Start with some Values, folks!
Hi all, I am a graphic designer from Bangalore who has been into UI/UX design for quite a long time. I am a designer who finds specialising in just one segment living it and loving it , BORING.
I venture into lots of Mediums to get rid of the boredom I dread. Recently in the pursuit of new learning, I jumped into an area which I was the most skeptical about.
Digital Painting.
Yeah. there it is!
I used to admire a lot of paintings done by many skillful artists. Constantly checking and appreciating their work on Behance, Artstation, Instagram etc. I used to wonder the immense time, patience and skill these great people have to create such beautiful pieces.
I used to wonder how Jenny Yu created her masterpieces with simple shapes yet powerful colors?
How Jordan Grimmer used to create that hyper-realistic compositions and lightings?
Atey Ghailan’s compositions which invokes so much emotion ….
But how?
I wanted to learn it. As a UI/UX designer, I know all the color theories, psychology, blah, blah, blah. I knew nothing was gonna help me here. So I just got hold of a Wacom and started just like that.
I failed miserably (No surprise here). I was lacking the basic knowledge of how to start with a composition. I did some research on the fundamentals of digital painting. I came across a lot of methods, tips, tricks, and aspects on that.
I wanted to share one of my key finding with all the wannabe painters out there. And that is — VALUE.
What is Value?
Value is something which defines how light or dark an object is. It is independent of a colors hue or saturation. A value range consists of White to Black with every gradation in between.
This is how a typical value range looks like.
Below is a demonstration of how an image will appear with the contrasting value range vs non contrasting value range.
Image with a high contrast value range
Image with low contrast value range
“Value is Important than color. It defines the depth’’
Below is the 2nd composition I tried. This time I went for the value first approach. I took my Wacom, created a value range and started creating a composition out of black and white. I did this piece by manipulating a lot of textures and brushes. I didn’t break my head over any of the color selection, color psychology or any of that.
The key to the value painting is.
“As the distance from camera increases the value range decreases to whites. As the distance decreases the value range increases to Black”
This results in an image which gives the sense of depth. After this step, it was a breeze for me to add color. Paint some color, clip it to the layer then change the blending mode! Viola, I created my masterpiece .
Yeah, I know it may need some refinement and I have a long way to go.
But as a beginner, this knowledge about the value range resulted in a significant improvement in my image quality and my will to do more, whereas initially I was skeptical to even start.
As a UI/UX designer, emptying my cup of knowledge on colors, compositions and embracing the ways of handling color in paintings did not go for a waste. In fact, it will surely help me to create better-looking web/app layouts or paintings in the future. So Folks, Keep on learning…
Hope you enjoyed.
