Getting outside of my comfort zone and learning a more painterly style has been one of the best practices I have started in my time here.
Difficult? Absolutely. But after years of only being comfortable within the lines, I knew that if I wanted to see real progress, I would have to suffer through what I ought to have learned when I first started digital art a few years ago: lighting, shadows, and texture. Real texture, not just hatching. (Although hatching is still my favorite.) So, for my first official post, I want to document some of my progress I have made in my digital painting class. That means letting you behold the cubes. Yes, we worked on material cubes for three weeks. I’m going to “squarely” face the common fear of sharing imperfect art, and display them all.
Week 1: Starting off rough
This week was my first real experience fully rendering materials digitally. There is a huge learning curve going from traditional media to digital, even more than what I was expecting. The perspective on the brick cube was frustrating (isometric perspective is unusual in the first place) and the rocks ended up being more enjoyable to paint. That one ended up being my favorite, and it was very fun to add the moss. The gold, however…it turned out looking like a block of Velveeta, and I was glad to just be done with it.
Week 2: Leather, Wood, and the Orange of Pain and Suffering
This week I became at least slightly more confident in my rendering skills. I added some (admittedly messy) cast shadows, and found some great reference images. The leather cube is my favorite, especially since I was delighted to find that thousands of real-life leather cubes in the form of ottomans existed in real life. Drawing with a real image to look at helps the learning progress speed up. The wooden cube was also fun to paint. I was especially proud of improving my perspective compared to last week’s brick cube. The orange, on the other hand, drove nearly everyone in the class to insanity, including myself. The skin texture, the sub-surface scattering, everything about the essence of an orange was just not meant to be forced into a cube. And yet, we all persevered. Thankfully, there will never be another occasion where I will have to realistically render an angular orange.
Week 3: Actually kinda fun?
For the final week, we focused on rendering all transparent or semi-transparent objects. I was expecting this to be the most difficult, but it ended up being the most enjoyable. The candle cube is my all-time favorite from this project! I loved painting the melted wax in the center and on the sides. Learning to add a “glowing” effect to these cubes was also a process I enjoyed. Admittedly, the cork on the potion bottle needs a lot more rendering, and I see this now that my eyes have had a break from it. Overall, however, this was my favorite challenge round.
I hope you enjoyed seeing a novice’s progress in this three-week challenge. If you are a traditional artist who is curious about digital rendering, know that it can be frustrating at times. However, the freedom and flexibility it gives you to experiment with are unmatched. I encourage you to push past the discomfort and dive in! Or maybe I just want you to have to paint a cube-shaped orange like I did.
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