You nailed my biggest dilemma for this piece on the proverbial head: what to do with the sky...
I liked the lines, I thought it looked decent and would lend to the colourist more opportunity...what I wanted to do, was black it all out with white contrast lines for rain...I debated forever in that part...should have gone with first instincts??
I liked the lines, I thought it looked decent and would lend to the colourist more opportunity...what I wanted to do, was black it all out with white contrast lines for rain...I debated forever in that part...should have gone with first instincts??
Yeah. I think your instincts are good. Maybe train yourself not to doubt them?
Isn't that always the way though?? 
Hehe.
you could still do something of the sort, just with a smaller portion of it - just that little bit above the horizon and below the clouds. I think that would be enough to get the effect.
Who would ever have thought to give the colorist opportunity? (Not me.) I guess it helps production when everyone's on the same page.
I'm thinking, if I'm doing single pieces at a time, perhaps scanning what I've done, then printing it out small like a thumbnail & mucking around with blacks/whites, line movements?
Well, I don't know if I could work it that way. I have to have a solid concept of the tonal scheme of the whole from the beginning. That's the thumbnail stage. After that, as a test, it's about burring the detail anyway you can so you can see the whole design. Reducing it to a postage stamp is the test I use, which has the same effect as what landscape painters do when they squint or use a red filter lens - it reduces the scene to values. Get your tonal scheme first - i.e. the values of the big shapes of composition and their relations. That's the most important element of composition. If that's not working, the rest is just exercise.
We work with a limited number of tonal schemes, four or five at most. So it pays to get acquainted with them, memorize them, noodle with their permutations, so when time comes you are confident about how to arrange or change things.
I think it's a whole new process for me that I obviously need to find a method for; where it used to be a case of throwing inks down, it turned into applying special effects, and now actually applying thought with relation to layout & design. Definitely a work in progress.
This is exactly what the art's about. It's entering this level that you express your potential.
Odd, how I seem to be going the other way, at least temporarily, doing what I criticized others for - i.e. literal translation. But there's obviously a need to gain the experience of it. Ironic.
It reminds me of karate...you learn the basics of blocks early & only to find out in higher belt levels that its not just a block, but a strike as well...but you've gotta start somewhere!
good analogy. And by the time you're black belt, you realize you're just beginning.
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