Avelorn
Sven Jonsson
I read a reply on a thread which one of our beloved forum members said that having too much contrast will make something look unnatural. I wanted to shed some light on this subject, so I did this shiny new thread.
The contrast depends on the lightsource(s), the colour and how reflective the material is being painted. The brightest and lightest point IRL is usually much brighter/darker than you\'d expect and on 28mm or 54mm you must often exaggerate a bit too. Usually the exaggeration does not actually lie in contrast boost, which you might first believe. But in how large part you paint bright/dark.
As a nice example I took our prime minister Mr. Göran Persson!
Softly lit by photography light, you\'ll notice how most of his face is made up by pale midtones. Actually it is the midtones that is most important to defining the colour. You\'ll also notice that the bright spots are very light while the shadows in the defining lines are dark. Notice though that it is an extremely small part where the spots are so light.. moving away just a tiny fraction there will be more and more midtone.
Here is Mr. Nelson Mandela. As his skin is much darker the shadows and midtones will be darker under the same kind of lighting conditions while the bright spot will be about the same as both Mr. Persson and Mr. Mandelas skins have roughly the same reflectiveness.
But notice also that it is a rather large part of mr. Mandelas face that is pretty bright.. generally we aren\'t bold enough to paint what we see. That especially goes for NMM. If done correctly half a sword could be painted in a near white and it will still not look unnatural as a shiny sword is highly reflective.
Well I\'m pretty pragmatic in my own painting but I hope this gave you something to reflect about. And if someone has something to add or object to, please enlighten us!
The contrast depends on the lightsource(s), the colour and how reflective the material is being painted. The brightest and lightest point IRL is usually much brighter/darker than you\'d expect and on 28mm or 54mm you must often exaggerate a bit too. Usually the exaggeration does not actually lie in contrast boost, which you might first believe. But in how large part you paint bright/dark.
As a nice example I took our prime minister Mr. Göran Persson!
Softly lit by photography light, you\'ll notice how most of his face is made up by pale midtones. Actually it is the midtones that is most important to defining the colour. You\'ll also notice that the bright spots are very light while the shadows in the defining lines are dark. Notice though that it is an extremely small part where the spots are so light.. moving away just a tiny fraction there will be more and more midtone.
Here is Mr. Nelson Mandela. As his skin is much darker the shadows and midtones will be darker under the same kind of lighting conditions while the bright spot will be about the same as both Mr. Persson and Mr. Mandelas skins have roughly the same reflectiveness.
But notice also that it is a rather large part of mr. Mandelas face that is pretty bright.. generally we aren\'t bold enough to paint what we see. That especially goes for NMM. If done correctly half a sword could be painted in a near white and it will still not look unnatural as a shiny sword is highly reflective.
Well I\'m pretty pragmatic in my own painting but I hope this gave you something to reflect about. And if someone has something to add or object to, please enlighten us!
