Alrightly, so I wanted to give art advice for a while, but I never knew how to go about it. Then I came to the realization after sharing this https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/267013723/ that I could just explain my thought process slide by slide and some more general art concepts as I do so. You can use the arrow keys to go through the process for this painting, and there'll be the descriptions here at the side. The costume numbers are in the left corner so you know where you are. --------- 0. This costume doesn't exist, but I just wanted to say that I used fairly heavy reference for this painting. I can't create something this detailed using my imagination alone, so using a photograph was an important part of this process. 1-7. I started out pretty messily, since the best thing to do early on, in my opinion, is to get the basic idea and feeling of the image down without worrying about details. My main focuses during these stages were basic colours and shapes. 4-7. You may notice that the road and the area around the lower left edge is one of the first things worked on in these stages. I found it to be a fairly safe starting point because it doesn't have much detail and I knew I won't worry too much about changing it later. It was also a good place to build everything else up from, since I find it easier to judge distances relative to an edge than from somewhere more random to me. 7-10. At this point I worked up to the blue sign and the areas around it. I've decided that that area would be my focal point, the place the viewer's eyes should go to first. Because it's my focal point, it's more important that it looks decent, and getting it laid out early helps with that. I still didn't pay much attention to detail at this point, since this is still early. To paint the blue sign, I just made a dark blue rectangle with a light blue outline and scribbled in the lighter blue neon strips. It looks alright from a distance, but looks messy when you zoom in. I'm okay with that because the viewer's first impression of a painting is usually what sticks with them. If something doesn't look good from a distance, than the viewer rarely takes the time to look closer, and they almost never feel satisfied if they do. 11-19. Moving outward and starting some small refinements. It's at these steps that I developed a better idea of the area away from the focal point. I think this is as good a time as any to bring up contrast. Contrast is a tool that can be used to either create clarity, or take it away. Two objects that don't contrast against each other won't read as well as ones that do. At the same time though, if everything contrasts against each other, than the image becomes too busy, and ultimately becomes more difficult for the viewer to process. Because of these concepts, it's important to find a balance in the use of contrast. Contrast can be created using values and edges. Lightly coloured objects, such as the signs, stand out against dark backgrounds, like the sky. If everything was bright in this picture, than the signs wouldn't read as glowing objects as easily. The street is more evenly lit, though, so the contrast between the values is lower there. That low contrast works to my advantage, since the street isn't where I want the viewer to pay the most attention. Edges are also a part of contrast that work with the values. A crisp edge is more clear than a blurry one. When painting this, I almost exclusively used a brush that could handle both sides of the spectrum. I used a chalk brush that was mostly set between 60% and 95% opacity, because it allowed me to blend colours by pressing lightly, while also allowing me to create more solid shapes by pressing my pen down more firmly. I occasionally used the smudge tool and a more textured brush to add a bit more variety, but I used them sparingly. Colour, shape, size, and a whole bunch of other things can also be used for contrast, but I'll try to cover those later. 20-27. These steps were mostly just rendering some of the areas I already had down. The left side of the painting could probably be considered finished right now, but I still left room for future changes, which I do make. 28. I realized some of the proportions were off, mainly towards the bottom of the canvas. My solution was to condense what was near the bottom without affecting the top, while cropping the bottom edge a bit. 29-86. My steps are actually pretty difficult for me to explain for the rest of this, mainly because I they're the same steps as the first parts, but in a different context with more rendering. Here's the thing: step by step instructions mean nothing without an understanding of the fundamentals. What are the fundamentals? They change depending on who you ask, but they're considered the basic building blocks of all art. I already covered contrast and values, but colour, shape, form, and composition are some other important concepts worth studying, but I've run out of space now.
