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Fascinating article. This is a subject I have some expertise in as I teach oil painting, digital painting, drawing, compositing and 3D rendering. What the art

by Daub 4y ago

Fascinating article. This is a subject I have some expertise in as I teach oil painting, digital painting, drawing, compositing and 3D rendering. What the article missies is the real reason that artists have avoided hard-edged shadows since the renaissance. 1. The silhouette of an object plays a large part in our ability to clearly perceive it. 2. This silhouette is defined by sharp edges (more exactly, two neighboring regions meeting to form neighboring regional contrast). 3. The hardness of a hard-edged shadow interferes with our perception of this silhouette. This is a particular issue with self-casting shadows, such as those cast by the nose onto the face. This is the reason that painters and filmmakers generally favour the so-called golden hour (early morning or early evening) when the light is low on the horizon and the shadows are soft-edged. To quote Leonardo Da Vinci: ``An object will display the greatest difference of light and shade when it is seen in the strongest light. . . . But this should not be much used in painting, because the works would be crude and ungraceful.'' Of all the subjects I teach, shadows cause the third-most trouble (the first being perspective, the second being anatomy). Common student mistakes: using black to darken the shadow (yuk), using default light settings in a 3D render (too hard-edged), in compositing, not matching the source shadow with the composited one, in digital painting, not changing the size of the brush as they model the shadow. Some of my course material on the subject: neighboring regional contrast: https://rmit.instructure.com/courses/87565/pages/structural-contrast-regional-contrast?module_item_id=3208002 https://rmit.instructure.com/courses/87565/pages/structural-... Shadows: https://rmit.instructure.com/courses/87565/pages/colour-shadows?module_item_id=3189223 https://rmit.instructure.com/courses/87565/pages/colour-shad... Compositing: https://rmit.instructure.com/courses/87565/pages/photoshop-compositing-and-integration?module_item_id=3222632 https://rmit.instructure.com/courses/87565/pages/photoshop-c...

syntheweave 4y ago
Pen and ink artists, most notoriously in comics, often lean into hard shadows for composition, turning one shape into another with a chiaroscuro effect, or using false shadow shapes to indicate form. Extreme examples often come up in Alex Toth or Frank Miller panels, but every cartoonist working in black and white struggles to create theatrical staging, and while many take the route of extensive hatch lines to describe medium values, there's an urge to simplify for efficiency. Frank Frazetta also did a lot of ink work before his well known fantasy paintings, and it shows up in some characteristic decisions about what he simplifies. "Framed Ink" shows off a lot of these methods, using a rough ink style to emphasize the composition. Since the appearance of digital color, the common approaches to ink in comics have toned down because the painting process creates a competing value structure. The mixture of hard and soft shadow creates some jarring effects, so ink lines made "for color" are used more often just to describe form.

by Daub 4y ago

syntheweave 4y ago

Pen and ink artists, most notoriously in comics, often lean into hard shadows for composition, turning one shape into another with a chiaroscuro effect, or using false shadow shapes to indicate form. Extreme examples often come up in Alex Toth or Frank Miller panels, but every cartoonist working in black and white struggles to create theatrical staging, and while many take the route of extensive hatch lines to describe medium values, there's an urge to simplify for efficiency. Frank Frazetta also did a lot of ink work before his well known fantasy paintings, and it shows up in some characteristic decisions about what he simplifies. "Framed Ink" shows off a lot of these methods, using a rough ink style to emphasize the composition. Since the appearance of digital color, the common approaches to ink in comics have toned down because the painting process creates a competing value structure. The mixture of hard and soft shadow creates some jarring effects, so ink lines made "for color" are used more often just to describe form.