nathanaardvark

Tutorial 101 - The Synovial Joints

Here's a breakdown of the most important joints for the artist studying anatomy.

The Synovial joints are six types of joints that artists need to understand because these are the most movable types of joints in the body.

We’ll know how to draw them on the human form if:

• we know what these joints look...
  2016-04-12 06:47:05 +0000 UTC View Post

Tutorial 100 - The Color Blue

Keywords: Calm, Serenity, Spirituality, Truth, Loyalty, Vastness, Sadness, Loneliness, Cold, Chilling, Authoritarian. 

The most beloved color blue has numerous connotations, both positive and negative. In it’s positive light, it is associated with calm and serenity, spirituality, truth, loyalty, and expansive...

Tutorial 99 - The Color White

Keywords: Innocence, Purity, Integrity, Neutrality, Cleanliness, Clarity, New Beginnings, Hope, Ignorance, Emptiness, Exposure, Isolation, Sterility, Boredom.

White contains an equal balance of all the colors of the spectrum, inherently implying equality and neutrality. Most of white’s connotations revolve around ...

Tutorial 98 - The Color Yellow

Keywords: spirituality/enlightenment, cheer, happiness, optimism, energizing,

cowardice (Western culture only), caution, hazard/emergency, illness.

Yellow is the lightest and most luminous color on the spectrum. Because of it’s brightness, yellow is the most easily perceptible c...

Tutorial 97 - The Color Black

Keywords: Mystery, Infinity, Death, Formality, Power, The Unknown, Elegance, 

Sophistication.

The color black primarily represents mystery, the unknown, and the concept of infinity.

For ancient Greeks and Egyptians, black was used as the color of the Underworld, where souls go a...

Tutorial 96 - The Color Red

Keywords:  Anger, Passion, Courage, Sacrifice, Lust, Attention, Sin, Joy.

Red is described as being the most brilliant color. It has the longest wavelength, and affects us physiologically, with the ability to increase our heart rate! 

Red seems to stand out against other colors and demands ou...

Tutorial 95 - Line of Gravity

The line of gravity is the middle or average point of the weight distribution. If standing upright, it runs from the tip of your head through the middle of your body and to your feet. You can feel your center point shift across the sole of your feet, your support base, if you stand and lean forwards or backwards. 

If the ...

Tutorial 94 - The Horizon Line

Here's a really simple tip to give you some composition and perspective options, which can have dramatic effects on a character in a story, for instance.

The character in the image on the left appears somewhat less heroic than in the image on the right. The middle image, somewhere in between. This is mostly communicate...

Tutorial 93 - Cool Light, Cool Shadows

"Warm light cool shadows, cool light warm shadows" teaching

Most painters are familiar with this teaching. However, a warm or cool primary light source will not always cause shadows to take on a complementary hue. What if our ambient light is the same or similar hue? That hue will still make it into the shadows.  2016-04-03 18:07:54 +0000 UTC View Post

Tutorial 92 - Grey in the Shadows

I struggled creating this one as it required deconstructing my illustration, which was created fairly intuitively, into a logical explanation of what's happening pseudo-physically. So, I don't think it's by any means perfect. Though hopefully it's sufficient enough to help us form an understand of what's happening when w...

Tutorial 91 - Cool Light, Warm Shadows

This scene is the opposite lighting setup to the scene in tutorial 90. 

This time the primary light is cool and the ambient light is warm. It might be unusual to find this situation in nature. Perhaps the red autumn leaves (warm) of a forest lit by the moon (cool) would create such an effect. Or a the cold light of a ...

Tutorial 90 - Cool light, Warm Shadows

You've probably heard about warm light giving the illusion of cool shadows and how this can be reversed in the opposite lighting setup. The shadows become cool because of the ambient blue light (the sky) making it into the shadow. The sky acts like a dome of light. Wherever the sunlight is not hitting directly the l...

Tutorial 89 - RGB and CMY triads

This explains some areas in color theory that we need to aware of as digital painters. We might expect that the software we use would mimic the way color is mixed traditionally, though this isn't the case, so we need to change our way of thinking a little. We have to think in an additive and subtractive way. See tutorial ...

Tutorial 88 - Two Types of Color Mixing

Color can mix in two ways, subtractive and additive. How they relate is a very interesting and elegant part of color theory that we’ll touch on here. It's worth knowing, especially if you’re like me and have struggled with color in the past.

Additive color 

Additive color mixing is a system...

Tutorial 87 - Thumbnail your Painting

When you get a new project brief or that first wave of inspiration, thumbnails are where you begin. They are the result of a brain dump. Many terrible sketches and ideas should be drawn and not judged! Make as many thumbnails as you can dream up (time considered, of course). Share the best ones with the client for direction, hid...

Tutorial 82 - Relative, Absolute & Local Color

This tutorial should have been posted a few days back but as Patreon has been having problems with their servers it seemed to have not been posted! So this is 1 of 2 that I'm posting today.

Anyway, let's talk a bit more about color. 

We can try to think of color in these 3 ways to help us un...

Tutorial 86 - The Concave Iris

This tip really helped me to understand the structure of the iris and therefore paint it effectively. 

The iris is not actually concave but it's best to think of it that way. It's a striated muscle, thin enough to be illuminated under certain lighting conditions. It's the lens behind this muscle bouncing light arou...

Tutorial 85 - The Biggest Secret

Ok, you're going to kick me when I tell you the biggest secret to making progress in your drawing. 

But, if you're interested, please read on, it's important and I can't state it in one simple sentence. 

It's often easy to feel like we just can't draw, or we don't know what to draw, or the stuff we are draw...

Tutorial 84 - Analogous Color Schemes

Generally, analogous color schemes will guarantee color harmony, though they may lack a certain vibrancy. If we find this to be the case in our painting we can introduce an accent to some areas. Cool accents may be added if the painting is generally warm, and warm accents for paintings that are generally cool. Use a complement t...

Tutorial 83 - Complementary Color Schemes

Complementary color schemes are one of many harmonious color schemes available to us. Here's a link to a previous tip on color harmony: https://www.patreon.com/posts/tutorial-36-4345676

To find out what color is complementary to a se...

Tutorial 81 - Warm Lighting

Unless your image is following a monochrome color scheme, you'll want to try balancing your warms with your cools. When I say balance, I don't mean equalize, I mean to weigh warm and cool against each other. One should be dominant over the other. 

When starting out, we must decide whether our light is cool or warm. This c...

Tutorial 80 - Color Temperature & Depth

Color temperature can have a really strong impact on our spacial perception. Though, value also has a lot to do with it, as noted in a previous tutorial (see tutorial 16 www.patreon.com/posts/tutorial-16-4166200).

It's not only extremely useful to be aware of this effect for landscapes and environments, with any le...