, I did put a note here. There is something called chroma. And a lot of people say chroma and saturation are the same thing and they're not, they are very closely related, but they are not the same thing. This is going to sound really weird. And I promise when we show the examples, I have a little exercise and I'll show you what I mean by chroma. It's going to hopefully make more sense. But chroma, think of it as, where does this color look the most like itself. Sounds really bizarre, right? But where does read look the most read? Where does yellow look the most yellow? Where does blue look the most blue? So it can be fully saturated. But if the value is dark or light, that changes, that changes the saturation, but it never changes the chroma. The chroma is a yes or no answer. Is this full Cromer? Yes or no? Meaning, is this the most yellow you can possibly get? Does it look the most like yellow? Does it live where he yellow lives? Yes or no. I know it sounds weird. Will take a look at it. Okay. Trust me, I'm going to try to keep this simple. I lecture about color for ever and ever. But really the only things we're gonna be doing to really get rid of all this fluff, weird definitions and terminology and things like that. We're just going to simplify the color wheel into two main things. Warm, cool, warm and cool. Warm. What do you think of? Fire? The sun. Beach, right? You think of hot. Hot, meaning fire, red, orange, yellow. Those are your warm colors on the color wheel. Cool colors. What does that mean? Water, ice. Anything with more of the blue is going to be on your cooler side of the color wheel. Now I say warm and cool. You can actually divide it right there in the middle, as you can see in this example. I'll tell you exactly where you divide it. You can see the example here, but you can memorize this. You divide it in the green and the magenta, or the purple or whatever you want to call it. That's where you divide your warm and your cools. You know why? Because green and magenta are the only colors that are equal parts, warm and cool. Does that make sense? So how do you get purple? You get blue, which is a cool color, and red, which is a warm color. Meet them in the middle and you get purple. Same thing for green. What do you have? You have blue, which is cool. You have yellow, which is warm. They meet in the middle, you get green. That's how any color wheel gets split into the warms and cools. Alright? Now, where we start getting real fine. This to me really simplified things. But it was almost an aha moment. Because you know how he talked about with values, it's all relative. Is this lighter or darker than something else? Think of temperature. The color temperature is the same thing. I want you to try to not think of colors like, well, I'm making a leaf, so I need to get more green. Oh, I'm making the ground. So it needs a little bit more brown. I don't want you to talk about colors in regards to whew, I want you to start thinking more about is the color I need warmer or cooler? Meaning, do I add a little bit of blue? Do I add a little bit of red? Does it go near the middle of the cogwheel? This, this is part of why I said at the beginning, this is an have a slide about this. Color is about doing. Once we get into Photoshop, I can quickly show you exactly what this stuff. Okay? So a lot of painters like to go around the color wheel to pick their color. So if you're painting something and you need to paint the sky, you're like, Oh, the skies here. I need to go over to the blues and get a blue. I would say, don't think like that. I would say the color that you're at go through the color wheel. So instead of going around it to try to pick these different hues, go through it. So you go through gray, it's going to give you way more control. So gray is actually my favorite color. And the reason why is It's always the color you need. If you push towards gray, you're gonna see some magic things happen. Okay? So if you're on, let's say the yellows side of the color wheel. Instead of going around to the blues to pull something off. What if you started heading towards the gray, towards the middle of that color wheel? Where's your final destination? If you draw a straight line from the yellows diagonally towards the, you know how it's kind of see if I can do my hand the same angle. Doing this is weird. Okay, So here we go. So you see how the yellows are right here. They start going down into those grays. You're going towards blues in the violet. You aren't getting cooler. But instead of making the drastic jump from yellow all the way to blue, now you're taking your time, you're going and you have complete control over quote-unquote, how much blue, how cool, how much cooling are you adding to this heat? Does that make sense? I love gray. I love it because it's always warmer than your cools. And it's always cooler than your worms. Because it's in the middle. You have to go through the middle to get to your destination. Does that make sense? Hopefully this is starting to like make more sense. So my dogs on her way. So if you hear clicking, I apologize. That's her nails on the hardwood floor. So there's an idea, and I fully believe that this is a great idea. Utilizing something called a limited palette, meaning limit your options only to four to six colors. It doesn't matter what the colors aren't necessarily just colors you might think might fit. So here's where you can pick your Hughes. I need a blue, I need a purple and yellow, I need an orange, I need a red, and then I need a gradient. There. That's your limited palette. You can only use those. Then you just start mixing them, select them and mix them. Traditional painters and traditional artists actually can do this, in my opinion, a little easier than digital artists unless you're using a software like ART rage or rebel or Corel Painter or something that has a good mixer brush. I don't procreate as any sort of wet blending can get you some pretty good results. But I was trained with traditional paint. So that's how I think about color mixing. Take two parts. This one part that, That's a little harder to do in digital, but it's still doable. But that's why it's so important to limit your options. My favorite limited palette ever. And it's the one I recommend to everybody because you can really start to see how colors work together and how it's more about temperature than it is about naming a direct hue is the Zorn palette. It's named after Anders or in one of my favorite painters. He's a Swedish painter from the 19th century. And he does incredible portraits, heated landscapes. He did all kinds of stuff, but he was really well-known for his portraits. Keys along the same lines as like John Singer Sargent. So if you've heard those names before, That's his wheelhouse in his color control. It has value control or Perfect. He's one of the best that's ever lived. And I highly suggest looking at his stuff because you'll, you'll learn stuff. Every one of his paintings is like a master class. So basically he just had four colors. Get ivory black, titanium white, yellow, ocher, and cadmium red. The ivory black and titanium white acted has to cool colors because they were made of blue. White and black primarily have blue in them. And then the yellow ocher and the cad red or your warms. Okay. Now, yes, you can have warm blacks and warm white, and you can have cool reds and cool yellows. But that's what I mean. Everything's relative. Do you need to cool it off a little bit? You need to warm it up a little bit. This is where you can see even some of these examples on the chart. If you see under the black right there on the leftmost side, those two are pretty green. But they've got the green. Andrews already got that green by mixing equal parts, titanium, white and black to make the gray mix that yellow ocher in there. Because if your gray is primarily made of blue and you mix it with yellow, you get green. Now notice it's not a super vibrant like neon green, but it's a green that fits with the rest of the colors. All your colors are going to work together because they have to, do you have to mix a little bit of each color into each color. You know what I mean? So you're really teaching yourself the recipes. So you'll notice, I haven't even talked about, and I probably won't talk much about like, Oh, colors apart from each other on the color wheel are complimentary colors. And then there's analogous colors and they're the same, they're the three. I don't really nice to know, but I don't think that way. I don't necessarily think, well this needs, they split complimentary. This needs a triadic color scheme, this needs a boy. I don't think that way. It's cool to think that way. But I like a little more nuance in my colors. I think instead of doing the split complimentary stuff, I would rather just mix my color palette. You know what I mean? You get way more interesting results that way. So Digital Art and what we're gonna do, we're just going to limit ourselves. The nice thing is, at least for me in my painting, if you're following along during the class project, based on what your colors are going to be. You're gonna notice that the way we set this up, because we did values first, we can actually go in and do pen color splashes, try to get different moods and a menu of options in super-fast time. Okay? So there's no wrong answer. Okay, I will just say try your best to limit yourself to some warms and cools. And that's about it. Okay. So before we get into the painting side of this, this slideshow is a little bit more sporadic. It's a little bit more theory based. Instead of hard and like this as a rule and with Values, hey, if something's darker, it's closer to us. If it's further away, it's a lighter. There's no real rules like that regarding color, because color is very subjective. It's going to change the emotion, it's going to change all that stuff. However, it does follow optics, right? Reds are harsher than even like cyans are. Just the way our eyeballs work. The way light bounces, the way the physics of it works. There are certain reasons why, like stoplights are red. As you can see them through even foggy weather and stuff, you can see them more clearly. The eye just picks up on it. It's very intense. But it's still, it's still subjective, colors subjective. So really the tips and tricks are going to come from the doing of this. So the lecturing part of it, it can be helpful when you can kinda see some examples of stuff, but until you're in there doing it, you're not going to really get those aha, moments. You can read about, excuse me, you can read about theory all day. But if you're like, if you can get into shape by reading a fitness magazine, you know what I mean? At a certain level, you gotta do it. You gotta, you gotta read this stuff, get it in your mind, and then try it and go for it. So yes, every part of this whole process. And it doesn't mean just landscapes, but any painting, it can be adjusted to meet your needs. You don't need to nail down your colors right now. Right now we're just think of this almost as another Ideation phase we are making. We're gonna be making different examples of stuff. The benefit from my thing, I already have my colors picked out because I'm making a sequel to another piece, somebody who is the same colors. It's kinda lazy, I guess, but we might spice it up a little bit. I have a few ideas to really hit home some cool like magic Example type of stuff and we'll look at that. But nothing's right or wrong. You're not going to ruin all of the work that you did. We're gonna be working in what's called a non-destructive environment. Meaning if you don't like, let's say you're doing some color splashes and it's just not working. You can just delete that layer and you're back to your values, your back to square one, which is not a bad thing. So whenever I work with clients, I give them a menu of options. So we agree on a value sketch first, right? I usually give like three values sketches. So they can kinda see the mood that I'm after the diode, the light and the dark and the shadows and all the lighting and stuff and kinda get a sense of it. So with the color, I usually give them two options. One, it just saves me time not having to make 18 options. But also you're gonna get it with just two. It's gonna be ones primarily gonna be probably a warmer tone and one's gonna be a cooler tone. You send it. They're gonna give the feedback. Oh, I really liked this one. It's a little more blue and my favorite color is blue or whatever their feedback is. Oh, this is a daytime scene, so we really want it to be warm. Great. But it's super fast. You didn't give this to clients very, very quickly before you start pushing into render. So every digital painting software, because of Photoshop, photoshop kind of set the vernacular and the, the definition of terms in the way that we think of digital painting. They use layer blending modes. So it's an algorithm, it's a mathematical way that one layer sits on top of another layer. And the two main layer blending modes that we're going to be using, our color and overlay. You're going to see whenever we start painting, color literally just takes the hue In, puts the hue over something without changing the value of it. Overlay does the same thing, but it can change the value depending on what color you picked. So if you have like something that's pretty light and you pick a dark purple on color blending mode, it's gonna be a light purple. You're going to put purple over it and it's gonna be light purple. It doesn't care about the value. It just cares about the hue, the area on the color wheel around where you are overlay. This also going to take the value your dark purple and probably bring that light area of value mid tone. So it is going to affect it. It does it almost like soaks in more. If that makes sense. Like if you're a watercolor painter, how, you know in acrylics for sure, acrylics in watercolor dry, one value darker than what they're put on the paper fresh or the canvas fresh, right? So oils you can get, if you're working with high-quality oils, they kinda stay the same as long as you don't mix like linseed oil or something like that. And there are two yellow it up. They stay about the same. But with acrylics and with watercolors, they tend to darken at least one value. Some colors really darken like almost two Values, but neither here nor there. Think of this as glazing. Okay, if you're more of the traditional artist, what we're gonna be doing as glazing or painting. Okay. So yeah, I'm trying to think of yeah, color and overlay and all that stuff. That's it, man, we're gonna get painting. I know that was probably a weird lecture compared to the other ones that was less straightforward. But once we get in here, first I'm going to show you guys what Cromer really is. But then I do want to just kinda show some examples of going through the color wheel instead of a rounded. You're gonna start getting the gist of what we're going for, okay? And then a vignette, once we get a few color things down, primarily minds just gonna be one color thing, but I'll splash another set of colors just so you can see it. And see how easy it is to make a menu of options. Then we're just going to take it to render. Render is going to take a long time. Don't worry, it's not gonna be real-time. You're not gonna be sitting here for seven-and-a-half hours watching me paint. But we're going to Timelapse that and I'll narrate over it. So it should be the hour or whatever, but that's then, right now we're going to work on the color stuff. Let's hop over. Let's get to putting our color splashes on and talk about using color theory on top of our values. Alright, so we are here in the painting. So yes, Like I said, this is not where I would leave a value sketch. This is very, very rough. I would actually go in and probably start rendering some of my value stuff just to really kinda get that full mood and everything that I would like. But the reason why I wanted to kinda do this color phase is I want to show you you can do these steps at anytime. And I know I've mentioned that quite a few times before. But it's true. Don't feel pressured to do the steps exactly the same time I'm doing them. If you want to just jump right into color, you can just put blocks and basic, basic really geometric shapes as your composition Or you can do almost a full black and white render of your piece before you even touch this color stuff. Okay. But would that being said, let me show you the chroma example and this is actually going to be part of your extras. You should have a folder of extras, and this is gonna be called the the chroma example. Okay? So let me move that right here. So here we have our, sorry, I'm gonna keep moving my mic around. It's on a little mic arm, so I'm moving it. So here we have fully saturated red, fully saturated blue, and fully saturated yellow. In the way I did this, the way I picked these is I came on the color wheel. I chose a yellow. And as you can see, I just went in the upper right corner. And you can also tell here, because the value and the saturation sliders are both at 100. The same thing for the blue. Okay? So if I color pick this blue, I'm would be good over here. Same thing, 100, 100. Same thing for the red. 100, 100. So this is the most saturated, the brightest, most saturated that you can possibly be. You would think, oh, all of these are Full chroma, right? Well, sure. But what is the chroma? This is where this starts blowing people's minds. Every color at full saturation and Full vibrancy, the most visible it can be, have different values. If you don't believe me, watch this. All I'm gonna do is put a quick basically and I'll show you guys how to do this at any step of your painting. But this is what I call it value checker. Okay, I'm going to turn this on. It strips away any color, any hue, and leaves us just with the value. Okay, So we'll do this in 321. Alright, what do we see? The red seems to be more mid tone, a little bit darker. So if we looked at that value scale, remember from the value definition, this would be about a five or six on the value scale. That blue looks pretty dark comparatively, right? Then of course, the yellow, depending on the brightness settings on your monitor, you might not even be able to see it, but the yellow is extraordinarily bright. Okay? This is what the chroma means. Very candy apple red. The most vibrant red you have is a mid tone. That's where it exists. It lives in the mid tones. Jared's live in the mid tones. Your blues, purples, things like that, live in the darker side of the coin, right? Your yellows are your brights. You can actually mix a nice white color using yellows, like you can use it as your lights. This is what we mean by chroma. Can you have a dark, fully saturated yellow? Yes. But the chroma isn't right. The chromosome low chroma. It's not wear yellow lives. I know that's kind of a weird day and because it's the best way I can really define it. Saturation is relative. It is subjective. Is that saturated? Yes. Well, compared to what? Is it more saturated than this? Yes. Yes. So now that really looks like a saturated red compared to a dull red or something. But with chroma, chroma is an actual scientifically measured thing. Bright, 100% light. Your visibility for yellow is light. It's a light value. So it lives in the light, Jared's live in the mid tones. They just do optically, that's where they live. A lot of people think red is brighter than what it really is. Red's not all that bright. But like we talked about, it's so aggressive on our eyeballs and the way it works, it just pierces right through it. So we give it were like, Oh, wow, that bright red is really bright. It's really light. It's not light. It's mid tone. That's where you start getting into these different deals. So I just wanted to show you that, like I said, if you want to play with this yourself, I'm going to include it. But just think about that. Where do my colors live? So why is that important? Chromosome important? Once we start painting over top of a value scale. So if I wanted purely saturated, beautiful, vibrant yellows, where would I paint them? I would paint them in the lights because that's where yellow lives. Do you see you? I mean, like, oh, if I really wanted this thing to just blow out, I would paint all these mid tones, read I wouldn't because that would probably burn your retinas out. But do you understand what I'm saying? And then the darks are going to be a little more blue if I wanted them to be very saturated. This is basically think of it like having the answer book on a test. Every answer you puts going to be correct. That's what learning color theory is. That's what learning how these optics work. Not to say it gets easier, but you're less stressed about it because you know how you can fix it and try stuff. You can try whatever you want. A lot of people think if you follow these rules and you're learning about Cromer, the color wheel and warms and goals. It takes all the creativity in the fanout of Art. I think it's the opposite. Once I started really understanding this and doing some deep dives, I was more interested to make more Art because I had the confidence of knowing that I could probably make a pretty good painting. It's not gonna be the best painting anyone's ever painted. But I'll be happy with the outcome. And hopefully fans or people on social media or my clients will enjoy the painting as well because they're going to follow certain rules that don't change. I mean, if you mix red and you mix blue, you get some form of purple. It can be a warm or cool purple depending on which way it goes. But that's what you're getting like, that's a law of physics and you're going to get that color. You're never going to mix red and blue together and get like yellow. It's not going to happen. This is not unless you live in the upside down or something. But anyway, that's what chroma is in. Chromite is important. But I do think it's more of an advanced thing. Okay? So we're gonna dig in to why do we work with Values first, okay? So at this stage, what I like to do is I like to Let's make a merged copy of this. Anytime I hit what I consider a checkpoint like a nice place to save my project. I like to make a merged copy. Meaning it's everything that you see. What you see is what you get on this layer. I'm going to come up to select all edit, copy merged. So every painting software is going to have a different version of this. But then I'm going to make sure I'm on my top-most layer here. I'm gonna go edit, paste. And it's going to make a new layer. And I'm gonna call this merged values. You can call it whatever you want. I just always like to keep it like, oh, where's my merged evaluator? Oh, there it is. I've done it for years. So whatever your vernacular is, whatever you want to call it, feel free to. Okay. So here we go. We have this. How do we start applying color and a non-destructive way? Well, there's two layer blending modes. Now, every Art software is going to have these. Well, except for like MS. Paint. Yeah, I don't think they do. Usually any any Art that has any Art program that has layers. Layer management is going to have color blending modes because it's basically just a computer algorithm telling it how to mathematically show your each layer in order from top to bottom. Okay? It's like silk screening. If you're familiar with that process where you put one color over the other color over the other color. You know, kinda had a printer works. So same principle applies here. But what we're gonna do, We're gonna make a new layer. In the blending mode. We're going to change it to color. Now. I'm just going to pick the, I'm really if you wanted good transitions and stuff like that, you can use a softer brush. But I'm just going to use a hard round brush that has like a wet tip. It's the one that we use to why my Photoshop is running real Genki, real, real Genki. So we're on our Color Overlay layer. Let me rename it. Alright. Now let's start picking a color. I did have my original open here. Okay. Let me close out our chromate example. Yeah, sure. Like I said, you're going to have that in the extras if you're just curious about it and you can make other little squares and test out where you think the chroma, where, where that color lives in the value spectrum? Um, yeah, that's a font exercise. But there is a way, Let's say you have an image here and or a year working from a photograph or something. And you want to have a the reference up. You can do a number of things. You can, you use pure ref. So we can come in here. If I want to like load up the image. Let's do load. Let me bring it over here. Right-click load, load images. And then I want to like get something. Sorry. It started off at a some artwork that's not undisclosed right now, so I can't show it, but here we go. We have my initial painting right here. You can do it in pure ref, you can have it here and just kinda pick from here. Or if you're painting software allows it. Like Photoshop right here. You can actually do a side-by-side view. If I go to Window, Arrange two up vertical, it literally makes an even split between or two or two pieces. Select here. And the reason why this is helpful, because I'm using the exact same color palette. I can just pick colors from this and use it here. So that make sense. So let's do that. Let me come in here. And okay, let's say our delight bloom is going to be a cyan. It's gonna be kinda that light green color. I'm going to click here. You can tell it picked it from here. Then if I come back over a little, so that way we can see this big. Remember I'm on my Color Overlay layer. As I start putting this color in, you're gonna notice that it brings in the hue, but it doesn't mess with the values. So it looks kinda weird, right? It doesn't look very natural. But that's fine. I'm bringing some right here. Here. That's fine. Because we're just going to keep either color picking or picking another color over here. Okay, so let's this muted purples, pretty good, right? So we're gonna just do our rocked here. That same color and see we can even color over. Once again, you notice, you notice something happening. The purple isn't in. This goes back to Cromer. The purple is not really showing as well here. As it's looking more purple, the darker. Remember, the blues live in the darks? The purples live there too. So the same thing, if we did beet red. We did be red. It would really show up in the mid tones, but it wouldn't show up as well as red necessarily in the light. You know what I mean? In the darks, it can. But like see even the dark red doesn't really look as red anymore. It almost looks like a really rich brown, maybe a little purple additive in there. But your mid tones, pool boy, they really blow out, right, because that's where the reds lived. But you can see all this is non-destructive. I can always just hide this. And we're back to our value sketch. Bring this backup. Now, if I was just painting on a normal layer, That's what it looks like. Right? Not not great. Then I know we've talked about the overlay layer, but I'm going to wait to actually paint, get my colors blocked in. Before I show you the difference between the color and overlay. They're very, very similar. But basically the overlay does affect those values. So I'm actually going to more of a purple. Let me, instead of color picking from the deal here, let me just pick from here. Let me get a darker purple, something like this and see how these are really saturated. Like there's a term in Art the artists use. And it's a funny term, it's a gross term. But because like if we look at our colors right now, the term for this as clown vomit. Everything so bright and so saturated that it looks like confetti. It's like we, some big party thing. The secret to getting good nuanced colors. I'll give you a minute to think about it. What did I say? My favorite color was gray. Right? So instead of let me see if wish I wish I had the color wheel that was just a sphere that had the gray in the middle and stuff like that. Because see this, let me do it. Color sliders, you. Not the spectrum. What? We can use that for more harmonious colors, get them closer to gray. So these are in the extremes of the saturation, right? These are really full saturation 6. Lesson 4 - Rendering and Finalizing Your Art: Hey there, Welcome to the last, like I guess, lecture style lesson. Before we get into the final Timelapse and narration and all that good stuff. So this lesson is about rendering. So let's recap what we've done so far. We've created an idea in our mind. Blade out some basic shapes and things to kinda get the general gist of what we want. We blocked in our values, our lights and darks in order to see the, the composition sort of come to life based on that mood that we established. Then we did some color splashes. We found some different methods that we can actually go and integrate color on top of our value pass without destroying anything that we've made up until this point. Now, let's say you've done all that and you've got to a point to where you liked the colors, the general layout of the colors, the values are pretty on point. Now it's just time to finish this thing. So we're going to talk about Rendering. So let me come over here and get this right there. So, yeah, landscape Techniques volume one, it's the last class lesson. Hurray. You made it. Congrats. You've heard me drone on and on about this for awhile. So pat yourself on the back. So rendering, this is where we push to final. And yeah, we wrap this thing up. So there's some rules that we're going to talk about. But really this is about balancing your focal points and your details. Using edge control with texture, a few different ideas to try to wrap your mind around it. So rendering is something that everybody does differently. It's part of your style, is definitely part of your artistic style. Some people enjoy more quote-unquote, cartoony rendering. Some people enjoy the more photo-realistic stuff. But there's, the great news about Art. Is all of it as valid and all of it is necessary? I think the world's a big place. Your version of your voice on how you bring a painting to life is absolutely valid and it should be celebrated. That's, that's my professional and personal opinion. Alright. Rendering is simply a term to mean finalized. So they a whole bunch of stuff. There's different techniques that people use, like photo bashing or like really getting into the nitty-gritty of rendering something to make it look truly three-dimensional. Another quick example of rendering is if you've ever seen those videos of people with sidewalk chalk, where they do something in three-dimensions. And then they make it to where it almost looks like you're going to step into a chasm or something. That's a form of Rendering because there has to be a certain amount of believability to make your mind, even for a split second be like, Oh, I need to walk around this giant hole in the sidewalk. Even if it's not real. The rules that it's following as far as perspective and where I worked definitely gives us that impression. And that's part of rendering. So don't think rendering is like 3,000 hour along. You have to get every skin pore. That's not really what we're talking about. Basically, this is just a way to finalize the image in the style that we want. So I think about rendering only two main ideas. Okay? It boils down to edges in texture. That's it. Once again, we talked about simplifying stuff and values as light versus dark. Color is warm versus cool. Rendering is controlling your edges and controlling your texture. That's it. Alright. So what do I mean by that? So edges, and this is a funny one because, you know that rule, you're not supposed to use the word in its own definition. I tried to think of other ways to say it, but edges, a sharp line. Sometimes it's sharp between one value or color and another. Edges or the relationship between paint stroke, edges, between hard edges, soft edges are lost edges. In fact, I've been kinda subconsciously wiring you to look at distinct edges by the background of these PowerPoints. If you notice the different brushstrokes and it might be pretty interesting to look at because there's different shapes and there's different edge control and some of them are blended in, some of them are smudge and some of them are pretty harsh. That's the idea. You want a variety of edges in your brushwork, in your brushstrokes to, to generate interests. Then the other one is texture. I just put texture is applying detail in such a way to mimic reality, emulate the visual and material of a surface, or add believability to an image or objects within an image. That sounds really big. But it's pretty, pretty easy. Okay, first let's talk about edges. So edges, in my opinion, are what separate painting? Charcoal and the artistic visual Art flare of interpretation. This is what makes it different than every other visual form on the planet. Okay? Edges are distinctly painterly. It's something that you can really add a lot of personality based on how you control your edges. So there's a myriad of different edges. If you look up edges on wikipedia or light artistic edges or something like that, there's probably dozens of different definitions, but I only worry about three types of edges. Okay? I worry about hard edges. Are sharp edges, soft edges, and lost or no edges. So a hard edge is a very sharp distinction between value or hue or both. It's a contrast. But there is a literal line. There's a distinct line, It's a very sharp between this and this. Think of it like a reasonable razor blade to cut right down the middle. In fact, I have a brush called the razor blade. So I know that's my hardest brush that I have. So I can go in and do that stuff. So a soft edge is kinda what it sounds like. There's still an edge, there is still a place to where this value, in this value or this color in this color change. You can clearly see the separation because there's still an edge, but it's a little smudge doubt, it's a little kinda out-of-focus, little blurry, if that makes sense. But you can still see a distinct line of separation between this and this lost edge, this smooth gradient. There is no distinct line where one thing changes to another. It's a gradual process, okay? So lost edges have no visible transition point. It's very important. So think part edge, razor blade, soft edge, kind of out-of-focus blurry. And then a lost edge doesn't exist. It's lost where to go. Alright. So here's how we had the formula and the rules for our values to where if something is closer, it is darker. If something is further away it is a lighter. We're going to use that same type of mentality with our edges. Now, I can tell you I made a career literally of being a professional artist, following these rules for every single painting I do. And this is one of my paintings to give you an idea of the different types of edges. This was a portrait and then I decided, Hey, wouldn't it be cool if I just went haywire with my brush work and brush strokes. And you can tell that there's all kinds of different edges. But hopefully you can still tell where the focal point, okay? So the most simple formula I follow for edges. If you have a hard or sharp edge, it is automatically a focal point. The eye wants to know because it's going to make distinct shapes. That's why shapes earlier in the Ideation phase or so important. It's gonna give you a silhouette of hard edges so you can build your focal point as it goes. Okay? So the more tension that's going to get, the harder the edge of the more attention. As you get less focused, things start blurring out. It's on a gradient. It is literally on a scale. Your focal point is going to have the most amount of hard edges close together. Then as Let's get further away from being the focal point or less important for the overall composition. You're going to use softer and softer edges. Okay? So there is a hierarchy. If you have to focal points, you have your main focal point and then a secondary focal point. You can make the secondary focal point and have quite a few hard edges, just not as many as your main focal point. So hopefully that value makes sense or the scale makes sense, okay? So less focus equals softer edges. Just give that in your mind. Good paintings have every type of edge and they each serve a purpose, okay? So your focal point is your heart. Edges are soft, edges is reinforcing your focal point. And then you're lost edges literally give your viewer similar to rest. If it's just chaos all the time bombarding you. It's really fatiguing on the eye, right? We can only focus on so much at once and we're going to talk about that here in just a second. But I will save this. And this is a tip I actually learned from the artist James gurney, who's one of my favorite artists on earth. He's an amazing teacher. And he said, 95% of your painting should probably be in soft edges Because that's how traditional paint actually blends into itself. Very rarely do you see a razor sharp edge in a traditional painting. You can, We saw that Caravaggio won during the value pass. That line that comes down literally it looks like he took a ruler than just painted, almost like masking tape and painted. But that's why it's so striking, is because with paint, even as it's drying, it's starting to melt into itself. It's starting to soften the edge. Even if you have a razor-sharp edge, you might have to do it 12 or three times while it's drying to make sure that the edge stays razor sharp. Because of the paint, especially Oils. Oils just all kind of mingling together and they're beautiful. I love oil painting. It's actually my favorite type of traditional painting. But just know it's not like acrylics where there's plastic polymer toward stays where you put it. Boils, blend in, making every edge a soft edge until you go and correct it. So a majority of your Digital Art should probably be of soft, not lost edges, but soft edges where you can still see shapes, you can still see stuff. That's why I put this painting here. So you can see if you look at the hair, there's not really a lot of part edges only where the difference between the forehead in the, in the bangs are coming in. But every other edge for the hair is a software. You notice I didn't render the hair but you know what it is. Your mind fills in the blanks. You're making the viewer work for their meal. That's an old saying. And that's a good thing. You want them to be invested and connect the dots. You know what I mean? You know how we talked about the blue-sky phase. You see shapes in the clouds. It's the same thing and rendering, you want your edges to allow for interpretation from the viewer. You want them to be invested as well. So if you give them all the answers, That's cool I guess, but they're gonna look at your image and be like, oh yeah, get it. And then they're going to leave. But if you get some of these edges, if you lose some of the edges, if you smudge some of them, if you soften them up, if you get a few razor-sharp ones that your focal point, people are going to look and they're gonna be low. What's going on here? And my eyes drifting, but I always come back here. What do I always come back here? People that don't know the terminology may not know why, but they're always going to come up and be like, I love your brushwork is just something dynamic about it. That's what it is. You have your differences and they're all playing apart. So here's an actual trick and I want you to do it right now, okay? Got this image from I Start. And ironically I stopped right with eyes. But our eyes can't focus very well. Like mine really can't because I've glasses. But literally the human brain were very good at focusing on one thing. That's about it. Everything else gets fuzzy in the peripheral. No better way to, to show this example as to focus on one word, on this image. On the image, your focus on one word. And don't move your eyes. Don't dart your eyes around. Don't do anything. You like to really be line in on a word like so I'm going to look at the word love, the tear on this image. Then I'm just going to look at it. Now without moving your eyes at all. How many other words can you see? I can see to the left, it says pure. To the right of it. It says of I think above it, it says it, and it has the colon. And then like I see the M 0, M of moment underneath. That's about it. I can kinda see the word the, in the lower-left from the word love. Literally everything else. I can't tell what it says. Okay. You're focusing in your eye literally like rural like tractor beam focuses. So this image has a depth of field effect. But what that means is it's telling you where to focus. It's blurring out stuff that's unimportant. As the image goes up. The focus isn't there. It doesn't matter. Use this exact phenomenon for your painting. Like I told you in the very first deal, how the rules of optics and science and we'll laws of physics and our physical world in the rules that we follow on a day-to-day basis will help us as visual artists. It's not about fighting the system. You can do that with your message and your Art. But like use these laws that are around us, that make up the world around us and make your life easier, right? So use this knowledge. Hard edges are your in-focus word. What word do you want them to focus on? What object do you want them to focus on? And as you get further away from that, whether it's like left, right, up or down, or if it's literally further away. In regards to light distance for debt, we talked about atmospheric perspective in the values. That contrast is way less and it's way less focused. The further we get away from the viewer. Because it's going to add distance. We cannot focus. We can't laser-focused on the word love. If 10 mi away from us. We just can't our eyes can't do it. We're not able to do it. So Start with your heart edges and as you get further away from the focal points, soften them up until you get to the outskirts, lose the edges, just lose them. You're going to literally vignette or tunnel vision your viewer exactly where you need to look. Okay. So I wanted to show this. I'm actually still really, really proud of this painting. It was an edge control study. Literally I wanted to do edges. I wanted to look, this is actually of a statue and I wanted to render it in a way that didn't. It's not realistic because it's very stylized, but it follows the rules of physics and it follows the rules of the way that our eye works. So if you notice right here, this is my focal point. And the reason why we're going to talk about stacking contrasting elements here in just a second. But I have a razor sharp edge where this eye socket is the orbital bone, the very top part of here, razor-sharp. It doesn't do that in nature. Like it's a very smooth transition normally. But I wanted you to look here. I made this razor-sharp. I also made the structure of the bridge of the nose razor sharp. So you can also see the shadows here. Pretty razor-sharp, not as razor-sharp as this. But I also did a nice trick to where I put the darkest dark next to the lightest light while having it be a hard edge. So now you're double-dipping. You're really making sure you're using every tool available to make sure that you're getting focus. But then as you get away, if you're focusing right on the eyeball, it looks fairly believable, realistic. The whole piece that. But then you start going away from that focal area and you start looking at the beard. Beard is a mess. This is just paint strokes. It doesn't matter. Like I didn't try to render hair. I didn't try to render any of that stuff. You will get the top of the hat here. If you're looking here at the eyeball, then you let your I do that, that illusion of softening things out. This looks fairly soft. But if you look at it, it's a lot of hard brush strokes. So it's how we're playing with value as well. But you notice there's no real detail here. This is just like open paint strokes then are lost edges in the background here. You can still tell if you look really close, you can tell there's some blues or some purples, little bit of even like a greenish yellow that I put here just to try to have something hidden. But there's no edges, there's no, there's no harsh thing to look at. This is giving your eye a place to rest, a cloudy, nice Misty place to rest. Before you hop back into like razor-blade central over here. Then you can see even some of these smudges and things like that to lead your eye almost as an on-ramp to that rest area. Then you can take that to and fro almost like a bridge, right? I like to think of soft edges as a bridge that your viewer can literally walk across. Okay? So I just wanted to show this because I did this painting, but also I do think it shows that focal the phenomenon fairly well. Okay. So now let's talk about texture. So texture actually consists of edges. All of this is edges, but texture is something that feels different. I have a texture on my brush. It's very gritty. I have a texture and it looks like rocks. I have a texture brush and it looks like I'm now basically a texture is simply a way to think about adding details to something. So if you have a smooth brush, like an airbrush or a hard round brush, a soft round brush. A lot of detail. So I'm going to have a lot of texture. Doesn't mean there's no texture. It means that it's very limited. Okay, It's very smooth. That's a great place for an IDA rest because with smooth brushes, it's easier to make lost edges that make sense. There's no, if it's a smooth outer ring, there's no weird transition. But if you look at all these brush strokes here, all of these are very hard edges, and then you have within them some softer edges where it kind of gradients out. It turns a little gray, gets a little speckled. So you're, you're playing with the eyes, focus even within each individual brushstroke. Now that can be a lot to remember. But just remember at texture brush like this means detail. Doesn't matter what the detail is, just matters that it's detailed. So any amount of detail is going to attract attention because it consists of harder edges. There's a different sharper transition between even little nuances if there's a texture on the brush. Okay? So anything different? Anything detail gets attention. Anything the same or no detail is forgotten, it's lost. Okay, and that's a good thing. So just think Instead of with values, we have lightened dark colors, we have warm and cool texture detail or no detail. Do any detail on this item. If so, use a texture brush. If not, use a smooth brush. This is another landscape that I made. And primarily I used soft and kind of harder round edges to do a majority of probably 98% of his painting. The only place that I use texture brushes is gonna be here in the rocks, here in the tree trunk. And then sporadically up here, you're gonna see little, little of light canvas texture or like a gritty texture and noise texture somewhere. But a vast majority of this, and as you can see, the background looks really foggy. That's on purpose because now it's going to draw you in to see the rest of this. And you can literally tell, we're using the same rules that we use last time. On all of the previous lessons we did our shapes. Shapes are here. It's a lot of cylinders, It's a lot of rectangles and diagonals and stuff like that. Then we built our value. If something's closer to us, it's darker. As it goes further away, it gets lighter. That's how we got that effect of these little holes in the trees. Then now we're using edge control and texture to further emphasize where we want the viewer to look. Okay? Yeah, if you use an airbrush or something, you don't how you've probably heard if you're been in Digital Art for a little bit and you've taken other courses. They're going to tell you never paint with an airbrush. Never paint with an airbrush. Primarily, that's true. Everything's going to look washed out. Everything's gonna look a little, you know, there's nothing to look at really because it's all kind of like cemetery on there. But remember that in you can use it. Okay. A lot of this background, especially right here, was airbrushed because I didn't want an edge. I specifically made the choice not to have edges. And then I came back afterwards and put some brush strokes here of a lighter value to reinforce what these scraggly looking branches look like. Okay, so remember detail versus no detail. That's one of the big, big things. So renderer Wrap-Up, literally we're going to wrap this up. And then we're gonna do, I'm gonna show you a few Rendering examples using brushes that you're going to have in this course. I'm going to give these brushes to you for free. There in.ABR format or Adobe brush format. They work in Photoshop. They can also be used and stuff like critter, loop Studio Paint. I believe Procreate can bring in ABRs. I'm not sure about stuff like infinite pain or rage or things like that. But anything that allows Photoshop brushes should allow these to come in. Okay. So hopefully it's going to, It's going to enter a lottery problems as far as if you don't have brushes. Now you're going to have a set of a bunch of brushes and I'm going to show you what each of them do, talk about that and how they can be used for rendering. Then that's going to wrap that up. We're going to go to the Timelapse, okay, but let's review this first. So quick tips, combined edges and textures for maximum impact. If you have a hard edge and detailed textures with a lot of high contrast or the values, you have a very dark and very light. That's always going to be your focal point whether you like it or not, right? We talked about that before. Remember what you're doing, pace yourself and know if I have a hard edge and texture, odds are pretty good. People are going to want to look there, especially if I have software stuff around it. Okay. So yeah, really direct your viewers eye. I will say working with clients. Really just wanting, like if you just want likes on social media or when I impress your friends are like really feel more fulfilled with your artwork. Using these techniques is gonna be, it's going to, after awhile, it'll feel a little obvious. Almost like you're handholding the viewer. Making them look where you want them to look. That's good. You want to do that. Like be as obvious as possible. The worst thing in the world is to send something to a client and they're like, What am I looking at? That's not great. Be go more on the side of being too obvious. If you have a good rapport with a client after ten or 20 paintings, then you can maybe talk about, hey, let's make something that's more interpretive in nature. Maybe let's be less obvious, then you can kinda control that. But I will say if you're just making stuff to post online, if you're making stuff for your portfolio, be as obvious and intentional as possible. Literally point big arrows like look here, look there, look here by Bao, Bao. Like use your edges, use your texture. Make a neon sign pointing where you want it. So here's something that's, this could be a whole course in and of itself. But I want to discuss quickly the difference between believability And realism. Realism means like photo realism. How realistic does this look? We've made the joke about drawing every skin poor and every threat of hair. Like Yeah, we have millions of skin boars and we have millions of hairs and different fibers on the fingernails and stuff. Now, you can Don't get me wrong photo realism and learning how to do that is extraordinary. The dexterity needed for that is unbelievable, right? I'm super talented artists do that because they are really dedicated to a craft. I need to replicate this to where it is. You cannot distinguish it from reality. And that's super incredible. Eye on the other hand, light to go more for believability. I don't care if something looks realistic. I care if it looks believable. Can I see a character in this place? Does this look like a landscape? Can I explore this? Does the portrait kind of look like a person? Does it follow the rule of cast shadows? Does it follow the rule of warm and cool? Does it have it rendered well enough that I can see the form of the shape that is believability. I don't care about realism. Yeah, I just don't really, I'm not super interested in realism whenever I was really a student in Otellini. Yes, like I wanted realism. I wanted to, to look exactly what I saw. No mistaking, no interpretation. But now I think interpretation is more interesting. So if you follow the laws of physics, if you follow these focal points, your stuff's gonna be believable. Okay? And even using that depth of field effect, that makes stuff believable because that's how our eyes work. So all of this stuff basically goes to the old adage of Learn the rules first and then break them afterwards. Do that. If it looks good, it is good. We talked about that in the Ideation phase. We're a visual medium. If you're breaking rules for a reason and it drives interest in your piece, it is successful. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. If your intent is pure, and then people get it. If they understand it, if they're engaged, it's a success. If it looks good, it is good. So I will say something on the more detailed side of things. If you use photo textures to speed things up. We talked about this in the references and stuff like that. Please have the proper license to do so. So if you get, let's say a landscape pack from graphics studio or another example that we gave earlier. Be sure you get, like if you're making something for a client, makes sure that you have the commercial license. It's going to be more expensive. But that actually allows you to use some of those textures and those photos in ways as part of a commercial product. Because remember those photographers and the people making these Art packs. They are absolutely artists as well and they deserve to get paid. They deserve to be compensated for their work. In credit where credit's due, your textures wouldn't exist without them. So you owe them a very big debt of gratitude. Not only just on the money side of things, but on the artistic side of things as well. So please have the proper licenses if you if you have questions about that, contact the photographer that you would like to use their photo ID like, Hey, I'm interested in this. I'd like to use these textures. I think they're beautiful in some of my painting. Can I pay you to do that? Canine licensed this image in order to do that. And usually if photographers will be very you, uh, yes, absolutely. Whatever you want, and then you guys can negotiate it from there. Or even better, we all have one of these. You might even be watching this tutorial on a cell phone. So use that, take pictures of stuff and use those textures in your painting. Okay, so let's get painting. I'm gonna hop right over here right away. And let's just go, boom, cool. So I made this right here. I'm going to just show some techniques. So you're gonna get, in this course, you're gonna get something called my may sketch a day 2020 brushes. So yeah, these are three-year-old brushes, but they still have heavy hitters that I use in pretty much every single painting. And I'm gonna do a quick showcase on what these brushes do. Okay? So what I'm gonna get you that. So what this has, this has a classic hard round brush But if you see the edges taper off a little bit, they kinda smooth out the edges. It makes for a really nice painterly look. Classic soft round. As you can see, this is perfect for lost edges. If you're gonna kinda go through here different values and stuff like that to great way to make lost edges. Or if you press a little harder, you can still make an edge. But it is softer. Write it is a softer edge, but you can still see the specific brushstroke. I call this the best pencil ever. It is basically a very dry chalk brush. This is going to give you some really good texture. So let's say we had the, these edges right here. And then I really wanna do like showcase something. Let me get pure white. Now that texture really pops against those lost edges. You have that contrast. You have hard edges. On a lost edge, It's always going to get attention. Okay? Traditional pencil and on the same thing, It's just a different feel from a different amount of grid, a different amount of texture. You can use it for whatever you want. I just call them pencils because that's what they remind me of an ink pen. These are a little bit more razor blade, but they still have some grit to them. Okay. Rich pencil. Now you can start seeing these really squared heart edges, but they have speckling on the side. So they can actually like, if we do this, this is a very hard edge. But there's still a little bit of visual interests on where they're blending in these little spots. Water and oil. This is a brush that depending on the pressure you put, It's going to mix your background in your foreground colors. So if you've barely put any pressure on, it's gonna give you more of your It's going to give you more percentage of your background color. If you press pretty hard, you're gonna get a bigger percentage of a randomness of your foreground color. Okay, So let's say I want to change this to be like white, green. And then my background color here, I want it to be kind of a darker green. It adds for some really nice painterly. I use this quite a bit. Painterly looks because now you have a variety of edges. Just by doing four or five different brushstroke. You have some hard edges here, some lost edges and smooth edges, some software edges. So really FUN to play with those diagonal texture. This might be the favorite brush I've ever made that I use the thing all the time. It is literally a 45-degree angle. It looks pretty soft. But I will say as you zoom out and this is 100% view right down here, I know I'm blocking the percentage, but this is the actual size of this document. I didn't come in here. Use this as like speckled wine type stuff. But this is great for adding detail, kind of sketchy detail, or if you make it bigger. It's a really interesting brush to use to render out details, okay? Once again, it has that nice painterly look. You get a variety of edges within the edges. So it's edges on edges. Pastel works the same way, but it's a little crunchier. I guess. You can see that canvas texture on there. It's a little more sporadic on where it gives you pigment. But that can actually be pretty cool to blend in to other areas, right? To start introducing or lead the eye somewhere else. Let me hide myself here. So you can see the names of these graphite square. Same thing. Smoother texture though, but there is a little bit extra in their sharp charcoal. And this is very, very, very sharp texture. Okay? Like very, very, It's almost, it almost looks fake. But that's a good thing. Because let's say I have the nice kind of a lilac color here. I have some darker, lighter. You start getting that nice, really beautiful splattering grid. Okay. Oily chalk kinda works the same way as the water and oil You're still going to get that mix. But it's definitely going to be probably 95% your primary color with a little bit of tinge of your secondary color right there. But yeah, allows for some smooth blending, adjusting the one brush. Very nice. Mullins scribbles. This is after Craig Mullins, one of my Art idols. Basically, this is just going to give you visual interests. It looks like chaos. It looks like nothing. But whenever you start implementing value control and things like that. Now if I move that, you can see that it makes for some kind of painterly impasto, impressionistic sort of stuff. A lot of funny to use. Smudgy smudge or tin. So this is basically the diagonal texture brush flattened out. As you can see, it's still making that look, but it also mixes that soft pastel, which is not an instant dry watercolor. This is using, once again your foreground and background stuff. But if you like that look of a watercolor brush, if you see some of those, that color jitter right there, it gives a little bit of life and vibrancy to your brush stroke. Cloudy. Guess what? These are good for. Clouds. Notice. These are primarily air brushes with some soft edges inside, right, that are somewhat transparent. So this is great for making fog and smoke and things like that. I mean, like just at the click of a button, you can make some really cool looking stuff. Then a palette knife. I like palette knives and traditional Art. And I really liked palette knives and Digital Art because they can be harsh. And based on the amount of pressure, you have an angle that you're doing. You can sketch what this thing, if you wanted to, you can really start painting with this thing if you wanted to. The more pressure you put on, the less texture on the inside of the brush. Like it makes more silhouette shapes to block things out. But if you put less pressure, you start getting some of that grit in there, right? In the cool thing about every single one of these, you can use these in different brush mode. So let's say I go to the smudge tool and I go to, let's say diagonal texture. And I want to smudge this out. Now I'm smudging these things, right? Normal, normal mode right there, perfect. Sample, all layers. So the strength is at 99, let's say I'll put that down to 42 and then come over here. Now we're blurring out some edges. We can get the graphite square. We strength of the 86 smudge, this smudge V edges. And together, you can start to see how you can control your hard and soft edges just based on using the same brushes. But coming in with a blender tool, Smudge tool, a softening things up a little bit. I'm trying to think of something else. Oh, yes. Let me actually what I'm gonna do, let me bring in I'm gonna show you how to follow bathroom real fast. That's a very quick look at this. There are whole tutorials on how to do this. Some people could do a way more effectively than I can, but I'm gonna show you the way that I have found that it is the most it works the best for me, at least. Like load images. Yeah, I'm in pure ref right now. I am going to perfect. Okay. So I actually do have some licensed images that I bought the rights for. And these are some of the caves we're actually going to use some of these textures in the final painting. But you can see, okay, let's say I want to bring in a piece of this rock, okay. Now that let me yeah, I'll do it here just to have it be easier to look at the gradient. Fill me, get rid of that. Let me fill this with 50% gray. That way here. I can block out part around. I'm going to block out a shape. My split short suddenly hit B for brush. So let's say This right here. I want to implement some of this photo texture. Let's say that's a big rock structure that I'll see isn't that war? Look at my rock structure. You're like, What are you talking about? It doesn't look like anything. What I'm gonna do, I am going to use the value trick to make this work. So I'm going to go ahead. Actually let me bring in the image first and then we'll do the trick. So I'm just going to edit, I'm going to copy, or I'm going to right-click Copy, then I'm just going to hit Edit, Paste. Oh, actually won't do it. Something you can do a pure ref. 7. Lesson 5 - Timelapse (w/ narration) and Wrap-Up: Alright, welcome to the Timelapse, the sped-up version of the full render process that we talked about earlier. So this was over the course of two sessions and I kept making the comment or the joke, I guess in lesson number four about Rendering and Finalizing. That this would be a four to five hour long super hardcore painting session. Not really. So this was only about an hour and 40 min and it's sped up to be about 45 min worth right here. And just did it in two little sessions. One was about an hour and 15 min, and then the second one was about 30 ish minutes from there. But it's sped up to 250 per cent. So just for a little bit of clarity. So the first step that I did here is you'll see that I made a merged copy of my value where the first thing I'm doing is I'm getting rid of all of the light, the lines, things that look like lines. And there's a number of reasons for this. The first one is because lines just automatically make things look a little more cartoony or like illustrative. And if that's what you're going for, a fantastic. But I wanted this painting to be that concept Art, high fantasy painting, much like the one we were basing it off of. You know what I mean? So I wanted to go that route. But a big reason why I like to get rid of lines are lines are the very definition of hard edges. And how we talked before about we want to save our heart edges sparingly, like we just want to use them for focal points are points to get the viewer's attention. If there's these harsh lines everywhere and how the lines are just darker than everything surrounding it. Even like I would even consider these lines darker or more noticeable than even the shape silhouettes are. You know what I mean? In Shapes definitely reign supreme. Whenever you're making landscape painting. You want your shapes to read before, really all else. And while that's somewhat true here, I think the lines were really getting in the way. My first-order of business was just to really look at my value pass. I don't even care about color at this point. I just wanted to come in and make sure if it's shapes we're reading. Okay. And it's, it's an interesting, I don't know, it's an interesting like almost a dilemma. Because everybody has a part that they enjoy. More out of all the parts of making Art as part of your process. So like your preferred method, you might spend a lot of time on the color fades. Like really putting in color and trying to see what happens and what it looks like and stuff and that's completely valid. But like we talked before in the tutorial, I really like values. That's where I really, I feel like that's my strength. I really like to just do the thing I'm decent app though, that none of us like doing things that were not good. It's just not FUN. But this is the Fun part for me, is coming in and doing the, hey, if stuff is closer, it's darker. If it's further away, it's lighter. I think. It starts to read better. And I'm really, even while I'm painting and putting paint strokes down, I'm looking at that Navigator, that, that top right kinda smaller version of the painting to make sure that the shapes are reading even at a very small size. So I'm working in for K resolution. So that's what, what does that 38, 38, 40 by 21, 60, I think. Which is just a standard for K image like you would see on a television or something like that, or a computer monitor really. And I like working at that resolution quite a bit because it's not super huge. But it's also big enough to make like for K wallpapers for if you have mentees or patrons or whatever, It's a good way to make some stuff for them. A little bonus, Thanks for them. It's just a nice size to work with because you have that nice view port where you can do. I mean really anything is just a great aspect ratio of 16 by nine. So if this were printed out based on inches, it could be a 16th inch by nine inch print. Almost almost a two-to-one. Not quite, but pretty good ratio in you. Notice here I'm still not super specific about things. I'm just color picking darks or lights, and I'm using some some brushes. I think this is oh yeah. This is using the brush pack that you guys have access to. I made that decision as soon as I started recording because I was going to use my standard brushes, the one that I use all the time. I was like No, no, You know what? I'm gonna I'm gonna kick it old school. I'm going to use that 2020 brush pack that you guys are going to get. Still works like a charm. Love it, comes with your texture brushes and your diagonal texture brush is a game-changer. It is a winner through and through. Because you can carve out details. It gives a little bit of grit to it, but not so much that it's like harsh on the eye. It's great. Finding your, like your special brushes is very much an exciting part of being an artist because that's dictating your style. Do you enjoy using more angled brushes? Are harsher edge brushes, or it's good to use a little bit of everything. But you're going to find the stuff that you you really like and you're going to use it. And you're going to, the more you use it, the more you get better at it, just like anything, the more you do this stuff, easier it gets in. You may see we've even made some dramatic changes already. And we're only like 6 min into this Timelapse. And it's already meaning worth of maybe 15 minute mark, maybe 17 or 18 minute mark. And real-time. And big things are happening already. I start getting this idea that maybe what if there were, what if there were almost two main focal points? And I know I've probably told you guys not to do that. But it's like Do as I say, not as I do type of stuff. That top area which we wanted to have as a walkway for whatever reason. I had in my head that it didn't quite look like a place that you can go explore. As like, how do I really make it look like something that you can actually, this is part of the structure or part of the rocks that naturally made a walkway to go up top. And I decided, okay, well, let me put some light stuff up there, almost like a glowing crystal or glowing kinda campfire type thing that we could have up top there. Then what ended up happening is after I did that, I was like, Oh, that can replace that light ray. Remember how we had that light ray coming down diagonally earlier. Maybe instead of having a light ray to that big dramatic thing, we just have that topmost fantasy camp fire there to be our light in the middle of all the darks. But then we have the same thing on the floor, right there in the middle, you see where we still have the darker square right there, almost in the smack middle of the composition. That way we have two things to look at. And I thought that fit pretty well with the idea of, hey, this is a place that you want to explore. Why not put my money where my mouth is in, make things for you to look at. You know what I mean? So that way your eye travels around the image. Like, well, what's over there? Oh, what's over there? What's that? What does this it starts to really feel like a place you could go visit. Now something I do want to mention. And this, this whole video is going to be filled with quick tips. Think about like almost a, a Christmas present or a nice, a nice birthday present for you. Because these are all kinda pro tips. Just spit, fire it out to you. And hopefully they're gonna be one of those things that like whenever you see it, I'm whenever you see it being done and then you hear it. It connects and way beyond, wow, away. Yeah, I get it. So great example. Do you notice how as those brush strokes on the floor coming towards us like to the bottom of the canvas are very straight line looking. It's almost like we call it busy shape, where you like write the letter Z. But then the top of the Z is shorter than the middle of the Z, which is shorter than the tail of disease. That helps you guide your viewer into the painting. Another thing for landscapes, especially you'll also notice, I don't really have anything quote-unquote, blocking the entrance. It looks like it's a smooth walk, like yeah, you can see some little rocks and pebbles and the foreground most part, right? But it's not it's not blocking your path. You do not real. You don't want to have big shapes right in front of there unless you're doing it for a reason. Unless it's because you want the viewer to feel like they're peering through, maybe like a keyhole for something to where you just give them unlimited viewport. But here, since we really wanted to do the exploration thing, you want it to invite the viewer in. And you do that by keeping the bottom of your composition open. Literally keep it to where if I got a pencil or a pin in, started in like drew a line, like I was doing a maze from a activity book that I could draw a consistent line. And I think I started doing that here. Consistent line from that base. Yeah, I think I cleared that little gap there that way if you draw a line and it could follows a zigzag and stuff, it's going to take you right to that bright light hitting the floor. You want to make it an unobstructed path. Because you do, you want your viewer, or at least in my case, for my goal, I wanted my viewer feel like they could explore that they could come into the painting. And the more you practice that, the more you do it, the easier it gets. And really I do it subconsciously now beforehand. I mean, I went pro as an artist in 2019. And ever since then, I've made something artistic every day, every single day for four years. And whether it's a full painting or a sketch or study or whatever, can really, what that does is it like beat the good habits and you really notice the things that worked in the things that don't. But hey, now we're doing, now we're going into color. I'm like, Yeah, the vote Values read way better now. And I completely ditch what we had before completely because now we have a new value pass. And I'm still looking at the upper navigator. I can zoom in and out and stuff on the main workspace. But I'm really looking at the navigator and how does this work? I thought, oh, instead of the really big cools that we were used to, what if we had a green and orange vibe? And I start introducing those blues again into the outskirts automatically using a gradient map. And then on top of that gradient map, making a new layer as a Color Overlay. And just bringing in more saturated colors on top. It automatically does pretty much the hard work for us. And I'm using Let's see what brush oh yeah, big airbrush from one of my brush pack. But you could also use the soft round brush that's provided in the pack that you get as you're working on your, whether you consider it like a class assignment or just your landscape that you're working on right now. Feel free to use it and use that as an airbrush to airbrush some color ideas over top of a grading. You'll be really surprised at how much it speeds up your process. And I will say, I know, I'm going to probably get a lot of students sitting, but like you were able to do this in an hour-and-a-half? That's crazy. How do you work that fast? How can I work faster? Speed is something that comes with time. Whenever you start kind of firing on all cylinders and you realize what you're good at and where your strengths are, especially if you break up your the way you make Artwork, your process into repeatable steps. Once you get good at your favorite step, everything else kinda falls into place. And I mean, normally let's say this was 2019. I just went pro. I'm still learning some I'm always learning fundamentals, but I'm really still trying to get the good habits in here. This painting would have taken me about 7.5 to 8 h. I think the goal is or I've heard this from other pro artists for every year. You're diligent in your practicing in your year, being an active participant in your own farming. Meaning you're not just making paintings, just to make them, but you're really studying and trying to figure out the world around you. You're going to shave at least an hour off every year. One thing on your first year that would have taken you 5 h three years later, it'll take you 2 h, probably even less. Because you know how you are going to work and how you can set yourself up for success. Does that make sense? Yeah, it's, it's one of those things that speed, Don't worry about speed. It doesn't matter that I did this in merit. Doesn't matter whether it took me an hour-and-a-half or it took me 50 h. It's the same painting. You get to the end goal. Now I will say for white client work in professional work, but I know it's gonna be published everywhere. Yeah, I'm going to spend a minimum of probably 25 to 30 h. But it's 25 to 30 h working at this pace, working at trying to just nail down values quick. That way I can spend 30 of those 35 h just rendering, just making it look exactly how the client wants it or exactly how I want it. This one was a little more loosey-goosey. And that's fine though, because I, a lot of times I like these paintings better than a lot of highly rendered, super realistic. Like I think these are more interesting Because the viewer of your Art gets to be a participant in it. They get to see it, make it to discover it with you. Because you're not giving them all the answers. You're not using photo textures like it's funny we did that little sub lesson on how to photo texture. We don't use any photo bashing here. I was just having so much one painting this once we got once we got the colors in and then I was like, alright, time to render. I just started grabbing brushes and we're going to go. So something on the right-hand side, if you look at my layers, what I ended up doing is I do very, very rudimentary basic layer Management. I'm not a big layers guy. I don't I don't use layers. What I think it's because I was trained to paint professionally or traditionally. I don't think of it like layers. I'm like, Oh, now this is my this is my pass. You know what I mean? Like this as my, you do work in layers and traditional Art with blazing and things like that. But really it's just, you use a layer to maybe correct something. Or if you have a big dramatic change you're going to make. That's really the only times I use layers. And I, yeah, I like having simple layers, but what I did is everything that came before this light color value merge paths. I put it in its own folder. Just to get it out of my fix. I just call it setup. I do that every time all of my clients that I've ever worked with, if they get the layered PSD file or Photoshop file. If they get it, they always have a setup folder. I wouldn't all this stuff, but it's the sketch, It's all of the problem-solving to get to this step. So then what I did is whenever I got to a point, I was like, okay, we can really start pressing this, this to render and make a merged layer. Anytime I know I'm ready for the next step, I merge it. That way it's non-destructive, meaning I can always delete the new layer. If I'm working in, something's not working right, and I want to do over button. I can just delete the layer and then make another merged copy of the layer I had before and then start working from there. It's super-helpful because I always have a backup. But that allows me and gives me the competent to continue just to do ideas the whole time. You'll notice I'm using different brushes and trying to see what looks good and what's, What's this. And right now we're doing the kind of that background look. I think I darken it or something here in a minute just to kinda see what it looks like. And then do the undo button a whole lot. I always think it's more interesting even if I make a mistake to paint over it rather than to undo. Because with Undo, you're getting rid of something. And I found out with painting, even digital painting, the more you have on there as far as brushstrokes or decisions that you're making, the more interesting it is to look at just saves all that stuff. You know what I mean? So why not use it? Why not use those brush strokes? Now if, if, even if it's just texture, That's what that's very a purpose. You know what I mean? So it's visual interests in feel free to keep it. I mean, for a majority of my paintings, professional or personal, I don't use the undo button all that much. I just think it's a waste because it feels like I'm getting rid of decisions and it's like, I don't know, I don't I don't want to get rid of anything. I want it to be part of that process. Like right here I add some blue crystal and I did that purpley fuchsia one down at the lower right. Unlike those. Okay. But I think I end up during that top blue one or maybe even just getting rid of it entirely. I really can't remember. But it's one of those things. The reason why I got rid of, I think the top one or at least toned it down a lot is as I would zoom out, it was catching a lot of attention. And I was like, I don't know if this is working right. I don't know. I don't want it to be its own focal point. Like it's one super bright thing in the middle of a really dark area. And you just throw ideas out there and if it doesn't work, just get rid of it. Like no harm, no foul. You're always doing every step of this process. So I know even it could seem very static. Like, Oh, I'm gonna do the Ideation phase. Then I'm going to put down my Shapes. Then I'm gonna put down my value. Then I'm going to put down my toddler Then I'm going to render I I would say that, yeah, it can seem pretty static. But at a certain point, you're going to start realizing that you're doing every step, during every step. Does that make sense? So right now basically, I'm just doing the Ideation phase. What I'm doing it in full color and, and values with different shapes. You see what I mean? I'm, I'm still exploring in figuring things out. By merging. I already know what my darks look like. Already know what my lights look like. Let me just color pick from there. Use that. And then if it doesn't work, then I can modify it. You know what I mean? Like never be afraid just to go for it. Just put some stuff on the canvas and see what happens. Yeah, fame here is where I kinda, oh yeah, just get rid of it. I had the idea that we had mushrooms in that first landscape. I thought with this one, what if we had like little crystals are flowers that glowed or something, you know what I mean? Like something similar that you can kinda call back to that original painting, but something on its own. Something a little differently. Your further into this area. Yeah. Overall, I think right here I'm redefining some of the silhouette shapes. I'm trying to get a sharper edge brush. It's a good old diagonal texture brush. I'm telling you it is a winner. I'm coming in and I'm just adding some light where that light is hitting and just coming in and yacc kind of silhouette in the structure of the rocks and things like that. Here's another thing that I want to emphasize because I feel like we haven't emphasized enough yet. If it looks good, it is good. Right? We talked about the rule of cool. Like sometimes if things just look cool, that's reason enough to put it in. So technically, if I were to be like a stickler in a hoity-toity, like, Oh, well, technically the light on the floor there would not be brighter than the light source that's providing the light. You know what I mean? Like we've all been while we haven't all been Art School, but we hear or see on TV or something that sort of Art Instructor stuff. And technically that's correct. Technically, you can not have a a light like some light on a floor or something casting white. Nothing can be brighter than the thing producing the light itself. That is a rule, that is a rule of physics. But you notice, I don't care. That line, that light focal area in the middle of the composition is almost pure white. And nothing else in this composition is really even close to that. Maybe that little fire thing, the little magic fire up top, has a little bit of white in it. Like, why is that thing the brightest thing? Why is that middle part? Why not? It looks cool. That would be my professional answer. But does it look cool? Mission accomplished. So don't get so hung up in rules. And well, it says here, and because the rocks are another good example, these rocks, I'm just starting to put some bounce light on the bottom of these rocks just to give them a little more form. Now, are they following the exact laws of nature to where for every however many feet light dissipates and therefore it wouldn't be that orange because things further what know, like if you're so caught up and hung up on that, either one of two things. Number one, you actually lack confidence. I know that's going to maybe upset and Russell's of feathers. But if you're that worried about things being exactly like mathematically or physically correct. You lack confidence as an image maker because you're too worried that it doesn't quote unquote will look right. I hope part of this course, even if just briefly Shapes you out of that thought process, it doesn't matter if it looks right or wrong. If it looks good. It is good. I'm saying I can tell you. If you ask other pros, they will tell you the same thing if you work with a professional client. And they're kind of wishy-washy about what they want. I go into default mode of how can I make this thing look cool? Doesn't have to look real, doesn't have to look a certain special way. The only thing I have in my mind is like, alright, How can the salt pool? And then I make that in the next, show it. In 92% of the time, the feedback I get is like, wow, that's cool. Right? So that just means my shapes are on point and my colors work well together and I'm doing my warm versus cool. And that's why that metal part of this piece works really well. Because we have a big thing of orange right next to the thing of that nice cyan, ice blue. That doesn't make sense necessarily, but it looks cool. Does that make sense like books? I like how it looks. That's the reason as an artist, that's all the reason you need. Okay, So another thing that looks cool is timed out really well. What I just did, I made a new layer. I got a soft round brush and I am on that. If you check that layer blending mode, it's on Color Dodge. What Color Dodge does is it saturates the contours of your values. But it does it with a very saturated color. It does some math to where, oh, now I'm checking my values again. Of course, after I do any Color Dodge or any like quote unquote special effect brush. I always check to see to make sure if stuff reads well. So now I'm bringing out the old piece and I'm comparing and you can see how they're common. They look similar, but they don't look exactly the same, and that's the point. So Color Dodge gives you a little bit of vibrant pop of color that works really well in your mid tones. But use it very sparingly, very, very sparingly. Use it around your height is like highlight, going into your mid tones. And you can see how it added some nice, almost like a light bloom effect. But then I don't touch it anymore. I do not touch it. All right. Then I just continue going. I'm like, Okay, I need these backgrounds to look a little more put together. In regards to making my shapes connect to one another. That's always a great Rendering tip, is like if you don't really know what to do when you render, make everything connect to everything else. Like to see how I'm closing some shapes and I'm making some lines and boxes, but then they kinda go and merge into the other stuff in the foreground. I like everything to be what I consider connected. Just because it allows the viewer's eye places to rest. If everything is broken up and everything's ease, small slivers of brush strokes and things like that. It can get really chaotic. So it's based on that focal idea. To our focal point is gonna be the area that has the Color Dodge and the big light bloom and really bombastic, like beautiful color mixing and all that stuff. Everything else can take a backseat. So the best way to get rid of a lot of that extra noise. Remember, like we talked about, is match those values to the stuff around it and use a softer brush. Use a smaller brush or like maybe softer brush or a lighter touch. Then just kinda make it less abrasive. Make it less contrast. And it's going to go, it's gonna go well for you, it's going to really start to draw the viewer's eye or make sure that the viewer's eye is drawn to where you want it to go. Which is the most important thing. Yeah. Now I'm just I'm continuing to do that like under under lighting. The good rule about lighting and light. You may be asking, well, how did you know to use an orange over there and maybe a little orange over in the middle part on the undercarriage of the bigger shape on the top level. Or how are you known what color to pick? Basically? And a very easy rule to remember. It sounds obvious, and that's because it is obvious. But it's something that we don't necessarily think about as its own thing. If something is facing a white source, it picks up part of the light source. Alright? The version of this that I always say is, if it, is, if it's facing the light, it gets the light. That's why the reason why we use the orange color on the underbelly of that path in the middle that's going up Is that correlates those two things as being on the same plane. The only reason that would pick up orange light on the bottom is because it's nearly orange light on the ground. Does that make sense? So we're connecting those two ideas using the similarity, that is the orange. But basically even if we went back into values, it's just that under part is lighter than the middle is dark. It's your darker area because it's not really getting light from anywhere. And then the topmost part is gonna be a little more blue because it's getting that nice, weird fantasy fireplace thing. That was really it. If base is the light, if if looking at the light, it gets the light. Now here, I'm just vignetting a little more. I tried it with a cloud brush and I hated how it looks. I was like, oh no. So just got the soft round brush. Then went around literally the edges of the canvas in a circular motion and darken everything up. Just darken it up. I did want to start focusing a little more on details on the foreground here. So you can see me get the hard round brush income and just start carving out some more shapes. And that's just to give that impression of rocks. It's to give the impression of some rebel on the floor or just some sort of texture. And notice I don't even mean texture in regards to like a texture brush, it's just texture. It's just, there is noise here, there are brush strokes. There was something to look at. Remember we talked about detail versus no detail. Right now. I'm just going and making tiny little adjustments in detail. I'm color picking. I'm using the value slider. Here. I wanted to darken that area a little bit. I think I'm going a little too much fair. I think I back off of it a little too. That will re I carve back in with some lighter so because I really wanted that topmost fireplace thing to pop a little more. So the best way to do it, you can only get so bright instead of we're pretty close to pure white. A little bit of that. So you can't go brighter than pure white. So the secret is instead of making that brighter, make the stuff around it darker. You know what I'm eating? Remember it's all relative, It's all in context. And that's just how you have to think. You have a limited capacity for light and dark. I'm just in general. So if something is pretty light, can you want it to be lighter? Don't worry really about making it lighter. Just worried about making this stuff around it dark. There's a comedian, his name is Mitch head bird. He's been passed away for awhile. But he had a really great job. And he was like, I could get my teeth widened or I can just go get a tan. And I was like, that's a perfect example of that idea of like just change this stuff around it and you're gonna get the result regardless. Yeah, I guess the technical term for that would be almost like working in negative space. Think about the stuff around it, not about the thing. But there's so many different ways. That's all it makes us so much fine in the real power of this. And I know we have about 6 min left in the video, so I'll start wrapping up the whole course of hopefully this makes things a little easier because it's training you to break up your own process into repeatable, actionable steps. The more you can get it down to like a menu. It's almost a recipe. It's like you've got to preheat the oven. You gotta prep the this, you gotta do that. You got to mix those and then you put it in for this amount of time and then it's done. That's almost exactly what you do with Art. You have to come up with the idea. You have to make sure it reads well. So hopefully this whole Ideation and Shapes vendor to value, then go to color. Then with all of that being established, start on your file. You'll notice this looks way different, way different than even at the start of this Timelapse video. Like if you would show that first little image and then this image and their weight, okay, That must have taken to infinity hours of difference. But every decision we made leading up to this point, goddess here, every decision we had to figure out that that middle area had to go back in the background a little more. So we had to adjust the value. Just the way to composition work. The middle, the middle area with the white light right there. Now it doesn't have a thing in the middle of a box or a person or whatever. But it's because it doesn't need one. It's about the environment. It's not about whatever is there in the middle. You can make drastic changes like that and it's fine because the changes are informed You are making these decisions and these changes because you did your due diligence in you did the steps beforehand to know what was working in what was not working. That's, that's the secret guys. I know this is a landscape course, but this works for portraits. This works for your imaginary character design. It doesn't matter if you have your structure that you start to follow and it works for you, use it. This one's mine. I do this for every painting I ever do. I start with a sketch and then I put in the values first and then I add some color things, and then we render it done, right? But that's after years of painting every single day. That's not an exaggeration. In fact, in 2020, I did to paintings a day. I think I had nearly 700 paintings. And that's not a Bragg. It's just to make up for lost time. I went to Art School and then dropped out and then didn't do Art. I didn't even pick up a pencil for 12 years. But then got the passion back. I wanted to go forward. One of the GoPro got to go pro, like getting hired for a studio or a freelancer in a studio gig. Then I was like, Oh, I have 12 years to make up for. So I just peddled with the metal, went for it. You don't have to do that. Trust me, I would recommend not doing that by the way. But it's just like we talked about before. It's just the time under pressure. It's the time spent, is the knowledge earned. And that's what log comes down to is just use this and use methods like this to build confidence. You can make good images. I know it, know it for a fact or else you wouldn't be buying tutorials to learn how to make good image. You know what I mean? Like, you got to where it counts. So the real thing is just finding your endurance, finding the way that your eyes work, finding the way that your taste works, and repeatable steps to get you where you need to go. The more you do it, the faster it gets, the easier it gets, the better it yet, I have more FUN making Art now than I ever did, and I loved it before. Now it's like it's on a whole other level. Like my wife and kids are the only thing that the trumpet but barely. What I mean, this is I'm a lifer now. Because anything that I can think of, I can start solving and start figuring out, oh, check this out. So I wanted some of the stalactites closer like, but then I couldn't quite figure it out. It didn't quite look right. So I got the soft brush and I wanted to do a depth of field day. Like, oh, if it looks blurry up front, like it's blurred out, like it's out-of-focus. And I liked the idea, but then I thought it was too big. I was looking at the navigator. I was like, That looks a little a little too big in. So what's funny is I end up going back and making it smaller. Just a second. I think I did it and I was like, Oh, this looks cool. And I looked at the navigator and I was like now let's do big. But I just wanted to further emphasize that depth of field effect. I mean, we're on our last minute and half of this, but it's been an absolute pleasure to be able to share this process with you. And I'm super humbled that you allowed me to be part of your creative process. And I cannot wait to see what you make with this. Just all, all bets are off now, had the balls in your core, you can go have a blast doing this, but yeah, so I resize it and then a blur out a little bit or oh, yeah, I clean it up a little so that way it's still there but it's Not Taken attention, it's not doing all that. Because remember, our eyes can only focus on so much so we want to vignette with the viewer. But that is that it's pretty much it guys, but yeah, it's been it's been a blast and appreciate you all very, very much. Hopefully this gives you some FUN stuff to look at it now you know, you know what time it is, it is time to sign this bad boy. Another pro tip, make an image, a transparent background image of your signature. That way you can just resize it and put along everything. Real, real helpful. Lower the opacity so it doesn't grab attention. I zoom out, lowered a little more. And then that is done. I'm gonna hit tab to show it frayed here. But then that's where that images and let me link it back over here. Boom, there we are. That's it guys. There's so many goodies, extra stuff that you can find in the course, but I appreciate you all very much and go make cool Art will see you next time. Take care. Bye-bye. You'll make landscapes. You've got this. You're a pro already. I know it. All right guys. Take it easy. 8. Outro: That is a Rap. Congratulations, you made it to the end of the course. I hope you found a lot of these tips and tricks helpful. Really, what it's all about is just making sure you're setting yourself up for success early. So you start off with your Ideation shapes. You get your mood board, kind of get in the zone and you start drafting the very bare bones of Boyden idea is then whenever you figure that part out, you move over to your values. Make sure that you can get those lights and darks in there to be able to read the piece as well as possible before moving on to color. Applying your color, making sure it's really nailing that mood down. And then moving on to your final render, once you're happy with all the choices you made from there. Now, like I said, we did this with a landscape painting for this painting, but this actually works for all types of papers. So feel free to use this method. And the best part is once you get this method down, you can modify it, change it. Remember this method now belongs to you. Do whatever makes you happiest, do whatever gets you the results that you want. And I cannot wait to see which you make with this. But my name is West Gardner. I haven't been your instructor. It's been a pleasure. You can go check me out at Western Gardner dot Art. I have all sorts of links there. So if you want to say hi or kinda show me what you're working on, I'd love to hear from you and I can't wait to see what you make with all of these cool landscape Techniques will see you next time. Bye