Craig Mullins: Revising Golongrias Picture
03/25/02 @954 | Arno | comments (17)
Ok this time I will describe how I took someone else's drawing and developed it a little further. The original image here was done by Golongria and it struck me as something that had potential. The hair and pose overlooking the ocean were appealing to me: the image told a story.

My first idea was to lower the eye level so the viewer is more on the same level as the character. This allows us to see into the distance as I imagine the character to be doing. The eye level in the original pic is much too low. If we accept the viewer as looking down on this plane, the horizon would be well off the top of the picture. Also, the silhouette becomes much stronger because the contrast between the figure and the background is higher. There is also contrast in materials, as the textural ground and figure contrast with the relative flatness of the sky. If I had kept the original higher eye level the horizon would have been lost off the top of the picture.

Tarzan by Craig Mullins

I did a rough line sketch in a mask channel and then put a flat color in the background and a flat color in the foreground on a separate layer. This way I could add and subtract from the silhouette easily. I find that this additive and subtractive approach is very helpful in giving variety to your shapes, and can be used not only in drawing outlines, but in general painting as well. But down a big shape, and cut away at it.

The first rule- get rid of the white of the paper fast and work out the big areas as soon as you can. Beginners (I did this too!) like to start at one corner and finish as they march across the image. Don't think of things as objects that need to be separated logically. What would you really see? Look at the leg and ground- the edge is lost where they share the same value and color. This is another mistake beginning painters make- edges and boundaries where the eye would see none. I see it a lot in 3-d work as well.

At night look at some trees where they meet the sky. Because the light level is low, the edge is softer than it would be in the daytime. The eye has a harder time differentiating two values in lower light. So in the shadow side of an object, the edges tend to be a little softer. This is probably the most important determining factor of edge quality. Look at a good head painting: the shadow side has softer transitions. The softest edges area probably where the hair meets the background in shadow. In places you might loose that edge entirely! Most beginners think "there's the hair, and there is the background, there has to be a separation there somewhere." This is where painting from life would help. I did this image from my head, but I could not have without a lot of life drawing and painting.

There are other considerations about edges as well. There is a hierarchy of edges in every image. You play up the sharpness of some edges and some fall away. Yes it is a matter of contrast, but also a matter of manipulating the viewer, and part describing materials. The spear is sharp and precisely drawn: this by contrast gives the figure a softer appearance, feeling more like flesh. The hair is softer still. If you were rendering a face, you could play up the differences between hair, soft fatty tissue, bonier areas, metal implants, etc.

Another consideration is to play up the difference between form and cast shadows. Since the lighting is diffuse, or from a large source, as opposed to a point source, this is not really an issue, and if you don't know what I am talking about, we will get to that subject in a later column!

In many Frazetta paintings the feeling of action and tension is accentuated by hiding the far arm or leg behind the body. This is good example of what is left out is more effective than what is included.

Also in the interest of simplicity I only included the most important landmarks of the body, the rib cage and then the arm and shoulder on top of that. The body bends below the ribcage. The weight of the body is being transferred through the shoulder to the arm and out to the hand on the spear. This is causing the arm and shoulder to ride up and around the ribcage. It is important to show this to give the body a feeling of weight, and in this case, a feeling of fatigue.That the hair is stringy and matted also helps here.

I work a lot with silhouettes and if you look at the figure and the ground, they function together as one. I saw the body emerging out of the ground as one shape, and as you can see the edge between the leg and the ground is totally lost.

I had originally planned to play up the texture in the body to contrast with the flatness of the sky, but I ran out of time (I loose interest when the problem is solved in my head, or in this case, about an hour). The hazy sky is like a summer afternoon thunderstorm, with the humidity in the air exaggerating the atmospheric perspective. This gives the feeling of a large open space, and makes the figure seem more alone in a large universe. I will talk more about atmospheric perspective in a later column. The ocean in the lower right is out of focus, which is actually an error, but it didn't bother my eye too much. Those rocks are a lot closer than the sharp edge of the clouds in the upper left, and they should both be in focus. I don't play with depth of field much, as it is a characteristic of bad model photography or bad lighting that requires the lens of a camera to be opened up for a given film speed. There are much better ways to show depth.

The low level of lighting dictates a similarity in the basic color and contrast of materials. The wooden shaft of the spear, the metallic head, skin, hair etc. are all the same color and value, or nearly. As I said before, I did differentiate them with edge quality, but if there was more light on the subject, you would see large differences in the treatment of materials. The edges would also sharpen up as well. That's about it for now, I know this is a sketchy pic to gab about this much, but I hope you have gotten something out of this ramble. I will have a plan in the future and keep each column to a specific subject, and not all over the map as I have done here. Maybe with that degree of focus I can communicate better.

I have to find my audience here, I am not sure that people understand what I am talking about always, so let's have some feedback if people feel I am too technical or to simple. What would people like to hear? Technical stuff or drawing and painting stuff? If you know me, you know I have an opinion on that one :)

Craig Mullins  / www.goodbrush.com