For the third week, we studied tone and value, looking into how the different tones we use can affect our drawings. Tone can be used for a variety of reasons but it’s often used to indicate depth within a drawing. It’s good to use to demonstrate how far away something is from us, for example the further away the object is, the more its value would be desaturated, and the closer it would be to the value of the sky – this is called atmospheric perspective. Value can also be used to demonstrate lighting – areas that are better lit are brighter whilst the areas that would have shadows are darker. All of this helps give 2D drawings a sense of depth and realness to them.
Values can also be simplified in drawings, from blending nicely together, to sets of value bands going up in increments from darkest to lightest, and in its simplest form, just simply black and white, creating two tones.
So, I did some exercises in order to study tone/value and how it works. One technique for showing tone is cross-hatching, and I decided to start off with trying to practice this a bit. At first, I used a screenshot from the game Stray to try to study this. This is a pretty detailed scene, but what I decided to do was draw on top of the screenshot so that I could focus my energy on trying to learn how to use cross-hatching, rather than worrying about getting the scene completely right just from observing it.
Tighter lines together give the illusion of a darker area, whilst less lines or more spread out lines give the illusion of an area being lighter. Looking back I think I could have emphasised the darkness of some areas better than I did, but I think it was alright for a first attempt.
Then I decided to do another study, this time based on the game “Coffee Talk”. I decided to do a small cross-hatching tone study based on a screenshot from the game, as I really enjoy its art and environments. Although this study is smaller and a bit messier, I think I managed to more accurately display the difference in tones here than in the first study.
Next, I decided to focus on the homework for the week.
- 4 thumbnail value studies in your world – consider the value range you use.
The world that I’ve been working on in my team is one of summoning a demon friend, so I decided to do some thumbnails that could possibly fit into the story that we have so far. I decided to use two different techniques for my studies – using a value range, and using two tones.
For the first study, I decided to do a sort of cave environment. I decided to let my imagination run loose with this, but I sort of mixed and matched how I used tone here. I used black for the closest object in the scene, but also for the background, in order to emphasise the depth in this cave. I also added some demons hanging off stalactites in this environment, and decided to give them lighter tones for contrast against the very dark scene. I also included this middle ground area, and I made this the brightest. This was to try to emphasise the the ground is far away from the demon at the front and try to differentiate the ground from the ceiling in this open cave.
For the second scene I decided to create a sort of library scene, because in our group we thought about the main character having a sort of library in their home where the book to summon the demon would be found. So I tried my best to try to recreate a sort of library environment, and airbrush a little darker where the book was, and put some magical flames above it.
Doing these tone studies was made a lot easier after having learnt about composition and perspective the previous week, and I utilised the a grid to try to put the book exactly in the spot where it would catch the viewer’s eye.
It looks pretty messy because I forgot to separate the layers for the grid and for the rough sketch, but it definitely helped. So did using a reference for a library, even if I didn’t follow it exactly. But I think that the perspective that I used made it look more like you’re looking down at the book from somewhere, which adds some distance and mystery for dramatic effect.
Now for the two-tone studies. This one was done based on the environment I was in at the time, which was in a car outside my mum’s work waiting for her. I could see some buildings, some fences and some mountains in the distance, and I thought it looked pretty cool, so I used that as inspiration for this thumbnail. My idea for it was that this scene is taking place outside the main character’s building, and they’re looking out into the distance thoughtfully, trying to figure out what to do. Other than the fact that I think this could have used a tiny bit more detail, I do like how it ended up turning out, especially considering that I hadn’t really done any two-tone studies prior to this.
And finally, I did another two-tone study which I’m actually pretty proud of. The demon is sitting on some sort of armchair, sitting calmly but menacingly as a portal filled with flames roars behind him. I’m actually very happy with the composition of this, and I think I did an alright job with the tones as well, and I like how I managed to create what appears to be flames in the portal, all using only two tones.
- Pick your favourite thumbnail study and illustrate a larger / longer focus study combining composition & tonality – either a full sketchbook page or HD digital page)
For this exercise, I decided to do a more detailed version of the first tone study that I did, because I actually really liked how it turned out, especially in terms of composition.
I basically took a screenshot of my thumbnail, imported it into a larger canvas, and drew over it, adding more detail and shading it so that the changes in value seemed more gradual, and so that there was more of an element of lighting in the scene. I quite like how it turned out and it gave me the opportunity to try out some new brushes in Krita as well as think more about how tone can impact a scene. It’s generally a pretty dark scene, as I didn’t use any white in it, only dark grey.
Rendering this scene also gave me the opportunity to add some extra small little details, like these little faces in this cave here.
- Continue to design, sketch and iterate on characters / creatures / props / landscapes within your world. Continue to gather visual references for your worlds to help assist your designs.
I decided to expand on the cave idea and used pure ref to put together a selection of images. I liked the idea of hell being this sort of underground, dark place that was a combination of a a huge internal cave environment, but also a society at the same time, possibly with some gothic-style castles and maybe some demons that could take inspiration from gargoles.
As I was sketching I realised that the way that I’d been drawing the demon was rather bull-like, so I pulled up some reference images of some bulls. I also added a forest fire photo in there to analyse the idea of this underground society being at least partially on fire, and that just being the way things are down there.
Overall, I learnt a lot from this week about how value can be used in scenes to show depth, atmosphere and environment, as well as expanded some more on ideas for world-building.