Original subtitles

Alright recording. Good morning everyone.

I'm gonna mute everyone.

Oh, sorry about that. You made me re-login to Zoom.

So this this weekend I made, or this past weekend I made a cat tree thing.

Let me see if I have another picture.

Yeah, I don't know. Fun weekend project. I decided to make one instead of buy one because

I wanted one that would go from like floor to ceiling and I have like 10 foot tall ceilings

in my place. But yeah, I'm working on it next. I feel like get rope, wrap it around the whole thing

so they can climb up and then I get like little carpet or something to put on each of these.

Yeah, that's what I've been doing.

I have two cats, Kiki and Oriya.

Oh, that's a good point. Something you can take apart and wash. Yeah.

Yeah, I love Sedona. I have been making a list of like

all the hikes and stuff that I want to do. So far I haven't done any. I did one hike.

I did a couple of bike rides. But yeah, there's some really cool places that I want to check out.

So yeah, I've got my list and yeah, I love it here. It's really, really cool town.

Yeah, you just, I don't know, I feel very relaxed and being outside of the major city.

I feel like I'm on vacation all the time because you just go outside and just like

beautiful mountains and everything. So yeah, very, very happy here.

You guys have fun with the homework.

It's really pretty.

Nice.

Yeah, sometimes like I give like estimates on my time, but like, I know it's like, sometimes

it's your first time like doing this kind of study or something. So it might take longer

the first couple times, but then once you get the hang of it, then you can go faster. This is awesome.

Beautiful.

Cool.

Nice studies. That's a cool way to combine.

Great.

Look at that. So much better than the photo.

I had a hard time getting reference figures.

Yeah, you might just want to like start.

You know, when you're like randomly on on the internet, start a folder of like figures and stuff.

This is a nice minute.

Awesome.

Great.

Thank you.

Like these feel like, like pretty natural to you like the way you like do some line drawing and then like some rough painting behind it.

So I don't know if that's a direction that you want to like, keep going but I think there's something really cool and nice.

Nice, nice.

That's

really nice.

You guys are doing great work.

Cool.

Wow, lots of studies.

Screw it.

Awesome.

Yeah, amazing work everyone.

Really great.

I think once you start doing ton of studies you care a lot less about picking the right ref because you know you'll be doing another one right after.

Yeah, that's a good point don't get like too attached.

Like one of the projects I'm on right now I had to do.

I had to do whatever I wanted.

So instead of just doing one I did. I did one, I did three sketches, like, like loose kind of like painterly sketches like different compositions different like writings and reflections and stuff like that.

And then I took my two favorite ones and tighten them up a little bit.

So they asked me for one painting but I did three, so then they have like three options so I'm not like putting everything into just one image.

Can we solve the distance perspective.

Yeah, I mean that's that's a lot of things if you want like atmosphere perspective like you put in like the layers of atmosphere so the values, get closer together as they go into space.

Usually, when I'm doing these quick studies, like I'll look at something like this, and then my perspective block out will be something like this it's not perfect exact perspective but it gives the impression of things receding into space.

I'm just getting smaller as they go back.

And that's kind of like how I deal with perspective with these like quicker paintings.

That's getting overwhelmed with the amount of stuff I wanted to paint so I pick random been a bit burnt out from

compost composting lately.

Just keep them, keep them quick and

we can lose.

Any tips for strong composition.

For these one hour works, or just a lot of practice and it'll come with time.

Same with a couple values.

tips with with value.

So, composing your shapes more interesting compositions horizon line like lower maybe in that one third or higher net top third. So you can see like something like this, putting that horizon line down.

It's something more, more cinematic more epic.

So if the horizon lines are in the middle then it tends to be boring and flat.

And then you can use this one third rule for the amount of the values that you're using. So, if you have an equal amount of

shadow in your composition like this, this is the total amount of shadow value total amount of light value.

That's not going to be as interesting as if you have maybe more shadow value, and then you.

And then your lights are like a smaller portion of that.

Or it could be inverse, you know.

So that's something you can keep in mind. And then, you know, composing your shapes so you have a balance.

So that learned from Edgar Paine's book.

Maybe you have a big shape over here.

And then a couple smaller shapes over here.

So it creates, it creates a balance hierarchy of shapes so you, you, it leads your eye from a big shape to a small shape it leads your eye back into space, and through your composition.

Using these shapes as like, like arrows ways to lead your eye. So, composing like clouds in the sky, like point your eye around.

You can see everything goes back to like these, these simple, these simple values that we do.

We don't do like a full on composition class like we'll talk about it but if you want like more of this.

You can do check out my business one, one class we do a whole, whole lesson on this kind of stuff.

It's really challenging to keep it loose in my perfectionism gives me a hard time.

Um, maybe go back to really force yourself to stick to those time to studies.

And then you mean you run out of time if you start getting into detail so it's a good way to like force yourself.

Rise of mine. Yeah. How do you adjust composition when you do plain hair and your pain was helpful by the way.

I'm doing like plain air stuff like what I'm doing. Yeah, like when I'm outside painting I'm not.

I'm not trying to be like too creative or anything and basically just painting exactly what I see I treat it as like a way for me to study, and to just like, learn from real life.

The most I do is kind of like re.

Maybe change the shape

to be a bit more pleasing of objects within my frame or move stuff around slightly. I don't make like huge adjustments.

So I just keep these kind of things in mind.

I try to like when I'm outside painting I try to like pick something that's already like a nice composition.

Opposite problem I paint loose I need to focus on detail.

Well this week we're getting into like the longer studies and like brush work and stuff like that so I think you'll, you'll get some ideas. This week.

How do you move into a full painting.

Let's, I'll show again in the demo this week, how to move from the black and white sketch to a to a full painting, but I think you'll see in the past demos that I've done, I've always.

I've started them different ways but some I've got started with black and white. And then I go, go from there.

Sometimes main focus later than other thing.

We felt this because most darker is.

It's also more being focused. Sorry for bad English.

I think you're talking about this.

Yeah, you could, you could switch this to being.

It doesn't matter if it's if it's dark or light.

If you want to compose a composition that's like mostly mostly whites.

Then you just instead of your figure being like light over dark maybe your figures, dark over light.

You know,

so it's just about.

It's just about not having like the same amount, like an equal amount of light and dark, you know, you can just create something more impactful if you.

If you favor one or the other.

Awesome.

So, we five.

You'll see how much like edges and brush work.

You can relate to, to the detail that we're adding pounds you think detail you're like okay I got to get in like render out every little, little thing in the painting, but with edges and brushwork combination of these you can you can leave the eye

to the other and create areas of focus and detail, so you're not rendering everything you're just like putting that information in a specific area where you want the viewer to look.

You'll be amazed at like how like one sharp edge and like a loose painting will make it feel

finished and much more detailed than it actually is. So it's just about like kind of creating this, this illusion.

So, edges, lost versus hard edges.

A lot of things are in the talking about is to do with taste like an artist tastes like what we

what we're attracted to a sense of appeal.

You know, and I can talk mostly to, like, what is appealing to me.

For me as an artist I like to have a variety of both of these.

If you have a painting of all all kind of like lots of soft and lost edges. It'll feel

not as not as bold it'll feel like you're not making like strong choices. And then if you have a painting that's all hard edges.

It can feel

like you don't sometimes you don't know where the focus is or it's hard to know where,

where you're drawing the eye as much. There's obviously,

there's, there's a lot of like gray area and there's artists who do paintings are fully hard edges and they're like incredible.

Like, like for example, Alberto is like, it's like paintings that are all like pencil tool and hard edges

everywhere like they're, they're insane.

So yeah, let's look at, look at some stuff.

So I've gone through I've picked paintings that are really appealing to me.

In terms of hard and hard and lost edges.

So, what we can do, what I encourage you to do is pick, pick artists, pick paintings that are really appealing to you.

Things that you, you like the brush work for.

So for me this one. What I love was how the sky here.

We have this lost edge up here.

We've got some like lost edges here and here. And what that does is it tells that tells us tells the viewer that these buildings up here are not, they're, they're not as important as the stuff going on down here.

Down here we get some like harder, sharper edges.

We get more, more edges down here, get some lost edges over here. So that tells us that this is where we should be looking.

Like you can see over here, all like soft edges.

So that, that helps us to draw our eye here, if we just, like you can see, like I put,

like some harder edges up there like that, that ruins the painting it doesn't have the same feeling as this, you know, because when this, when you've got like harder edges up here then now we're looking up here, we're not focused on here as much.

So keep that in mind when you're painting, like what what areas can you put a lost edge to like push things back and to make something else feel more important in your piece.

This one is cool because painting a tree with leaves everywhere you could paint leaves everywhere.

But what this artist, Joseph, decided to do was have lost edges in some areas.

And then bring out some of the leaves in other areas.

And that tells us that this part is more important than this part.

It draws our eye into this area.

So I love the background how this is so, so lost all these lost edges back here.

And this is awesome.

The boot.

Big. So big.

I love this one, a lot of lost ideas like the iris is just kind of hinting at some stuff in the foreground.

Lost ideas lost ideas. And then we get, we get tight in this area we get get some hard edges in here.

So that keeps our focus here.

Another interesting thing about this piece is the cloud.

Like that negative space and the cause where we see the sky coming through.

It's right behind our focal area here so like if this cloud went off to the side like this or something, then it would draw our eye out of the composition.

But by containing it in this area we keep the focus right here.

Even with hard round brush you can make lost edges, it's about values. Yes, exactly.

I love a lot of these paintings, there's

that feeling of graphic hard edge quality versus like very like painterly stuff.

That's something I always tried to achieve in my paintings.

So yeah, like loose brushstrokes, hard edge graphic.

Same with this one I love like this like really soft watercolor versus these, these tighter, more intricate lines and harder edges.

And then this lost edge here, like that helps the composition of this so much because if this was just hard edge, right like that, it might draw our eye out of the composition.

And then when we put a soft edge in there. It pulls our eye and tells us that this is more important.

Any, any questions on edges.

There are a lot of different artists you can look at who treat edges differently so it's really got to pick.

Brush work.

I'm going to use like different brushes and stuff just because I've been using these forever but I'm like ash said like you could do this all with like the normal round brush.

By placing your values closer together.

You know you create

create a hard edge like that.

Or you can create a softer edge by placing values that are closer together, and you get like a transition.

Yeah, this, this might be a good, you know, this would be a good week for you to.

I haven't downloaded any new brushes or really made many in years, but because I've just kind of gotten used to this, but would be cool to go out and like download some new like brushes that other people have made and see what see what kind of new, new techniques

and things I could get from it.

Yeah, something you can think about is any unlike the artwork that you're analyzing, you got like dry brushes where you see.

So you, you mix up your pain and you don't have a lot of water in it.

So you get that that brush stroke with the bristles you see the bristles of the brush watercolor the kind of stuff you like softer edges oil you can get.

Yes.

Just people are calling me, tell them to

oil you get you mix up some, a few colors together and you can you don't mix them perfectly so you can get

really like wet and paint.

Very graphic hard edge stuff.

You know, maybe use the lasso tool more.

I'm using rectangle brush.

I'm using a lot of hard edge hard edge things.

I think the spider verse stuff we do is very hard edge lasso tool pencil tool.

Just to give you a little bit of a thought so limiting your brushes also less thing to think about I guess. Yeah, that's a good, that's a good point, glad you brought that up like, like here.

This is like way more brushes than I would want over here, like if it was perfect scenario I probably have like five brushes that I use.

All these brushes I don't know like 3040 brushes because I'm on a variety of projects. Some are more painterly some are more graphic.

So I've kind of made brushes for each of these projects, and

so I have to just like keep them all here just like makes things easier. And there's like overlap between them all too so it's not like I can just have like a folder of my spider verse brushes folder of my wet up brushes folder of my like impetus brushes.

They all kind of like overlap so I end up having like this big, big list.

But I do recommend fewer brushes, the better like every time I see one that I don't really use I just get rid of it in my list.

Because, yeah, you want your process to be like a streamline and like less like thinking about like oh I have to pick like the perfect brush for this, you just want to be like be painting and not not worry about that.

Do you typically pick just one or two types of painterly texture brushes per painting to go with your hard round, or do you mix a lot of different ones, the same painting.

Yeah, typically, we'll just use a couple,

a couple brushes.

I'll do like 90% of my painting with like,

be like 90% of my opinion with like this brush on this brush.

I'll do like the normal, normal round brush.

And then there'll be like a case like this brush I used for Windows for for Spider Man, I might like

use some of that, but typically I tried to just just use

a few.

So, why brush work.

I think a sign of a like truly like masterful incredible artists is someone who can take a bunch of detail a bunch of information and know how to simplify it and represent that information in a few brushstrokes.

Like, that's why Richard Schmidt, in my opinion so so great because he knows he's like okay I'm going to detail out the focal area like the face and hands and all the important information here.

So I'm telling the viewer that we need to look here, like, I don't know what's back here.

Looks like another chair maybe there's some stuff on the walls but he's deciding to represent that in fewer brushstrokes and just represent like, like maybe something, something hanging on the wall here and just like a simple brushstroke

representing all this detail. You can tell this chair has like a pattern on it but he's not like going in and like painting every little, every little thing he's just representing it.

Same with these boats, and all these people standing here like you could go in and render out like everyone's like hand perfectly holding everything, but that's not what's important about this piece.

Like the beauty in this piece, I feel like is the way he represents.

He captures the feeling of this, of this tree with some simple brushstrokes that show like the form of this, of like a grouping of leaves rather than painting every little leaf.

It's like if you're doing this painting, you paint these leaves in these groupings.

You're representing those within, within brushstrokes. Here we're painting,

painting this stuff back here.

Just representing,

rather than having paint every little detail everywhere.

I love like just this thick like caked on paint. It's pretty awesome.

There are three very different uses of brushwork and

what's cool about this one is like it feels like a palette knife, kind of like carved away to get like these, these textures and stuff in there and then we've got these like really soft edges back here.

I don't know, just, just really pretty, like what if, what if you had a portfolio of work that was kind of like inspired by, by this kind of stuff, that could be, that could be really interesting.

Like if you just look at the difference between like the brushwork in this compared to this like they're both, I think equally as beautiful but here it's kind of like the same or similar refinement to everything.

And I'm like a similar size brushstroke, but here you've got like a huge giant

huge giant brushstroke.

And then you've got like, like, really thick paint laid on top.

And then, then you've got like this smudge, like get some of these like lost edges here and there.

There's so much like variety and an interest in that.

And amateurs like us get so overwhelmed with a scene that we forget to ask ourselves exactly what drew us to the scene in the first place, I've noticed that's where my hard edges should be.

Yeah.

Good point.

Like if, for example, if I was going to paint a scene like this, and I had like limited time.

You have to make a choice you'd be like, okay, the scene is going to be about these people so I'm going to put my hard edges tighter brushstrokes in here, and then back here is going to be more like loose maybe, maybe more like this kind of stuff

back here.

So you're saving time you're telling the viewer that this is what is most important.

So yeah, that's a good point, ask yourself.

What's, what's the focal point in your piece why, and keep in mind the things that drew you to that piece and make sure you're representing that.

Do art directors and studios and then entertainment industry like seeing this kind of super loose painterly work in junior artists portfolio.

I mean,

yeah, like, there'll be projects that I won't get hired on because my stuff is too impressionistic and like my color choices are, you know, certain tastes.

So,

I, I probably wouldn't get hired on like,

like a minions movie or something, maybe, even though I love, I love the minions.

But maybe I wouldn't be like their first choice for something like that.

Because my like painterly stuff and I'm more like traditional background comes in handy, or lends itself more towards something like, like spider verse puss in boots.

I don't know.

The more like less traditional CG looking stuff, then I get, I get asked to work on all of those projects.

So it's just what you like. I mean, you could totally start a painting like this and then just refine it in a way.

So yeah, to answer your question.

Some, some art directors will will really appreciate this kind of stuff and really like this, because they, they know that by looking at this they're like, Oh, Zach can we can give him an idea or prompt he can do a bunch of loose painterly quick exploratory

sketches.

They're really like creative and interesting and we're gonna get a bunch of ideas.

So they will they'll see the benefit in that. And like in my portfolio I have like really tight stuff as well. So,

yeah.

And for me if I'm going to hire someone I want to see that they can do these like loose color sketches, and that they can do like slightly tighter stuff.

That means that I can, I can give them. I can give them the color script to work on I can give them color keys down the road I can give them designs.

Zach may I know the name of artists who paint the castle in the previous image.

Um, yeah, this is one of my favorite artists he has a lot of like super epic.

Just like really cool stuff

into the minion verse.

Yeah, I think, um, you know, you have to do what you enjoy like if you like super refined art.

Then, you know, do that and you'll get, you'll get hired for that if you do it really well. If you like really loose stuff, then you'll get, you'll get hired for that.

Like I get hired to work on, like, the early concept phases of a lot of movies because by looking at my art, it looks like that I can just pump out a bunch of like crazy ideas quickly.

So,

I do a lot of that kind of stuff.

Did you work on your team and tutorials.

No, they didn't. They didn't ask me.

So hurt that movie looks like incredible like I just keep like watching the trailers looks so cool.

I feel like it took like a lot of a lot of the team from spider verse and Mitchell's versus the machines on went on to work on that movie.

So it's cool to see like they took what they learned from spider verse and Mitchell's, and then they just pushed it like even further, so things are like really painterly and like really impressionistic.

Yeah, I'm, I'm so excited for that movie.

Sounds like we can't and shouldn't please everyone. Yeah, don't try to please everyone. Like we should pick a style aesthetic and stick to it.

And if it's a good quality, we will get hired. Yeah.

I think if you want to sum it up.

Is it, is it a good idea to have a wide range of aesthetics and once per for the portfolio, or just stick with one.

You feel is most you.

Yeah, I think

it's better to

pick one that's most you, because that will someone looking at your work they will see.

They'll be able to sense that they'll be like, Oh, this person's like really passionate about like, you know, like this like traditional kind of feeling like brushstrokey like it fits with their story it fits with their life experiences this like grunge.

You know, just as an example, you know, so you want to stay true to yourself, I would say.

It's always better to be a master at one thing, then average, or not very good at like a lot of things.

So like I would, I would rather pick someone to work with who pick them because they are like super passionate and really really good at this one thing and they fit this project really well.

Yeah.

Yeah, good point if you make movies for everyone, make stuff for none.

I heard a good quote other days.

You can't do everything.

But you can do anything.

I think I said that right, so you can you can pick one thing and dedicate your life to that one thing and become a master and go down in history as this like being super good at this one thing.

You just like tunnel vision focus on this one thing.

You can't, you can't be good at like, like a ton of things like I always, always get people coming out of college they're like, I've got character design environment designs color keys storyboards 3d modeling animation.

Like well, you're not good at any of these things. So you won't get hired anywhere. You have to meditate on it, think about it for a while. Like what do you put yourself doing and five 10 years.

And then, if it's, you know, storyboarding, then hyper focus on storyboarding become the best at that so you get hired for that.

Consider doing portfolio reviews.

Yeah, I just don't know the best way to do that.

You know a class that like 140 people sign up for I can't spend time with like every single person, you know, so

I've got to kind of.

Yeah, I'll consider it. I'll try to figure that out.

Um, yes I just grabbed some of my stuff to kind of show like, you know, I'm inspired by like these different artists and like some are like very

okay, lasso tool.

I'm inspired by like those to Bernaghi like big brushstrokes and then those sharp edges.

Some are more like Richard Schmidt inspired but I am taking like some of those like sharp edges from from other artists.

Yeah, same with this one like leading leaning more into like the painterly kind of like loose impressionistic feeling.

This is kind of like taking like that graphic hard edge style mixing it with someone like Richard Schmidt, but only using the rectangle brush.

So, painting it like I would a Richard Schmidt piece but using very using a more graphic brush.

And then stuff like this that's a little bit more refined so I am refining these shapes more but if you look within the textures are very like loose and painterly and impressionistic, but I know where I need to like tighten things down and refine things.

Same with this just, you know, a lot of like loose painterly brushstrokes within these textures, but then I add in some like really graphic hard edge straight straights so I get, I get that mix between like graphic and painterly.

What shapes would you give to reconcile a painterly painting style and stylized characters.

Also, what difference would it do if it's a figure focus painting.

If you just integrate the characters into environment shot

style stylized characters.

You know I would just paint those stylized shapes with the same brushstrokes and energy, as you would do the rest of the environment. The minute you tell yourself, like okay I painted the environment now I'm going to put the characters into it.

When you do that, you've kind of failed, because now your brain is switching over to like rendering characters.

And what you want to do is trick yourself, trick your brain into just painting light and shadow for the entire piece, not being like okay now I'm going to paint the sky.

I'm going to paint this cloud.

Now I'm going to paint this figure, because each time you tell yourself that you're going to paint this different object. Once you tell yourself you painted an object then a different part of your brain switches over and you're like, okay I'm going to paint

the cup on the table. Now I know cups are like kind of reflective this material I know the cup shape is like this.

That's how you fail at painting you need to just tell yourself.

This is just light hitting this.

This object, or this, the shape.

How do you know when a concept or piece is finished I feel like sometimes one can work and work correct things. How do you know when to stop.

Yeah, it's a question I get a lot I'm not 100% sure how to answer it.

It does come with time.

I think this week's homework and lesson will help a lot with that because you, you know, to look at a piece.

And for me it's like I do a painting I try to capture the atmosphere the light.

The important elements in the piece.

And then I do that like as quickly as possible.

And then I go in and I refine the focal areas a little bit.

And then, and then it's I call it done.

And then I can always like, if I want to like tighten more things up I can always like do more whatever but I try to like finish it up as as quick as possible and move on to the next one.

When you're working with a lot of colors and textures, how do you keep your strokes from looking money.

Couple things can make things look muddy. One is not a strong value structure.

So,

if we get rid of the darks.

This might start to feel money in here, because I don't have a separation.

So you first thing I would do is look at your values.

The second thing you can do is

say, back here.

You've got all these different kind of colors mixing together.

You got all this stuff back here.

And then what I would do is, you haven't made any like serious choices. It's all kind of like, I think it's kind of this color mixing with this color. So what you should do is take a couple of these and be like okay that's like this kind of like purpley

color so I'm going to put down that bold brushstroke, and this is more of that red.

So now you have some of those like painterly brush brushstrokes things like layering on top of each other but then you've made a couple really bold choices where you've picked the exact color and you've put it down.

You can see that's what I'm doing throughout this whole piece.

So I'm kind of mixing together here but then I put down a couple like really bold brushstrokes colors mixing together.

But then I put down a couple like bold,

deliberate colors.

So it's that that variety.

You have any advice for complimenting or finalizing cleaning up a piece.

I know you often start rough, but in the piece above the rocks and the mountain base I see a lot of refinement.

After you do a rough, do you redo the piece with layer masks or separate foreground middle ground background.

I'll start loose.

I'll like blocking like the main shapes. And then, yeah, I might like cut out this mountain shape, or keep it as like a selection or something so that I can keep that shape refined and very like hard edge.

Sometimes for myself I find it hard to use that process as I am working on different layers, I paint with the mindset of one, one layer and then it gets messy again.

Yeah, so what you can do.

Yeah, the shape.

Yeah.

The shape.

The shape.

So, like say that's your sketch.

I'm going to do

And then you go back to this meeting okay I want to refine that shape over so you select it.

And you can bring back some of those hard edges.

That's usually how I work so I started loose pressure mistake move things around.

But then when I want to refine those edges I just go back to my grayscale sketch select something, refine them.

Yeah, that's, that's, that's the workaround for instead of using like lots of layers and putting every object on the layer and stuff like that.

So that process works for me.

But yeah do you know as you paint more you'll figure out your own kind of process and whatever, feel free to, you know, take this.

I feel like I always get confused and mixed up with colors like the relationship is always a little messed up, making a painting look muddy. In the end, when the painting is muddy it's hard to wrap it up and properly render it.

I reckon I need to work more on studying these specific things really should be between color and light.

Yeah, sounds like if you if you if you're sketching, and things are are just getting muddy.

And then, you know, go back to week, week two and three where we're doing like the bold graphic statement with like two or three values, and then we're adding colors, a limited color palette so start with very limited colors, do those kind of studies for

really focus on bold, strong, light and shadows.

And then, as you go start to incorporate more and more colors.

And you'll just naturally kind of like build up a way to like make these relationships work. And really, don't be afraid to just copy master paintings palettes for for a while.

What makes this shot epic.

There's a couple things scale like you have like the depth of the mountains going back into space, you feel that atmosphere, the scale like these vehicles, you, you get a sense of, like, wide,

wide shot with epic view and then you've got these small vehicles.

So that's a sense of scale.

So that's probably

why you get that that feeling.

So for homework, and do to 30 minute master studies so these are a bit longer.

These you can focus on the brushwork more so pick artists who you.

You really love their, their edge quality, their brush words, and you want to try to replicate that a little bit.

So you might, you might have to make a brush.

Or you can, you could do it with, you know, very simple brush it's up to you.

And then do to 40 to 60 minute photo studies.

But you are going to take what you've learned from those master studies, the brushwork of them and paint the photos in the way that the master artists would paint them.

So, and I'll demo that.

I put down the notes here pick one artist and copy their brushwork. So when you do these. I think it's probably best if you just pick one artist for now.

Feel free to make brushes download some to help you.

So let's see.

This is a demo I did last time.

So I had this photo that I thought was nice. And then I tried to paint it and like the tabernag you kind of

brushy style.

This week.

I want to try a Jeremy Mann kind of inspired piece.

I mean I love.

I love his brushwork and how you get the sense of like a full like epic city back here but he, it's all represented with just like the simple shapes and very painterly.

And his sense of scale as well. Very, very nice.

Yeah, I grabbed some photos.

I can decide which one I liked the best.

Cool.

I think I'll do this one because it's, you know, a little bit less typical you know this is just how many times we've seen like a dark silhouette I'm like a foggy night street, you know, like that's easy to paint.

Maybe I'll challenge myself.

Like an interesting perspective.

I think that's something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not you're thinking my perspective is off.

Yeah.

I'm going to do it myself.

abstract

windows.

Yeah, designing something that might be interesting.

Yeah.

I'm just going to put all this kind of on one layer here so now.

I can space.

How much do you want to be like looking up at this.

Okay, so this gives me like a good reference point for my, my perspective now.

Yeah.

I'm working with her create, and it's difficult for me to be efficient and blocking out choosing brushes colors.

Yeah, I don't use procreate.

Yeah, sorry I can't can't help you there.

Tell when you're doing time studies.

I mean, you use Photoshop or maybe, maybe you don't have a computer you're just using your iPad.

I know I probably use a lot of Photoshop like little tricks and things so maybe you can find some tricks that work for you and procreate, I'm not sure.

And then I'm going to establish my perspective, because

this is a little bit.

And since the perspective is such an important part of this piece I want to make sure I don't want to make sure I'm fairly accurate.

I'm lining this up.

Okay.

So what I'm doing now to establish this, the perspective going back into space I'm looking at these lines inside this window, making sure those feel

fairly accurate.

So that'll be my perspective.

And then sometimes you. What I do is I just put like a color on it so I kind of remember, like I've done paintings before where I like merge the perspective lines into the painting like at the end, and then I have to like, go back and like, select, select the different

colors and paint it out, which is annoying.

I'm going to use a little bit of a school's and as a Photoshop or a procreate one. Get a keypad if you don't have one helps changing brush size.

Interesting.

Okay.

Okay.

So I'm going to go back into space.

Okay.

Okay.

Repeat how I created the perspective lines. Yeah.

So what I did was picked up crazy color.

I'm going to draw a bunch of lines and then distort them into the perspective of the scene.

So I'm just following like these lines that I established.

Because as I go in and I start painting more details and stuff I'm going to want to refer back to these perspective lines so everything is generally pointing to that point in space.

And I'll just duplicate that.

Man you.

I'll make a different color.

And then I'll do the next set of lines.

I can just turn them on and off, as I need them.

So we have some lines coming out towards us. Let's, these are going to follow this perspective.

I'm just drawing this perspective.

Okay.

Yes, nice coming.

Excuse me.

I have another sign coming out here.

This is Vanessa for but during a production, how long do you usually take on a piece.

Yeah, totally depends.

I can't really.

Usually you get an idea if it's, you know, if they want exploratory sketches.

And then they, they'll tell you they'll be like, Oh, you get us some sketches.

By midweek, and then you know you've got a couple days to do research and do a bunch of loose sketches. So those can be like black and whites maybe a couple, couple color ideas.

Very loose and quick.

So you can do.

You could time yourself every hour you're going to do a new sketch or something.

And then that time, by the time you get into the meeting.

You'll have like 10 ideas or something like that.

Or like finished, like this that paintings.

It could range anywhere between like, you've got a day to do a piece to two days, usually, usually I give myself one or two days to do a piece depending on like how complicated the subject is, how much I'm struggling with it.

Like I'll never spend like a week on a painting.

Usually, because I'd rather show. I'd rather come in with like a few.

But there are artists who do.

I'll never spend a week on my painting.

I'm not worried too much about, like your time, your timing as long as you're not like super super slow, you're going to be fine. And I'm, I'm known as being like the fast and efficient.

So usually I'm like one of the faster people on a project.

If you're like half as fast as me then you're, you're still great.

If you're faster than me then great take my job.

Okay.

Yeah, if you find, if you think that you're very slow maybe that's something you can work on, you know, just doing those time studies work on your efficiency.

Because if you are efficient, halfway good, easy to work with.

Then you'll always have tons of work, always have tons of jobs.

I'm working as a colorist now but I feel like I need to be more efficient with both time and painting style usually get caught up in details.

Yeah, I think just being aware of it, setting a timer for yourself might might be helpful.

I feel like is it true that if your value group is really flat. We can have as many groups as we like HDR.

If there's a lot of texture we start running out of value, for example, for Roya versus.

Oh yeah, like already groups.

Let me try to understand your question. Is it true that our value group is really flat, we can have as many groups as we like.

There's a lot of texture we start running out of value.

I'm not sure I fully understand what you're saying.

I'll say this,

like Sorolla versus this versus this artist.

It's a different kind of look it's a different style, neither one is correct or wrong.

So I think that's a choice you need to make going into a painting like do you want it to be more high key Do you want to lift the dark values.

This is just a choice that you make.

Sorry if you want to explain that question more happy to

If you have a lot of texture you can't have a lot of value range. No. And if you have little texture, can you have a wider value range.

I don't, I don't think so you could have like,

I think there's a ton of texture in here.

It's like a nice like contrast and texture tons of texture versus more like simple.

Yeah.

We show me a bit like box. Yeah, I'll try to set something up so we can meet up.

I'll come. I'll come back to LA, probably for that.

What's a good benchmark for knowing you are industry ready.

I think when you start, start to get attention from studios.

That's when you know you're ready.

If you're fast enough good enough, aside from presenting the best work in portfolio unit someone gets a job. How can you be prepared for switching from being at home student painter to meeting industry standard deadline.

There's such a wide variety of artists at every at every studio, like,

like I remember before I got a job I was like, I had the same worries as like oh my, I'm going to be too slow.

And it's gonna be people who are like busting out like tons of paintings every week and I'm not gonna be able to keep up and then then I'm going to get fired.

I'm not going to be good enough once I get in.

Any decent studio that hires you they know that this is your first job, they're gonna like help you help you.

I'm not that at all like when I got my first job. I realized I was one of the fastest people they're one of the most efficient, because I like that was my worry so I was like trying to be as quick as I could be.

Yeah, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't let that worry, unless you're like it takes it takes you like weeks to do like one piece, then that's, that's way too slow, you need to be able to like do a piece to be like, do a finished painting in a day.

You know, and then if it's a more detailed painting you spend a couple days on it.

When the light side is flat. Can we have bounce light in the shadow.

Before I start to compete. Okay.

Yeah, I think I know what you mean.

Usually you want to pick one or the other.

You don't want to have

texture detail and the lights and the shadows same amount everywhere.

You need to ask yourself is this painting about what's in the shadows, or is it about what's happening in the lights.

So then, with your camera you focus on

are you exposed for the shadows or you expose for the lights.

And you make that choice, and then you paint according to that. So if it's exposed for the shadow.

Then your detail, your texture is in the shadows and you can your shadows are heightened a little bit you see what's in the shadow and the lights get like blown out and simplified.

And opposite. If you are focused on the light.

Alright, you ready for this trick.

All these lights here, I'm just gonna

I'm just gonna

Let's make these. And distort them a little bit. Get that realism in there, like not everything

is perfect. How are you swapping between lasso and geometric?

This is something that became muscle memory for me. So on your keyboard, you have normal

lasso. Shift, you can add to that. Alt or Option, you could subtract from that. To get

the geometric lasso, you hit Alt, which is the negative, you click. Okay, nevermind.

You've got your normal lasso, you hit Shift, you click, you lift up on Shift, and then

you click Alt. And then you get the geometric lasso. And then you just hit Alt and then

you lift up and click and you get the negative. It's hard to explain because it's so just

like muscle memory that I just have it down. But yeah, play around with the Shift Alt and

it'll take you a minute to get the hang of it. But if this is a tool you use a lot, then

like use the hotkeys. All right, so I've got my base figured out. Now let's go into color.

I know someone asked, how do you go from black and white to color?

Okay, so I'm going to go with white. Okay, so I'm going to go with black. Okay, so I'm

going to go with white. Okay, so I'm going to go with white. Okay, so I'm going to go

with white. First, I'm going to take this piece, group the values a bit, I'm going to

put a color into this. So I'm looking at this, generally a paint neutral warm, I want to

start out with a neutral warm so that way I can like add in the more times light is

hitting things it's going to cool down. So I'm going to make a nice color to start with.

And then from here, you can do a variety of different things. Sometimes I'll do like a

soft light with a color jitter. You get like a variety of colors in here.

Okay, so I'm going to go with white. Okay, so I'm going to go with white. Okay, so I'm

going to do is I'm going to paint a texture. I'm going to just color pick some of these

colors from these.

Okay, so I'm going to bring it in.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Now I've got like a nice kind of palette to work on.

Now I can go back to this and be like, okay, I want to select the darks. Select some of

these dark areas, fill the windows and

I'm not going to paint every single window perfectly because I want to create areas of

focus.

Since this piece is so dark, I'm going to change the background color.

It's easier to see.

Now let's do the whites.

I'm keeping in mind his lost edges and brush strips and all of that.

As I'm doing this, it is a balancing act. You're trying to paint how you naturally would

paint a good piece, but then also keep in mind the brushwork.

It is difficult.

Focus high contrast.

I'm going to go back over light characters here.

Oh, yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

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Setting up the graphic statement and then using the painterly textures within looks so sick, almost like a cheat code.

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Yeah, this is like kind of like my go to like process for just like when I need to create something.

Also, I have a good reference here. So I'm not really making stuff up. I just made it like a little bit more epic. I zoomed out a little bit more.

So I'm not like changing too much.

Do you show us the value statement again when you have a chance seems Neo and Morpheus are standing inside the building.

Is that what it's from? I don't know what this is from. I think I was looking at like,

No, I don't think it is but I got off on like, like a tangent.

Some like 90s photography or something.

This Japanese.

Yeah.

Would you change the approach or a scene with even more lighting like overcast?

I could.

I think I am going to push this stuff up here into more atmosphere.

Yeah, that someone asked about the value. There's there's the value statement.

Okay, what am I doing?

Warm light.

Warm light.

It's pretty, pretty interesting because it's mostly a cool.

You know, I'm not going to get into the details. I'm going to go back and forth.

I'm going to go back and forth.

I'm going to go back and forth.

I'm going to go back and forth.

I'm going to go back and forth.

I'm going to go back and forth.

I'm going to go back and forth.

I'm going to go back and forth.

Now it's about going in and refining some of these things.

I'm going to go back and forth.

I'm going to go back and forth.

I'm going to go back and forth.

I'm going to go back and forth.

I'm going to go back and forth.

I'm going to go back and forth.

The cool thing is if you paint one,

you can copy and paste it.

Okay.

Let's see.

I'm not aware of that.

Okay.

I'm going to go back and forth.

I'm going to go back and forth.

I'm going to go back and forth.

This reflection,

some of that.

Okay.

Let's see.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

So much class.

Glad to be part of it.

Make sure to catch up.

Cool. Yeah.

Wrapping up past time anyways.

Oh, Jeremy man.

Cool.

Yeah, I don't, I haven't.

I haven't seen it.

Julian.

It's crazy how slow and thoughtful.

Was for each brush stroke.

And really doesn't always mean fast.

Yeah, that's a really good point.

You know,

Forgot.

I think I'm going to go back to the other side of the room.

I think there's some artists who will.

In traditional painters, they'll have a painting at one end of their

room.

And before every brush stroke, they will go back.

To the other side of the room.

Think about the next brush stroke.

Walk all the way across the room and then.

Put that brush stroke there.

I was like.

And if I had no, no time limit, I would probably.

I would probably just do it.

Attach like a stick to my stylist. That's like five feet long.

I guess it's a similar thing to like zooming out.

Yeah, cool.

So do you have to try to do a couple of these for homework?

You'll learn.

Some things about these artists that you're following.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'll just leave it at that.

Yeah.

Yeah. Or no,

some of my friends have said they speed it up like one and a half times.

So, cause I know I'm a slow talker.

Oh,

I'll add those.

All of the characters in there.

I'll add them to the script.

But yeah, thank you guys so much.

Thank you guys.

Thank you.

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