Tips & Techniques: Grizzled Outcasts and Value

I was all set to talk about "Krallenhorde Wantons" this week, and as I did I began to segue back to "Grizzled Outcasts," which segue turned into another post fully of the technical sort. I'll try to break it down so non-painters can make sense of it.

One thing from last week, which was kind of important but was left out...two things, actually. Thing One: Apart from having a light background, I also wanted a misty or foggy look. So while there's some distant foliage in the background, to help sell this I went about first graying out the entire palette, so that the overall color saturation is fairly low. Next, I staggered the characters in terms of distance from the viewer. Doing so in fog means that things further from you become grayer, and also lose their value range, collapsing to the value of the fog itself. This was somewhat evident in the study, but was something I worked at more for the painting.

 

A scan of my actual value scale, paint-stained and everything

In painting, one might work with a value scale either in their head or actually a physical value scale nearby. I eyeball a lot, but also have two printed out. One of them is my standard go-to and is actually broken into 6 steps: 0, 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100% where 0 is white and 100 is black. When needed, I'll hold it next to colors mixed on my palette, or next to an item being painted, to ensure I'm staying close to my grayscale/value study done in the preparatory phase.

Here's the image in grayscale / value, for reference

So, recognizing that the nearest figure should have the areas of darkest shadow, I basically moved up the scale a bit for each receding figure, such that if the closest character has a black point of about 90%, the next further character registers a darkest value of about 80%, and the outermost two have black points of about 70% of black. Simple enough of a formula. The problem was I painted it back-to-front to create good overlaps. This means that the first figure I painted was the leftmost. When you try to paint a figure whose darkest shadows are only about 70% black, it can play with your head without context. I probably swiped some darker pigment into the shadows of the foreground figures to reassure myself that it would look ok as I proceeded forward, but I don't remember. That's what I'd recommend, anyway. Nevertheless, I recall it being a leap of faith to paint the two back figures with that limited value range--asian hair is often raven black, after all! This is part of where having a definite grayscale formula in mind or next to you is very helpful. As I moved forward, each figure helped to set the context for the next one, and I think it worked out ok. It was a matter of pure restraint to keep from darkening the shadows more than I did.

Even in Photoshop 7, this is a piece of cake vs. real paint

I should pause and note that what I'm describing here is simply a piece of cake, digitally. Digitally I might've just painted each figure with a full, normal value and color range, since that's easiest to do--you're not compensating for value, which can come out wrong. You're also not constantly keeping your color saturation level in mind while you're painting. I would have just painted everything fairly normally. The background would've had its gray tone across the entire digital canvas. Each figure would be its own layer, and using perhaps a Levels and a Saturation Adjustment Layer in Photoshop (one set per figure) I could've tightly controlled the graying out of color on a per-figure basis, and also adjusted the value levels exactly how I wanted them. It would've taken a couple of minutes to tweak, tops, and the digital painting would have gone much faster.

Instead, I made great use of my value scale, holding it up as I worked, tweaking color mixtures appropriately, and so on, testing dabs of paint, wiping them off, adjusting the mix, then painting. A challenge and a bit of a pain in the rear at the same time. This sort of composition was made for digital.

Lastly, the foremost figure itself does not have its shadows sink quite to 100% black, simply because there were still the branches to do. Being the foremost object, and wanting that moist autumn darkness to their bark, I saved pure black for that "layer," and having restrained my hand all the way through, managed to create a fairly convincing set of overlaps and atmospheric depth, without getting all scientific about it. I mean, there were some other rules I could have or should have kept in mind to really sell it even more, but a man has to eat and further refinements to the scheme would have set me back even longer. To have suddenly flipped the scheme in the foreground and used light-colored branches like birch would have required the figures be dressed in dark colors, otherwise it would have flattened the composition completely.

The topic just discussed is something that comes into play to some extent or other in a lot of paintings, really. But, being that this piece was such a great example of it in a rather clear way, it made sense to bring it up here.

I mentioned there were two things left to discuss. Thing Two I'll postpone til the next installment, when I actually cover the flip side, "Krallenhorde Wantons."