Achieving Realism

Supernaut76 · Joined: 10 Jul 2009 Posts: 1

I'm trying to get a realistic glossy effect on the body of an insect as well as getting effects like glass and porcelain. So far I'm just painting on layers of paint from dark to light and adding white highlights at the end. I wonder whether anyone has any ideas about how to do this better?

gggraph · Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2010 6:50 pm Post subject: Re - Achieving Realism

The best thing to do is find examples of shiny things and study them closely - by which I mean observing what it really looks like rather than what you think it looks like.

- I'm not being condescending there: human brains are very good at interpreting massive amounts of contradictory information to arrive at a conclusion. As a realist artist, you have to turn some of that off.

For instance, a shiny object will have specular highlights in the direction of each light source. It will also tend to reflect some of the surrounding environment. It will have some shading (modelling) due to ambient light. It may be in shadow, which will change the tones as well.

Here's one I prepared earlier...

Of course, this doesn't mean I can paint it either...

Cheers

Grant

lizel · Joined: 27 Aug 2010 Posts: 12

Thanks gggraph
That's good advice. Something I needed to be reminded of as well.

xx Very Happy

xx