Accidental Seurat

 

 I was experimenting with filters in Procreate using some old artworks and accidentally discovered this Georges Seurat effect. It was achieved by applying colored noise to the image and then setting it to Divide. There might have been some other steps too but this is what I mostly remember.

CSP diary #4

I resumed progress later in the evening.

• Still haven’t figured out how to change color on multiple layers at once, so I took a different approach.

• Gradient adjustment layer using sepia preset

• Discovered various color palette presets

• Selected four hues to use for the intermediate palette 

• Colored over the sepia gradient map, layer set to Hue

• Toned down the Hue layer so the sepia still shows

• How can I distribute the saturation? Everything has the same intensity of color.

• Shower thought: Make a copy of the grayscale layer, and convert brightness to saturation. 

• Black = Grayscale. White = Full saturation.

• I have only pondered this in theory, but have yet to put it into practice. I feel like it could work, though!

• Reduce friction as much as possible

• I keep getting stopped every so often because I don’t know what to do or where to go. 

• In particular, merging layers: there are separate keyboard shortcuts depending on if you’re merging clipped layers or grouping a bunch of layers into one.

• I don’t like having to press Ctrl+Shift+E. I just want Ctrl+E for either of those actions like I do in SAI2.

• Use more stylized colors. 

• The colors are too intense on the eyes. Reduce the saturation but retain the stylized appearance.

• The more stylized it gets, the less room there is for “realistic” shading, but I can play with that.

• I’m not yet sure how I want to shade this drawing. Stylized colors call for a different methodology that is not yet clear to me.

CSP diary #3

• Setting up the base colors

• Figure out how to handle the fill tool better because it’s not getting everything. 

• Not getting into colors just yet. For now I just focused on values.

• Is there a way to modify an entire folder’s worth of contents all at once? In SAI2 I can select a layer folder to change the color/brightness of everything inside. I can’t seem to do that here.

• When establishing base colors, I lower the opacity of the lineart for easier visibility. I forgot to return it to 100% but I do like this more subtle look.

• Brushes

• Slowly getting acquainted with brush config.

• There is a scatter brush tool in CSP that I haven’t checked out yet. Can’t wait to mess around with that.

• Workflow

• Configured some key shortcuts to match my SAI2 settings. 

• Configure workspace so it’s easier to keep track of all the different brushes. They are on opposite sides of the screen

• Use shift+spacebar to rotate the canvas without having to switch to a special tool (R key)

Emily eyes

 

Diary entries here. Writing about my progress in between sessions has helped me stay focused on my original goals.

Emily eyes diary

As of November 25, 2022

• Borrowing from artworks I saw on Pixiv

• Spontaneous drawing

• Underwater lighting

• Glowing eyes like literal gemstones

• Transparent and prism-like

• Eyes are focal point

• Focus on technique and aesthetic

• Meaningless is not a bad thing

• Message/meaning takes the back seat

• Art style

• Exaggerated, non representational colors

• Maintain art style that balances anime and cartoon

• She looks so anime here. How can I find balance?

• Add more cartoony elements

• Exaggerated eyelashes

• Nose is main indicator of anime or cartoon style

• I feel like the nose has to be anime-style for the lighting trick to work. Is there a workaround???

• I love the huge eyes. I don’t care that they’re “out of style”

• Details

• Delicate details on face

• Thick outer contours like a protective casing with finer linework inside

• Remember attention to detail in my old artworks

• Details are casual and sketchy. It doesn’t have to be meticulously precise

• Remember the Big Picture!

• Inspirations

• Cartoony playful artworks for color inspiration

• Art nouveau for the flower

• Recent Pixiv art I saved

• Things to fix or consider

• Should be obvious she is wearing a hood

• Fine tune the flower

• Shadows of leaves on face?

As of November 27, 2022

• Loving the eyes so far

• There was some struggle but now I have an idea for the streamlined process

• The outer ring is blurry and saturated

• The inner ring is a black outline, creating a contrasting border between the iris and the sclera

• Next time (not here) I will set the eyes to Multiply so it retains the transparency of a cut gemstone

• Face

• Too anime. Needs more cartoon qualities to the art style

• Reinforce the outlines of the eyes

• Lips are too red. Make them closer to skin tone but more saturated

• Make the freckles more obvious. It is one of her charm points

• Hair

• The hair should fade to a lighter color in less important areas

• Add specks of light to her hair

• Glowing individual strands

• Hood

• The hood should have a softer texture

• It should be more obvious that Emily is wearing a hood

• Add sharpening contours: two parallel lines consisting of a very dark value, and a very light one- to bring out the desired shapes

• The hair ornament should have a hint of color that stands out but doesn’t compete for attention

• Background

• Background is too light compared to character’s face

• How will I combine the background painting with the character?

• Add hints of green and yellow

• Foliage

• The flowers should be more defined. They just look like flower-shaped blobs. They’re supposed to be hydrangeas

• Doesn’t need to be meticulously rendered, but just enough to be recognizable

• Add stronger saturations in important areas

• Add extra lighting to the leaves and flowers

• Add light lines to the leaves (Insp: Wakaba-chan)

• Viewing the artwork with fresh eyes

• Grayscale

• Upside down

• Backwards

• From very, very far away

• Get outside feedback

• Any combination of these

• Observe what you notice first

• What will you remember when you picture this image in the mind?

As of December 1, 2022

• I had fun at first but now it’s getting overworked

• Spinning my wheels. I’m mentally spent

• Forgetting about the big picture

• Hoping to call it a day next time I work on it

• What if I traced over the picture and colored it all over again? But I want to be done with this. I’m torn.

• There is a disconnect in the colors

• The colors got too washed out

• The hydrangeas don’t pop

• Not a fan of the leaves

• Make lips darker again

• Too much emphasis on the hood

• Hood should be less intense luminosity

• Shift emphasis to frame the face

• Reduce high contrast of hood and shadow

• Other stuff

• Crystal coloring should be fuzzier

• Remember the hair piece

• Later that day, I opened the image in Procreate and kept tinkering with the colors until I was happy. I will use it as a guide for the next time I work on Emily. 

• The lighting is noticeably darker, making for a more dramatic picture. 

• I want to add a grain and chromatic aberration effect at the end.

• It would be cool to add a light ray effect.

Declared complete on December 3, 2022

• Color key

• Blue = Goals for next time

• Purple = Things I like

• Red = Things I regret

• I generally like how it came out, but there is still room for improvement

• If there was nothing to change, art would not be very fun. It is all about experimentation.

• Always looking forward to the next iteration and how I can make things better.

• Remember to look at the big picture

• Struggles

• I struggled to get the atmosphere to my liking, and a result, the image got deep-fried.

• I like her hair but after the post processing, much of that detail has been lost.

• Effects

• Chromatic aberration is overdone in some places, especially the hair

• I like the subtle noise effect

• Noise and chromatic aberration can work well when used SPARINGLY

• Backdrop

• The background is overworked

• It looks too busy 

• Used tricks to get overlapping to work

• This obsessive attitude is not helpful when I’m in art mode

• Some exploration is okay but I kept going until I mentally wore myself out

• Creating and analyzing are different processes and should be kept separate

• I did for the most part but kept going after I should have stopped. I ended up spinning my wheels

• Art style

• Art style is too anime and “realistic” in terms of color and shading.

• I want it to look more like a cartoon

• Symbolic representation

• Get bold with elements of design

• Gemstone eyes are a good step in that direction

• Colors and shading

• Underwater lighting was borrowed from Pixiv

• Aim for more stylized and non-representational colors

• Be more limited and deliberate in color choice and shading

• The drawing itself

• Wide variation in line weight. like stained glass

• Thick outer contours case delicate lines within

• Contributes to the cartoon effect

• Rely more heavily on shapes and molding features to fit them