What Painting Do I Look Like

We had a great question in one of our livestreams recently that I thought deserved its ain video. The artist was having problem with their work looking as well much similar cartoons and wanted a more realistic look. This reminded me so much of when I started painting, it was a problem I had and I had the exact same question.

While in that location are a lot of things that tin can contribute to this, I observe there to exist three things you can adapt to avoid this problem.

#1 – Stop trying to include also many elements in a single painting when yous beginning painting.

If I could go back and give myself some communication, this would exist a huge one in correcting the cartoon look. I was then focused on creating a large painting with eighty different things going on that I wasn't focusing on the things that mattered more in achieving my goal of a more than realistic painting. I was completely ignoring my contrast and values.

When starting off you will be more successful if y'all can focus on 1 matter at a time. In this case, I would say paint a single flamingo on this sheet, or a tiger's face, or a landscape. I was as well new to painting to manage to get this many small elements into a unmarried painting AND focus on values, lighting and everything else needed to make the realistic painting I wanted. By the mode…why is the flamingo bigger than the tiger?

Now that I've painted and fatigued several close-ups of flamingos and tigers in a photorealistic style, I have the understanding I would demand to tackle a concept like this with so many in i piece. I now know where particular is important and where lighting and shading are what needs to exist focused on.

#2 Creating Depth

The next problem I had was creating depth in my piece of work. This was a problem in ALL of my paintings at the fourth dimension. Everything in the back was just every bit detailed as what was in the foreground and my values were nearly ever the same. I had no concept of softening outlines or adjusting lighting and values to make things look softer in the distance. The birds, rocks, and plants in the distance should not be near as detailed equally what is up close. If we wait at the painting with the scene inside the mirror, notice how much more than detail I take on the items on the shelf and how everything fades out the farther back into the scene you lot look? This is something you tin can practise to help avoid scenes looking too cartoony.

#3 Values

If you want your work to look like a cartoon, so, by all ways, pigment the subject all one color. Tiger…pigment it all one shade of orangish. Flamingo? All 1 flat shade of pink obviously! Better withal, become through and outline your work to make it even more cartoonish!

Cartoons are one perfect color and outlined. Real life is not. Wait at the flamingo in that start painting, then in the one below. No outline. No one shade of pinkish. There are And so many colors in this bird. Pinks, oranges, grays, reds.

The first few years that I was painting, I seemed to believe that more detail meant more realistic. It doesn't. The biggest factors in making your piece of work look more than realistic are your lighting and shadows and your subject being drawn correctly. If I were to brand changes in how I worked when I was younger, I would accept spent more time focusing on smaller studies. The faces of animals instead of a whole scene filled with a grouping of them. It's not that you won't go back and paint total scenes, but I think that information technology'southward easier to tackle if y'all first with the close ups then work your way back to larger scenes.

I was brought in to fix a mural many years ago. The first artist had painted the subjects simply used all midtones. No lights, no darks. Everything was rubber and midrange. Safe and midrange tones are flat. The only matter I had to exercise to gear up the complaint that the showtime creative person painted everything too cartoony was to accept my airbrush and add deep shadows and some highlights on the subjects. The first artist hadn't actually done anything wrong…but she was calling her work, what I would have considered an underpainting, finished. It needed shadows and highlights! That one adjustment fabricated the client happy.