B/W only comps suggestion
3yr
Marco Fornaciari
Hello everyone! I made some pretty quick b/w only comps, i always find it difficult to work only with 2 values and hard brushes.
Please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestion for improving my comps!
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3yr
These are really good! If you wanted to push these kinds of exercises farther I have a couple of suggestions:
1) Try to change up your lighting scenarios a bit. Right now these compositions feel a little simply backlit, a mountain in shadow against a white sky, the fully shadowed figures against the white sky. It's not bad or wrong but it seems like your go-to mindset for lighting these scenes in order to get them to read. I'm attaching some black and white comps by the awesome artist Steve Wang where he's using variations of top and/or frontal lighting angles.
Lighting does a lot to dictate your choices in terms of of black and white shapes, and playing with the angles can create a more visually interesting and 'layered composition. Instead of a 'flatter' black on white like you get with backlight, with these top/front/side lighting angles you get layers of white on black on white on black.. etc. I think you'll get what I mean when you look at the images. This will also make you have to consider how you depict the transition of light to shadow across form in flat hard shapes, rather that letting something simply be a silhouette.
2) After you get comfortable doing some comps with different kinds of lighting, you can always try doing some where you use 3 or 4 values. A lot of really great, 'finished' artwork you might see is often working with a very simple value composition of 3 or 4 distinct value groups. I've attached some cool studies like these by Joon Ahn.
Keep up the great work! : )
Oh wow those are incredible! I love them!
Yes, i'm not really confortable with this process and i feel like i want to keep it simple becasue i don't really know how to push it or what type of scene to create.
I'll try to push it further with some reference and some more studies behind, maybe in that way i'll be more confortable.
Right now i'm doing those from complete imagination to play with shapes but i'm not sure that's the best idea :D
Thanks so much! ♥
I think those are all pretty good composition except for the 2nd (middle left) one. The shapes are interesting but I think it is too evenly balanced. The black and white seem to equally dominate the composition. Also there is a very even distribution of point shapes that sort of distract from the figure. I think to emphasize the figure a little bit more (and I only mean a little bit, like 15% more), you should cut back on some of the dark shapes and leave a bit more flat white space.
Oh yeah now that you mentioned it, it's pretty clear. Thank you for pointing that out!
I always have the problem to start with an idea about shapes and composition and i always end up with something different. That's not bad but i'm probably not good enough to really change too many stuff on the go without having a clear idea behind._
Thanks again!
These are already looking cool! you got readable shapes and great contrast between busy and quiet parts of the image.
I think they look good. Especially the one with a solider in a doorway. You can tell immediately where the focus of the picture is.
Is there any specific goal tied to one or more image, that you'd like people to comment on? It might be easier to suggest improvements once we know what you're striving to do a little better
I'm trying to study graphic comps/composition in general to help me with my work and ideas. I don't really have a specific goal beside having a good understanding on how to place B/M/S shapes, contrast, perspective, etc etc.
