Completely New To Painting. Any Help Is Appreciated. First Submission

[hdan85]

Heya,

I think you have shown significant improvement. It takes years to get to the level of detail that these people are at - don't be discouraged by poor votes ---- you are, after all, up against veterans.

Just a simple tip - practice transitions from dark to light. you could start with a cape, dark in the deep crevices with
80% black and 20% main color and moving to 50/ 50 of each and finishing with 10% black to 90% main color once you get to the top or main part of the cape.

the reverse can be applied with highlights -> 90% main color and 10% light color (e.g. white) and transition to 30% main color and 70% light color at the highest point.


The difference between novice and pro is that the pro can make the transition smoothly (with about 30- 60 levels between darkest and lightest) and the novice might only use one layer/ color.

Hope this helps.

Remember:
You can't expect to run a marathon if you havn't learnt how to run properly

 

[Dragonsreach]

Just a simple tip - practice transitions from dark to light.
I totally agree with this Practise is the key to all improvement.

you could start with a cape, dark in the deep crevices with 80% black and 20% main color and moving to 50/ 50 of each and finishing with 10% black to 90% main color once you get to the top or main part of the cape.

However the second part of this quote, no I have to disagree.
Adding Black to a lot of colours just muddies the colours and makes the painting look poor.
Most shadow areas are a darker variation of the mid tone and should be worked that way. Often this involves mixing an intermediate tone of the mid colour with the darker version. (Which is why Reaper paints are done in TRIADS to facilitate this transition.)

Another way is to mix in a colour wheel complimentary but this is both complex and scary to get right.
But as an example if your were to paint a Green cloak you could darken the shadow area with a very thin glaze of Brown (VMC Burnt Umber) to darken those areas and leave a visual impression of an 'organic' material.