Critique and Rendering question

Can I make stylistic choices when rendering? For example, I used ink and watercolor to capture the shapes of light and shadow. Also, am I obligated to make realistic rendering or is it a choice? All other crituqes are welcomed.

https://imgur.com/a/WwYLOKS

• JO NI edited this post on May 29, 2024 11:18pm.

A bit of a strange question, but no, you aren't obligated to anything at all, unless someone pays you big monies for drawing one way and not another way. And to convince anyone to ever pay you monies, you first of all need to be able to draw stuff, that looks cool. If someone needs a perfectly realistic depiction, they will probably ask a photographer, not a draftsperson. Heck, as you are still working from a photographic reference, they can just use the reference instead!

If anything, you are obligated to make stylistic choices. That is what sets you apart from a xerox machine or a cheap filter software. The end goal is to be able to make them consciously and deliberately, and to keep your stylistic decisions consistent enough to let the viewer intuitively understand and appreciate them.

Talking about looking cool and your ink and watercolor drawings: Yes!!! A thousand times yes! This looks way cooler than your too smooth graphite gradients. These shapes are quick to pick up, and they convey all the informations about the body in space, that you were formerly losing with your blended transitions.

There is one thing you could try: Buy yourself grey ink. Then draw the darkest values in black ink (like you did) and the middle tones in grey ink, and you are automatically forcing yourself to break down the figure into 3 values. If you watch any tutorial about rendering, this separation of the object into three distinct values will ALWAYS come up at some point.

If you want to check out a really classical (and classic looking) impression, you can aim for the rule of thirds, and try to approximately match your darks, middletones and brights in size of area over the whole painting. It's ofc just a rule, not a law, but if you get it done with nice shapes your results will be on a whole new level.

(Footnote: You should never break a law. You should never break a rule, unless there is a specific, obvious, and undeniable reason to break it. There are generally no laws in art, but the rules you obey define you as an artist.)

If you aren't planning to hit the art supply store anytime soon, you can substitute the grey ink for any watercolor of your choice (blue is perfectly fine) Just try to keep the application of the watercolor as uniform and flat as possible, so you achieve a clean separation of darks, middletones and brights. Focus on shapes and lines alone, and don't get tempted back into gradients for now.

Practice this first, and you will already achieve a smooth, but not boring, looking and deliberate finish. Once, if ever, this separation really becomes so second nature to you, that you get bored of it, then you can progress by for example replacing the mono-valued planes with hatching or crosshatching, or to start breaking down the figure into even finer shades of gray, so you can approximate your graphite gradients without losing information, or you can start to investigate color theory to dip into full painting.

Tried to put the theory to practice. This is how it looks when I do it (Not so happy about the linework today)

• Aunt Herbert edited this post on May 30, 2024 9:57am.
• Aunt Herbert edited this post on May 30, 2024 1:26pm.

If you aren't planning to hit the art supply store anytime soon, you can substitute the grey ink for any watercolor of your choice (blue is perfectly fine) Just try to keep the application of the watercolor as uniform and flat as possible, so you achieve a clean separation of darks, middletones and brights. Focus on shapes and lines alone, and don't get tempted back into gradients for now.

I just wanted to add in that you can create the mid tone using the black ink you already have. Just mix it in a separate well or container with water and it will create a wash that will function as the mid tone that Aunt Herbert described. It actually wont take much ink to get a good mid tone. But feel free to try out different amounts to see what options there are. Otherwise I don't have anything to add that wasn't already said.

I agree that it is entirely your choice whether you use realistic rendering or not, when it is a personal project. There is a huge variety of art out there, everything from extremely abstract non representational work all the way to hyper photo-real. Personally I prefer some level of realism, it's a nice challenge, however it's up to you. It is true that certain art materials lend themselves a bit more to realism because of greater control. An example of this is wet on wet watercolors, it can be difficult to create sharp details with those. But some people do realistic work incorporating those.

The best piece of advice I can give you is this: whatever your goal is, realistic or not, it's best if you choose what level of detail/realism you want instead of being limited to that because of lack of practice. If that doesn't make sense, here are two examples. When I was new to art I had a very loose, rough way of drawing. I used to say that was my style but really it was because I hadn't practiced my line work enough. It wasn't a choice even though I pretended it was. The other example is Pablo Picasso. His later work was very abstract and was not very realistic, but that was a choice. When he was young he proved that he was very good at drawing realistically.

I hope this helps and makes sense!

Thanks for all the insights, it has been very eye opening.