pintafema

[pintafema]

Typographical “color” as a tool for intuitive picture layout

(cross posted from PixelJoint with a small preface added)

Pixel art can teach you a lot about design. It is a heavily restricted medium, and that forces you to prioritize, which is the essence of design work.

However, I think that most of the skills cultivated through pixel art can also be cultivated in a clearer and more scalable way through typography.

So I currently regard pixel art as more of a industrial/production medium, which I still enjoy working but I don't feel has that much left to teach me.

Anyone who is interested in dither patterns / other texturing might gain insight by learning and practicing the typographical concept of "color". Pretty much every harmonious, 'correct'[1] patterning, whether in perspective or not, can be broken down cleanly into regular patterns of "color". I've found this especially useful in thinking about scale and perspective in an intuitively correct way : the 'space' not being empty but being occupied by a pattern of "color" gives my mind a continuous path to follow, rather than being reduced to measuring lengths of spaces (an inherently fragmented process).

[1] as in, some drawings contain elements that seem like pictorial glitches. Tangents are one, but it can be something as minor as getting line weight slightly out of wack or a small discoloration, that draws attention back to an element for no good reason.

There is no particularly great online information about "color", but this is a competent summary. In my view it is functionally a way to unify negative and positive space into a 'value' (fullness, really) for an area, that approximately implies both. The typographical definition of "color" focuses on 2d pictorial space, but it can also be applied to the 3d space you are projecting into your 2d picture.

[pintafema]

Don’t look too hard at what you’re drawing

Posting this accuracy technique, as it's pretty reliable for me, and I've never heard anyone mention it ever:

First fix the positions of the points you are joining firmly in your mind. Empty your mind of all other things in order to do this best. Then stop looking at what you are doing - defocus your eyes - and make the stroke.

This produces the straightest straights and the smoothest curves. Like other blind-drawing techniques, it depends on an intuitive knowledge of how your arm will move, and a well locked down sense of space. But it can also be used as an exercise to develop those same qualities. Alternatively, the 'contour drawing' exercises described by Nicolaïdes are designed to achieve similar ends.

I suspect it works well because the paper is typically filled with lots of other stuff. That other stuff really is just a distraction to the task of making any particular mark, even though it often enters into the question of 'what mark should I make and where?'

[pintafema]

Practicing "keep it general until you absolutely HAVE to be specific". Broad side of 2B pencil for painting/wash-like application of graphite tones.

[pintafema]

A little precision exercise

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[pintafema]

A little leaf breakdown I did for someone on /r/ArtFundamentals

The semitransparent lines represent ghosting (ie. lines that I would carefully move over but not draw, in a normal drawing)

I mainly wanted to post this here to show my Right Angle / "L" measuring method., which allows me to avoid directly fiddling with angles. I always reference an existing member, and try to measure the biggest features first.. It is rather literally like building, in that sense.

If you have watched Scott Robertson's videos, he similarly avoids direct angular construction, probably for similar reasons -- 'you can be more accurate when you deal with one dimension at a time'.

[pintafema]

Memory and intentionality in drawing, by way of Speed

Some quotes from James Gurney's review/synopsis of Harold Speed's book 'The Practice and Science of Drawing'; I have also added a bit of commentary.

Chapters 18 and 19 focus especially on these subjects:

Chapter 18 synopsis

Chapter 19 synopsis

Speed strongly emphasizes the importance of memory, especially in these chapters. He connects this to intentionality:

"It is seldom if ever that an artist puts on paper anything better than he has in his mind before he starts, and usually it is not nearly so good."

"To know what you want to do and then to do it is the secret of good style and technique."

"Look well at the model first; try and be moved by something in the form that you feel is fine or interesting, and try and see in your mind's eye what sort of drawing you mean to do before touching your paper."

Intentionality is also generally emphasized:

"It is much easier to put down a statement correctly than to correct a wrong one; so out with the whole part if you are convinced it is wrong."

"Try and express yourself in as simple, not as complicated a manner as possible."

This echoes in some ways thoughts that I have had, about the importance of cultivating short term memory, so that you can maintain awareness of many reference points and keep the picture accurate 'in your head' (thereby more easily attaining the goal of making the picture you actually draw accurate)

The practice of memory drawing also forces you to cultivate intentionality, since you cannot simply 'draw what is in front of you'. You can't not-decide what is important when drawing from memory.

[pintafema]

Leave concerns of technique for artworks, not studies

There are two broad skills involved in executing a successful artwork

Choosing intelligently what mark to make

Making a mark that matches that intent.

This may seem like a truism, so I'll write it again in a different form

Understanding and planning

Technique

This observation connects to the questions of 'How to study?' and 'How to make artworks?' Specifically, you get in trouble when you mix up the two.

Studies and artworks are fundamentally different.

In one, you use as little technique as possible, devoting your work to understanding the subject. Your study work will become clearer over time as your perception clarifies, but concerns about prettiness or even appeal are irrelevant. The only reason to make a study clear is that clarity helps you notice and integrate additional observations.

In the other, it's pretty much entirely technique. Your work on artwork consists in constructing a design that efficiently communicates the intended ideas, and using all the techniques at your disposal to render that design into a form that your audience easily grasps.

The basic point of this post is simply that bringing concerns of technique into study work is generally a form of self-sabotage. Your study, to be most effective, must contain no affectation or performance. When you draw a box, it should have faces that connect crisply and at right angles — but not because that looks pretty, but because that is what a box really IS. If the question in your mind when studying is ever anything other than "what is really going on with my subject", you have become distracted and are in danger of entering a cycle of poking things to make them prettier.

Why's that bad? Because a study is not a collection of pretty things. Nor is a (well executed) artwork a collection of pretty things. Studies and artworks are both things made to a purpose. There is hardly any single skill more valuable in either studying or making artworks, than simply, strictly, relentlessly prioritizing and subordinating. If your mind is scattered, it will inevitably show.

[pintafema]

Don’t photograph your art unless you really have to.. But if you really have to:

Taking good photos of art via camera is hard. The best photos will always be worse quality than an equivalent scan. But here are some things you can do to get better results:

Use thick, non-glossy paper if possible. This minimizes a)non-flatness of paper, and b) undesirable specular highlights.

Use a tripod to remove any blurring due to the involuntary motion of your body. Even if your camera has anti-shake or anti-blur, this will still help.

Use maximum resolution and highest quality setting. This gets you the best quality 'master' picture to start with, which allows you the most flexibility in producing a good image to upload.

There should be some things visible beyond the picture -- you can crop them out in a paint program later. Usually, if there aren't, you are too close/zoomed in and may get an undesirably blurry result. Backing off a bit also helps to minimize lens distortion -- if possible it's good to use maximum resolution and be more distant, as this produces a result that is closer to the true rectilinear geometry that your actual picture has.

Make the picture really flat. If the paper has small-scale ripples, that's pretty bad -- you can sometimes get away with ironing (the back side, of course!), but I generally don't recommend it, different media may respond unpredictably to it. Larger-scale waves can be corrected with bulldog clips / clamps and methodically ensuring the tension along every edge is equally high (pulling it out if needed, being careful not to pull in a direction that might tear the paper). Of course if clipping it down, you should also make sure that the surface you are clipping it to is straight in both dimensions (this is typically a concern with wood). You may also want to have a thick white piece of card/cardboard/etc to place between the picture and the backing , to prevent features of the backing showing through in semi-transparent parts of the paper.

Align the camera carefully with the edges of the picture (the edges of your picture should align exactly with the edges of the camera display, making a clear 90° turn at every corner). Many cameras and phones have a rule-of-thirds display option that can help you check this.

If your picture in the best photo is mildly non-rectangular, use the perspective tool in Corrective mode to correct the almost-rectangle to rectangular. (this is GIMP terminology -- not sure how you do this task in PS). This is one of the tasks where maximum resolution is definitely a benefit to the final result.

Have lots of lighting on hand. This is actually quite hard. You need very even lighting shining directly on the face of the picture. Sunlight can work, but only if you can set up the angle just right.

Check that white in your picture is white on the camera. Printer paper is good for this (hold the sample next to the camera display; it won't necessarily be the same brightness, but should be equally colorless.) If you can't get the camera to produce the white you want, you need to adjust the white balance in post-processing. Sometimes you can get away with simply doing 'Auto white balance' (Color->Auto->White balance in GIMP. Available in most image editors). But more often you will need to manually use Levels / Curves to achieve a result that best matches the appearance of your picture.

Take lots of photos (via burst mode, or tuning lighting/positioning). Which is best only becomes obvious via comparison

It's really a lot of work. Sometimes still necessary even if you have a scanner, though (eg. for paper formats that are way too big for the scanner. For formats that are only -somewhat- too big, you can scan them in parts and stitch them via Hugin or in an image editor)

[pintafema]

A quick-reference compilation of the information provided at this link, for the purposes of guiding reuse.

Textual summary:

1, 3 and 6 should not be reused (although 1 may be ok in a well-ventilated, non-food context.)

2, 4 and 5 are generally OK to reuse

5 covers most microwavables, and we don't know whether heat transferred from hot food causes any particles or vapors to come out of it yet.

7 is miscellaneous, but includes polycarbonate, which features BPA.

9 is not covered (ABS, which tends to be in forms that aren't very reusable anyway, like shells of LCD monitors, phones, etc). FWIW ABS appears to be safe in non-extreme, non-food uses.

It should also be noted that examples are not uniformly applicable -- eg. some CD/DVD cases are not marked with a recycle code at all.

[Media: 96x96mm card. Markers: Permanent markers, calligraphy marker, 0.4mm pens, try square. average X-height is 5 mm, x-height is 3 mm (making this equivalent precision-wise to a pixel font with X-height of 12.5 pixels)]

[pintafema]

The harsh aesthetic of gel pen is interesting

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[pintafema]

clarity == differentiation

I enjoy roguelikes, but this comment is actually about representation in general. After posting the following comment on /r/roguelikes :

To me the same kind of principle applies to everything in RLs. Because you experience it again and again and again, anything that is not simple and minimal becomes tedious - complexity should arise from interaction of strongly differentiated simple things, not from things being complex to begin with.

ToME's lore / plotline is another example of this; Whereas its skill trees are mostly a counter-example (each individual skill is easy to understand, they can be combined in a number of ways to produce a range of effects on the character's play style)

Of course RLs also have a tradition of including prose and quotes, but I think it's important to recognize that this is usually incorporated in a way that makes it either optional or easily ignored.

I had this insight:

For any set of items -- which could be of characters, elements of a background, spells, abilities, backstories, events, worlds,... -- what gives them clarity as a whole is not just individual simplicity. It's about maximizing change (differentiation) between each item.

The viewer/reader will easily parse (break down and understand) a scenario when each element is as different from the other elements as reasonably possible. Readers with an animation background may be familiar with this "maximize change" idea.. my insight was that it's a completely general design principle that can be applied in almost any field.

If one thing is very big, you probably want another thing very small. If you have a smooth thing, an angular thing is an obvious choice for the next item in the set. Violent thing, timid thing. Slow thing, fast thing. Dark thing, light thing. Loud, soft. Disjointed, flowing.

As your set gets larger, you take these different dimensions and distribute them between items, so that each item remains unique in as many dimensions as possible. Small orange round, large blue spiky, medium green blocky.

This also involves grouping similar things. For example, you have people of small, medium, and large size; and animals of small, medium and large size. But you make this (small/medium/large) size relative to the category, so that most animals, whether they are small, medium, or large, appear smaller than most people, whether those people are small, medium, or large. In that way you differentiate one entire group from another, and the viewer immediately recognizes 'this must be a person' or 'this must be an animal' simply by the visual convention you established.

Intentional deception -- an animal that is pretending to be a person, or vice versa -- becomes easier too: you simply adapt the thing to the "wrong" convention.

[pintafema]

Not actually a sketch; this is a "color" / spacing / coordination drill I just devised.

You start with a simple outline, like a circle, ellipse, box, or regular polygon.

Then you draw lines, adding an array of at least two similarly-dimensioned primitive objects. I recommend drawing the entire object without lifting the stylus.

Why at least two? Because the aim is to create spaces that are (or at least feel like they are) the same size, so you need a minimum of two spaces to compare.

After drawing each shape, check its spacing on each end, and its spacing vs the previous array element

Then you repeat (placing an array of objects into one or more of the shapes you just drew, and so on ..)

Things to keep in mind:

Avoid crossing lines. Try to make your lines stop exactly where they started, and strictly avoid colliding with the shape you are placing or a neighbouring array element.

Fill with simple shapes. All the shapes depicted here are essentially distorted boxes or ellipses.

Each 'array' should ideally feel like it 'flows' in a uniform direction. If it doesn't, you have probably got the spacing and hence the angles wrong.

Avoid the reduction of spacing if the outer shape's surface feels like it's "turning away". This exercise is about consistent measurement, not about perspective.

Shapes are 'good enough' if the spacing checks out on all four sides. This drill is not about drawing perfect circles or straight lines, either.. or even about drawing "shapes of the same size"; it's about having accurate spaces.

Make sure to draw arrays of different scales, and minimize use of zooming/rotation if applicable. The exercise is structured so you can naturally progress from creating relatively large spaces around relatively large objects, to increasingly smaller spaces around relatively small objects.

[pintafema]

[pintafema]

The urge to ‘rush ahead’ in art

If you draw any amount, you will know what I mean here: the idea that a good piece of art can spring nearly fully-fledged from your pencil/stylus/instrument of choice. It tempts all artists, and generally the supposed finished piece of art suffers as a result.

I've been thinking about this, and I think it arises from an unhelpful view of drawings. Drawings or studies, as distinct from art (a finished artefact).

What I'm thinking here, is that a roughly executed drawing is not bad, and a cleanly executed drawing is not good. Obviously, we would prefer the latter, all things being equal; but the purpose of drawings is not to be impressive at all; it is industrial -- for the artist to understand what they are drawing, and encode it into a form that they can later use readily.

Therefore, a good drawing or study is one that communicates the facts you observed in a definitive way. It does not have to be clean, just informative. Scientific, but informal.

Aside from the urge to rush ahead, why is this relevant? Time spent making one cleaner study could be spent making three less clean studies, and IME doing more studies of the same thing (turning it over and permuting it mentally) is a better way to understand that thing than doing one very finished and precise study.

As Loomis says "Success lies primarily in capturing the big relationships"; details can be acquired from anywhere, but what makes a subject feel like itself is the big relationships, which are understood by testing and re-testing our understanding of the structure of a thing.

Finally, there is also the element of choice: making many studies naturally will vary the presentation of the same elements. This gives you a stronger basis for intelligently considering each aspect of your subject, whether you want to exaggerate, minimize, or remove it.