Live Stream - Lighting Demo!

[Music] hey everybody Aaron Blais here and it's Thursday so that means we're doing a new livestream and I got a new camera angle because this is my I've been shooting some new videos for my acting for animation course and I didn't want to mess up my camera so I'm talking to you over here now so last week we did a request day and so today I did this I did an image the other day or yesterday I'll show it to you in just a minute but I did this cougar image where he's holding this little mouse and I tried to do some dramatic lighting on it and I had a lot of people ask me about the lighting and so I thought I would do a stream today talking about lighting and when I think about with lighting and that sort of thing and and you know bounced light direct light shadows all that kind of stuff and just kind of give you my input on that so I thought that would be kind of fun and also I want to remind you that in the next day or so we're gonna be taking pre-orders for a brand new course that we have coming out on creature art teacher calm and it's plein air painting with Ronnie Willeford he covers oil painting and watercolor painting he shows you how to build your own push shot box which is basically your own box to bring out into the field he teaches you how to gesso boards and most importantly he teaches you how to paint how to wear those how to look at color how to apply color warms cools all that kind of stuff all plein air painting and that comes out I think that's actually coming out next week I think is when we plan on having it come out but we are taking pre-orders starting today I believe it by the end of the day so look for that at creature art teacher com and then also in the next couple of weeks hopefully by Thanksgiving if not earlier I'm going to have my course on acting for animation now I've already covered a little bit of what I think about in acting for animation in my actual in my original animation course but I wanted to do something that was a little more elaborate that focused solely on acting for animation this is gonna be for a little bit more advanced intermediate to advanced animators but it's my thoughts on how I approach shots animated shots with characters how do I bring them to life how do I get them to act and so I cover a whole bunch of stuff on there so I'm in the middle of creating that right now so look for that but anyway that's kind of the housekeeping stuff I wanted to cover and like I said today we are going to cover lighting which I really enjoy because that really gives your illustration some drama and mood and all kinds of cool stuff so we're gonna cover that today but as usual I've got my trusty sidekick in the Coco pilot seat Dustin say hi Dustin and so we got Dustin here and I've got my business partner Nick Burch and he's in Sarasota Florida about a hundred and sixty miles away from here and he's going to be fielding questions as well so hopefully between the three of us we'll be able to get to a lot of your questions and and and also I'm going to start doing a demo so while we jump over to the main screen what I do with my glasses here we are and I got a hydrate really quick remember don't don't draw don't draw without being properly hydrated stay thirsty my friends yes and and so here is this image right here this is one that I did yesterday it's this cougar I've got a lot of reference this past summer we went out to a refuge that's got a bunch of North American big-game predators and other big game and they have this these Cougars or I had a cougar they do have a couple of them but they brought this one guy out for us and we shot a lot of photos and so I've got a ton of reference and I found this one photo that I really like to the way the cougar was looking into the dirt and stuff and I added this deer mouse because it felt like there should be something there and I want to create this kind of this illustration where you don't quite know what's gonna go on but I also really manipulated the lighting the lighting is very different from the actual photo and and like I said a lot of people were kind of wondering how the heck do I you know approach my lighting and so I want to talk to you guys about that today and I like to do a lot of stage lighting and and what I'm talking about I really try to manipulate lighting so that it's really focusing on areas of interest you'll notice how in the background here I push things in the shadow I added shadow in the foreground I've added even darker shadow behind the deer mouse to get the deer mouse to to really stand out and create an area of contrast so the eye goes there and and then also pops between the face of the cougar and the deer mouse and that's really where I wanted the attention to be and I used lighting to do that to achieve it so what I'm gonna do today I'm gonna move this out of the way let me move this up here well actually let me shrink it up and what I want to do today is I'm gonna do another cougar figure we'll keep it in the same subject and here's a piece of reference the same cougar the same guy but I purposely I picked a really cool pose for as well I really like how he's kind of intent on something and he's moving forward he's kind of stalking but I purposely picked something that's all in all in shadow his whole body is in shadow and we're gonna manipulate that and we're gonna add areas of highlights or sunlight that are going to be washing across him to draw our eye I want to do something across his face I maybe part of his shoulder and then the rest I'm going to keep in shadow and it's really it's all about manipulating the I try getting it to go where you want it to go and also to create drama I want to create warms and cools and bright spots and dark spots and areas of interests and areas of quiet and you know try to get this balance so that we have a well you know a nice dramatic piece of art so I'm gonna move this up to my other screen up here you know you know and there we go so I like that here's a document I just started and I think with that now that I've gotten all the talking out of the way Dustin I think we are ready to do some questions if you are ready get a drink again lady in art studio I don't know art studio so I don't have any tips on that I unfortunately sorry but I am assuming that what I'm going to show you today will be Universal when I when I approach my lighting I'm really approaching it from real world thinking of it in real world think of warms and cools and that sort of thing and that's really it doesn't matter what the software is that kind of information that will go from whether you're painting you know traditionally an oil paint or watercolor or whatever software you were using so that's what we're gonna do today the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to get rid of that white and go with this mid-tone I always like to start with that mid-tone gray so that I can judge my values light and dark and now I'm just gonna grab a brush right here all right yeah hell yeah and start drawing now I might caricature this guy a little bit too just to have a little fun with it but uh I'm just you'll see me looking up because I'm looking at that reference whoops might want to start with a dark line I'm starting with the same one the same color let's do this again all right here we go you're awfully quiet over there dust but I'll gotcha Dustin's currently trying to do something over there this is gonna be daylight but he's sick he's gonna be partly in shadow and partly in light but I'm only gonna let the light hit the areas where I want the viewer to be looking so I'm gonna create drama that way right now I'm just really focused on trying to get a good sketch in and I want to make sure that my big cat our cat here that we're drawing is a nice accurate drawing now like I said I was thinking about maybe pushing the caricature I'm not sure I might keep them a little bit more real let's see maybe I'll come in here and play with these brows a little bit amen my real the what now say it again oh oh oh in this actual studio oh I'm sorry well that that's that's wait if you're talking you know first of all if you can get into a studio that has north light that's really always the best because north light is not direct light and so you're getting nice balanced light coming in but you're not getting anything direct southern light you know it's probably one of the worst because the Sun beats in all day long through the windows and it's very hot and it's gonna heat up the studio but Northlight North lay is always the best if you can get that so here I'm just trying to try to make sure all my perspectives are right cheekbones I'm gonna make sure I'm getting cheekbones correct I want to make sure this Anatomy is working correct that's actually a really great way of thinking about it that's the directly that's a really great way of thinking about direct light in case you didn't hear what Dustin said think of light as a as a as a hose that spring water but in this case it's spraying light and that the hose is only gonna you know the light is only gonna be were those the water or the light hits directly and that's that's a great way of explaining it I might borrow that but there's more to it than that because there's bounce light there is reflecting you know reflected light and and so there's a you know there's a fair amount of just a little bit more to think about and along with light temperature and bounce light temperature in shadow temperature and that sort of thing and that's what we're gonna we're gonna talk about that a little bit more today here I want to so I'm really roughing this in very quickly and I want to make sure that all this is coming together in the right way this ear is probably a little too there we go I know it I wanted to change my eraser well my favorite place is the wild so you know drawing drawing big cats you know live in Africa yeah it doesn't beat you know nothing beats that so but obviously we can't all go to Africa and I can't always be there but there's a couple of there's a place called big cat habitat and Sarasota Florida that I really really love these are rescued animals lots of tigers big cats that they've rescued over the years and are keeping you know on display now they do they have got several lighters actually and for those of you that don't know what a liger is it's the it's a mix between a lion and a tiger and and it's interesting with laggers the the gene that that controls their growth that stops them growing that's turned off and so they don't stop growing and they'll get up over a thousand pounds they just continue to grow throughout their life and they're absolutely monstrous yeah the yeah they really do become prehistoric-looking they've got they've got a giant I think it's 900 pounds they've got one a big cat habitat and he's his head is you know just freaking massive oh he's just he's giant no Disney is not in Northern California Disney is in Burbank California which is Los Angeles no Southern Southern California I mean you only lived there for six years so I mean it's no big deal this year a female this is the difference between wrong email or you know this this is a male cat a male cat male mountain lions tend to be heavier bodied they're bigger and more muscled he'll him more heavily muscled this guy is his name is smokey he's a pretty good shape so I'm just gonna bring that foot back there just bring that tail back I'm just gonna let this foot just kind of disappear into the darkness into the darkness well it really it really a great way of doing it I want to I think I'm gonna do something like this I want to kind of have him break the borders um yeah I think I like that negative space it really helps to set up still lives that helps but really just going out and painting from life painting landscapes painting whatever it might be painting from life you're gonna see real life lighting situations and you will learn that way you can't help but learn when you do that and it all will kind of become clearer it'll start you'll start it'll start rubbing off on you I should say and I mean just a little bit and so and for me I mean the where I've always learned it is literally just painting from life going out and seeing you know seeing what's going on in the real world and that's that's how I've learned oh I don't shoot sorry Nick hold on hold on let me bring up [Music] let me move this up I got my Facebook up there we go I'm gonna bring that up here and let's go to bookmarks deep thoughts of Nick Burch deep thoughts with Jack Handey twitch I'm 35 years old do you think it's too late for thinking about being a professional painter well no I don't think so I mean if you're if you're a good artist then I don't think it I don't think it's too late no and then I've got a youtube question how do you warm up or do you warm up I don't really warm up anymore I just dive in and really I mean yeah I'm kind of I guess but I don't know I I have a system of drawing now that I just know I start very rough I guess the rough working roughly is my warmup I guess and that's what it's become anyway and and that's that's pretty much all you know that's my whole approach nowadays I get up now that I've got Nick up here I've got to make my oops there we go my cat my cat there we go I got to make him a little smaller that's my reference reference reference put him off to the side there we go now we're good so I like I like that breaking the borders like that that feels interesting to me and what I might do so let's bring that over I want to it feels like the move to look at the move tool oh that's weird it feels like I want to have a little tension along the side and in that space but I feel like I want to get this I this area of interest I kind of want to get it right in the middle everything else kind of off so it's you're not gonna feel that Center but I want to have that kind of 1/3 down and then kind of right in the middle it always feels like a good target for me when I'm doing my compositions with something right you have a you know a face to look at I don't have grunge I have debris like dust and rain and snow brushes and things like that I don't have any grunge brushes per se I've got them on my website yeah I mean I've got a whole bunch of them at creature art teacher calm there we go if you if you go to creature art teacher calm you'll find my brush packs there Tom did you put it up there did you pull it up there you go aah creature art teacher dot-com it's okay so there's our very quick sketch like so now I want to tell you that down a little bit so I'm going to knock that back but I'm not gonna tie it down I'm not going to go really dark all over the place cuz I'm I'm gonna try a new method which is I'm just gonna pull out some areas that just need a little bit more definition that might be a little darker like in this area along the nose I do have to increase the size on this guy just a little bit just a torch just a slight touch uh periscope question how do I stay motivated to keep making art when you're in a slump you know what um I don't get into slumps I do sometimes I do sometimes get to where I'm not sure what to do because I do I try to do art every day and that helps because because I do it every day it keeps me from getting into a slump and it keeps me motivated because first of all I just love making art I always have and always will and so I never I never get bored I just don't so my recommendation is to do it as often as you can because the more you do it the easier it comes and then it's it's almost like talking you know you just you get this there's an ease to it because you're gonna you'll have a certain approach that you'll do everyday and so because I do it as often as I can I have a system that just allows me to kind of ease into what it is that I'm going to do just you don't really know what to do anymore you're not inspired yeah sort of like an artist block but for me I just I don't kit I don't really get artist block that much I mean there's certain subjects now that I'm older that I just know that I love and I'll just keep doing them such as animals and wildlife and character type work animation that's another thing if you can vary up what you do that's gonna help as well you know I do as you guys know I do I'm not just a painter but I do you know I do character design I'm an animator I you know I I was lucky in the sense that I started out as an illustrator before I was an animator and so I have you know over the years I've been able to learn different disciplines that allow me to kind of jump around a little bit flip around jump around after they go to bed I went through this after they go to bed you know when Dustin was a little squirt yes your there was a time then Dustin was small and cute he was cute and you're kind of cute now you're so appealing hey you're very appealing you're appealing but um anyway there was a time and when I was doing a lot of gallery work and so I would get home from work this is back in the days when I was working on a Latin and Beauty and the Beast and you know Lion King and that sort of thing and I would you know we'd get dinner cooked and get that you know play with the kids I'd play with him and his sister and then once they went to bed they went to bed at like 8 o'clock I got on the cannot on the computer there was no computer I got on my easel and started painting at 9 o'clock I treated it like a job I painted it and I started at 9 o'clock every night and I would paint until midnight one o'clock sometimes 2 o'clock sometimes 3 o'clock if I was really into the painting and and I just did it that way and I got I've got a surprising amount of work done at just three or four or five hours a day I got a actually got a lot done but it's just being really disciplined about it you you know you treat it like a job you know you have time with the kids and the kids go down and then you get to work and that's just and you do it every day and I would do it and I like I said treating it like a job I would do it only during the week the weekends were mine in the family and then you know Monday through Friday is when I would paint at night and and I did it that way and it worked it worked really well no I'm very careful not to I've had I've had many Cintiq sover the years and and I've been using sin teks for about 13 years and I've never damaged them not once No No in the matter of fact the very first T Cintiq I bought 13 years ago I've still got it still works well got it yeah Oh YouTube says ah Dustin is so cute look it doesn't portray tup he got you portray heat up Dustin is so cute you have no idea I'm sitting next to him I'm sitting next to him I feel the cute vibe all the time yes Oh Dustin you are so cute yes he is he just won't admit it and he's you know what he's a really nice guy and he's available he's on the market [Laughter] so I'm just tying things down right now just hitting certain areas and I like having a nice strong drawing before I start to paint so this you know even though we're probably gonna be thirty minutes into this stream before I actually start painting I like having like I said having that strong base to me a good drawing is like good architectural plans when you're building a house and you know once that drawing is in there then it really guides me for the rest of the painting and that's you know some people don't have don't like to work that way they like to kind of let the painting like to go really loose and build it up which is very very much a viable way of doing it that's just not my way of doing it because I've always from a traditional standpoint I've always started with you know the drawing first and then worked over the top of that so I've let that carry into my digital painting yeah I mean painting fur is not painting individual hairs it's painting the shapes that the fur is making up and then you find areas to break it up a little bit and then that will allow you to give the illusion of fur we're gonna be painting for today on this and I'll show you what I'm talking about now granted this is not big long bushy shaggy fur this is gonna be tight cropped fur but we'll still get a sense for it you got a YouTube question this is Erin can you pull up a childhood picture of Dustin oh god yes Oh where's that one where's that one of you laying down you got to pull that up pull it up on your phone I know it's on your phone yes and I'm going to show you I'll show you on the camera yeah you know you're gonna like super cute I just I don't have any way of pulling up here I don't have anything of you on my computer right here but I know you have somebody on your phone or on your Facebook Aaron just turned into the matchmaker did I oh the matchmaker from Milan I actually animated some of her yeah I animated the stuff where she sits down on the hot on the hot tea and she's jumping up and down and screaming and crashes and you know smashes the the table and all that I animated all that alright so here we have a rough draw it's not rough we have the tied down drawing and you can see it took us 29 minutes we did it in 29 minutes actually less than that because I talked for a little bit so you know if you just get in there and start drawing you can get it done relatively quick so here and I like I said I really like this pose now I'm going to create a layer underneath the drawing layer it's the two drawing layers and this is where I'm going to start creating my local color now if I'm painting traditionally excuse me if I'm painting traditionally I can't really do this the same way but I'm still thinking of light and shadow and all that but right now what I want to do is is put in local color and I'm really gonna start with I'm gonna start with kind of the main kind of brown gray of the whole cat and just paint it over the whole thing and then we're gonna we're gonna get into kind of specializing areas ZBrush we are going to do ZBrush is that was that some question right yes but it's not gonna be taught by me I don't know I don't know ZBrush one of my great friends Toni Cipriano he we worked together at Disney he did all of our maquettes for brother bear he did a lot of the maquettes for Mulan maquette maquettes for those of you that don't know our you know little sculptures of the characters that are made and 2d you know for the 2d animators to use as reference nothing can you hand me that Nala maquette there we go yeah try not to bump that and then go to this camera up here so this is this right here is a maquette so this is one that was done of Nala friend of mine but this is so that's a maquette so Tony did all of that and he's going to he teaches both traditional he teaches both traditional sculpting and ZBrush sculpting and so we're gonna get him to be doing a course for us on ball ZBrush and traditional so that's gonna be really cool I gotta go to hit this camera and so let me just turn this sideways and blow this up I don't know how how well can you see it dusting cuz I can't say any clear that's dusted 1991 look how cute he was oh my god he was cute and then and then I don't that was 2013 that was five years ago yeah he went from that did that to cut to your camera so there's that and now back that how did that happen I don't understand no all right go back to the desktop over here this one right here got you so what I'm doing now is I'm just laying in this initial color and open oh here we go how do I do that how do I open that in a new tab or actually I can just drag it into Photoshop there yes so somehow on another Nick had this photo Nick found it there he is look at that cute little son of a gun so this is our first house and you I remember you used to lay on this tile because it was nice and cool and like I can still see the little ant bites you had on you kids used to get into the fire ants out back all the time when you're a little kid oh my gosh what a cute little kid yeah that was Dustin and here's a good example of lighting look at that you can see the lighting on his little ribs can't see his ribs now [Laughter] like father like son okay back to back to our cat back to like when you're 12 13 your hair started changing alright so now that I've got kind of this base color in here I'm going to lock it because we've got a nice silhouette and so now I can't paint outside the color I've already established and what I want to do actually I don't want to I don't want to lock that yet because I want to get that tail and you got any more questions Dustin there we go so now I'm gonna lock it and let's go I'm gonna go a little warmer in our local color keep in mind I'm just painting local color I've got this I'm gonna go a little gray you literally just try different styles you just said it you got to try you've got to you've got to be disciplined to break the style that you're in and try different ones and that's not always easy but if you study other styles if you study what other people do you know so much there we go then you'll start to understand what it is that makes a certain style look the way it does and and then you'll be able to emulate that yes I helped to animate jasmine mark ken was the supervisor of jasmine Raja was just a small role so I had animate our head Raja animated fairly quickly and so then I went on to help with jasmine and I also did a little bit of Aladdin next question do I do I ever make it out to see tnx yes and I will be there this year I'm out there for the last two years I've been going and we will be out there again this year we're gonna have a panel matter of fact they're doing a panel on the 25th anniversary of Mulan and I'm part of that panel yeah it's gonna be fun yeah that's gonna be very cool I'm moving into my first art studio at the moment what light bulbs do you use for traditional painting I use both warm and cool so fluorescent and incandescent something that's going to give you a balance between warming cool or you can get the bulbs that are considered like they mark them as sunlight bulbs or and you know anything if you go to Home Depot or wherever that sells a nice variety of bulbs find a place that sells you know some are day light bulbs because that's that's what I like to work under obviously yeah I want them where I'm gonna be working and I try to set them up where they're not the I'm trying to make sure that they're on though I'm left-handed so I try to make sure that most of my lighting is on the right side so that my my left hand is not casting a shadow across what I'm when I'm creating I want the shadow to be cast away and so that's something to think about as well so I'm just going through and hitting very loosely some of the lighter areas that make up the fur on the cat and you'll notice that I'm going very very loose and I'm not going pure white either I want to leave I want to make sure that I have enough room to go lighter even though it looks like I'm going really white in some of these areas I'm not actually going white it's actually come down you know I've still got room to go actually probably could go a little darker right now I'm using this this is a homemade brush that it's kind of this pastel chalky brush that I use this is a brush that a friend of mine gave me so I don't sell it on my site because it's it's his brush but brushes like this are fairly easy to make and you know I've got tutorials on both YouTube and on my website as part of my digital painting course that teach you how to create your own brushes is it possible for pro to tell a person good work see that again is it possible well I mean if the work is great then yeah maybe I can't tell if it's as if it's self they're self-taught if that's the question you know for me a lot of times I can tell self-taught artists only because a lot of self-taught artists and I'm not saying everybody so don't don't get up in arms but a lot of self-taught artists are very they they tried very much to be photo real and a lot of copying of you know instead of and there's not a lot of stylization but I'm just saying that's my experience of you know working with having worked with self-taught artists in the past now I'm sure there's a lot of great self-taught artists out there that are more well-rounded than that and so so like I said don't you know it's just it's just my experience so here you can see I'm going through oh here we go got a couple more questions come in I just got my snow bear t-shirt and I love it awesome I'm glad you got it I'm glad you love it I really like that shirt I don't even have one I got to get one for myself and I got a youtube question do I think that art animation college is worth the investment now with how accessible this information is on the internet you know let's talk about that for a little bit because I actually think that's a great question first of all no one can answer that except for you but I do think that at colleges art colleges private colleges have gotten obscenely and I mean it when I say obscene have gotten obscenely expensive when you're shelling out over the course of four years upwards of a hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand dollars to go to school [Music] there's no good excuse for that I just I don't see how anyone should have to pay even if you are going into a career I don't I don't understand how anyone can pay that I really feel like private colleges have a hand in bankrupting a generation before they ever get started and so that being said if you have the means to do it and you learn better with other people than I think yes college is a great opportunity for you to do that if you are able to self learn and you don't have the means I think YouTube websites like my own school ISM proko I think these are all really viable alternatives to going to college and I would recommend them every day I just I think we're living in an age now where you can get in a lot of cases I think you can get higher quality instruction off of the internet because you're getting people if you look if you search correctly you're getting people that are still in the industry or have been you know tops and they're in their field in the industry and they are there they're sharing their knowledge this is something that motivated me when I started doing this I I felt like there is not high enough grade teaching out there I think Ringling has you know Ringling is a school that I went to I think they have some good some really good teaching there but I feel that it could be better overall and so it was something that I felt you know I'm stealing the Indian industry I'm still you know deeply involved but I also want to share my knowledge and so that's what I'm doing there's a follow-up question as a self-taught artist what can I do to become a more rounded artist well it's it's just it's your kind of answering your own question try to be more rounded and look at look at the classics look at look at what other artists are doing be influenced by that but really look at classical art and and that's where I learned a lot especially artists that went outside and learned from life look to nature don't draw cartoons you know per se cartoons are a stylisation of the real world so draw the real world and then you can stylize later on on your own you know a lot of people love to draw anime and they always ask me you know what do I think of their work and I'm looking at just anime drawings and and I'll probably get kicked back from this comment now because I always get kicked back from this but my my common is anime is fantastic and I know I'm probably not answering directly what your question is but I do want to get this off my chest anime is wonderful but it once again it's a stylisation of the real world and I really recommend people to put down the anime and just broaden their horizons and try to learn different styles and learn their own style find their own style and then come back to it and then you might actually have something to offer that that genre because I really do think that it's it's something that will stifle you if you don't break out of it early enough because I see a lot of good artists that all they've done since they were kids is anime and there they have good potential I should say but they they they're stuck they don't know how to see their work in any other way and it gets and it's and it's tough and I'll tell you if especially if you're looking for a job as an artist or especially in the animation industry unless you're working in Japan or someplace else in Asia which you know a lot of people aren't you're gonna have a hard time getting a job with a portfolio full of anime and that's just that's not me being a jerk that's just the reality so you know try to try to be you know going back to your question how do you you know how do you become a war well-rounded self-taught artist that's the thing you you know look at different styles look at different people look at what it is what is it that they do to create the art that they do I'm always even now at 50 years old and haven't been a professional artist for 30 years old for for 30 years I'm still looking at artists that really move me and I and I and I look at it to find what it is that why is it moving me why is it making me feel the way I do and I try to emulate it and my work because I want to try to get that same kind of influence I guess and what that does is you might not end up copying that character that person you because you don't want to do that but you'll it'll it'll shape you in a different way that's completely unique and that I like there's a long winded answer how do you like that Dustin how do you like them apples oh that was great that's great all right I got another I got another YouTube question up here please any information on the acting for animation course yes I do have information on that I'm very active in shooting the course right now I've spent about a month and a half just creating the animated shots for it and now I'm going through and actually recording the videos and talking about what I animated and what I was thinking and I'm also going to be doing some live demos so I'm hoping to have it done by Thanksgiving which in the United States is the third Thursday of every November so late November I'm hoping to have that done and so look for it then I don't know if it's going to be live stream I'm assuming if they do live streams at CTN then I'm assuming that this will be live stream but don't take my word for it yes okay so I'm gonna jump off the questions just really quick and I'm going to actually I'm I can do one more question because I'm going to do a little bit of background color I've got a lot of see there's a lot of scenes I really loved for different reasons so I can't say any one scene there's favorite scenes that I've done you know the sequence where Belle and beast are arguing with each other where she's trying to bandage him there in front of the fireplace and he goes wow that hurt and they getting this big argument about how she shouldn't have been in the West Wing and all that kind of stuff and for me that was a huge sequence because of how juicy it was how the animator Glen Keane who is my mentor who gave me that sequence to animate yeah he trusted me with it you know that was a big deal for me and you know so that to me is probably still my favorite sequence that I've ever animated just because of the sentiment sentimental sentimental reasons and it really because I was able to kind of shine in it it opened up a lot of opportunity for me and the rest of my career so there's that so that was one so I'm just gonna do I'm just so what I've done is I've laid in some local color on him right now and you can see it's all kind of very bla but I'm not worried about that now I want to start I'm going to lay in the the shadow shapes now this is where we're going to start getting a sense of the drama so do you normally start with the base colors yes when I'm painting digitally yes the question is do I do I start with the base color which for me is local color and then add shadow and add highlights yes that's what I do when I paint digitally I don't do that when I paint traditionally obviously because you can't really I can do that and I do kind of build it up that way sort of but when I'm painting traditionally I'm blocking in my shadow areas blocking in my light areas and kind of building it up that way in this case because I can do layers in Photoshop I start with a with my local color and then throw in shadow and light so I'm gonna go ahead and do shadow right now so I've created a layer on top and I've set it to multiply and I want to go with a cool cool color I'm afraid it might go a little bit too gray but I'm gonna use it anyway and we'll just see where it goes and like I said I'm gonna pull down let me pull this down really quick this is my reference right here that I'm looking at and the cat is all in shadow it's all in shadow so everything's equally lit I want kind of the right along here along the side of his face I'm going to imagine the lighting coming from the left and slightly behind him so it's gonna light up the left side of his face and a little bit of the left side of his shoulder and and it's gonna cast a light light up a little bit of his cheek so it won't be behind him it'll be slightly in front of him and off to the left but I'm gonna I'm like he's stepping into the light so the lot so everything behind him is gonna be in dark so that face is really gonna be lit and it's gonna pop out and that's this is what I want you to think about this is with a lesson I don't want to get across to you is you're not a slave to the reference that you have you can just use that as just that just reference and then you can light things the way you want and when you think about lighting the way that I do in a real-world situation you can manipulate it and and do whatever you want with it and that's what I want to show you here so remember this this is what we've got here and then I'm gonna move this up to the top yes and so here I'm going to start laying in my shadow and I'm not gonna paint I'm not going to paint the shadow where I want light so I'm basically I want everything or everything over here to be in shadow so I'm just gonna start laying that in boom boom boom well everything's gonna be in shadow right along here I'll let all this all of this I'm gonna go around his face a little bit I go around it yes any advice or dealing with harsh criticism and being put down yeah don't listen to him grow a thick skin you'll be criticized in the future that's just people are jerks and but also have let that skin be thick and try try to listen to what they're saying without being hurt try very hard to listen because so often some people might mean well but have a very bad delivery and and so if you're willing to kind of push aside the delivery and just just hear them out you might learn a thing or two and and so that's my biggest advice to you is to try to try to just have faith in yourself and don't don't worry about what other people think unless you think they have something worthwhile to say even though they may be harsh in the way that they deliver it that's the key even if someone's harsh and the way they deliver something it still might be worth listening to you know I get I get criticized all the time you know YouTube or whatever and sometimes and sometimes it's just somebody being a jerk which is you know can't help that but other time somebody has a very really valid thing to say and so I and it might be something I never thought about and so you know take the high road if you have to but also take the low road and listen so here I'm gonna change brushes now I want to start thinking about the lighting so I want this this light to be coming across his face but everything else is in shadow so if light is coming across his face I'm gonna let this be lit and I know that there's a kind of caught this kind of goes in so that's gonna cast a little shadow I know we've got shadow along here right just like that this is all gonna cast a shadow right down along his cheek right there Dustin's laughing why you laughing man shadows this is gonna come out this way and let that kind of go in the shadow there underneath we might have a let's gonna cast a shadow this way that'll go into shadow I'm thinking about like that person was talking about earlier imagining the light as water and if it's sprayed what you know where is it hitting this is all gonna might catch a little bit of light underneath there this is going to go into shadow along here let me cast a little bit of shadow this way underneath like that but you can see already we're getting a nice sense of light this is gonna cast a shadow over the eye the brow is and it's gonna come down like that see that and I'm gonna let that come around because I know that cheekbone is nice and smooth and it's gonna come up under here there we go so already now you can start to feel that lighting and it's very simple look how quickly we've done this so you're saying there's a chance so right here I want that to go into shadow and then you know within even in the lit areas there's gonna be areas that kind of the contours move a little differently so we're gonna have a little bit of shadow there but this by and large is our shadow pattern right here you know because I know they're that brow you know the nose bridge comes up maybe comes up underneath here a little bit yes it does for sure eighty-eight percent now so I'll keep working over them you'll see they'll get a little darker that chin I'm just gonna go all dark that feels better and just catch light along the edge my favorite big cat my favorite big cat is probably it's a toss-up between lions and tigers I really you know what I love and I don't know why maybe it's just because they're so exotic and they're they're the biggest wild cat in the world but Siberian tigers there's something about seeing a tiger in the snow that I just think is that's just magic they're not white white tigers are actually not a separate species that's a that's a kind of a melanistic there it's a recessive gene so that they don't have all the the same pigment and their fur and that other cat's have but Siberian tigers look they just look like a regular tiger they're orange but they're giant they're massive I think they get up to like 600 pounds they're the largest cat in the world and and there's something about them that's just I don't know there's something about I just love so there's our shadow pattern you can see now already we're getting a sense of drama just through creating this area of contrast and where I want I want the eye to be going we might even cast a shadow what if we did this cast a shadow here I'm going to soften a little bit what if we did that to make it feel like his always used gray for the shadows or are there some examples well see that's the issue that I'm going through right now I'm not using great well I guess a kind of M it's kind of a gray but it's a cool gray because I want the shadows to be cool um sometimes I'll go warm with the shadows it really depends on what the bounce light is and we're gonna that's one of the things I want to talk to you guys about today that we've still got a ways to go even though we're in this about an hour I probably got another hour hour and a half we're gonna be working on this and if you want to stick around I hope you do because I really want to you know get into the reflected light and the bounce light and that sort of thing and that's what's really gonna get this image to sing so I want to get this shadow being cast on the other eye as well what if it was a baby gorilla I don't know you have to be more specific if you're talking about a big big silverback possibly I love that photo I don't think he's usually getting ready to punch the guy if you look if you look he's actually touching the the girl in behind him yeah I think it's just the way his fist is she I think he was pushing the other one back yeah and that's a super wide angle lens so that gorilla is actually right here and I think he's just pushing the other one back I think is what was happening so now what I want to do is I'm going to create a new layer on top and I'm gonna put it send it to overlay and now I want to go warm I'm you know opposite of blue is orange so I'm going to go with some orange warm light and I'm gonna just kind of work over the top just where the light areas are and let that let this kind of light up a little bit and get a little brighter well your watercolor course come out can't wait that's gonna be a while I haven't started it yet I'm not sure what I'm going on to next I might do an oil course next not sure yet so you can see what I'm trying to do is just create some warm complementary color light against this cool shadow that I've created with that blue gray and so just by just by sheer there's two things that we're looking at right now we're looking at value which is light and dark and that's probably the most important thing when considering light and shadow obviously you want to think about the value of it is it is it a dark area in shadow or is a light area in light but then the next about the next bit is temperature you know and you can see right off the bat by me adding this bright warm temperature to this cat in the light areas only that all of a sudden and it's bright nice and getting bright nice and bright here now it really has a sense of light and weird we're only we're only a little bit into this but I see I try to establish this right off the bat the earlier you can establish this the better off you are and then the rest is just working out details so look at this like when I shrink it up you can really see already feel the drama and look it I'm gonna I want to bring this and compare it to our original here's our here's our reference right here and then here's what we're creating from that and so you can see already how much more drama there is you can you can manipulate your reference let that reference work for you in this case I was looking at it for anatomy perspective reference excuse me all that sort of thing but really beyond that and just I want to control that lighting I want to control the drama I want to control what the viewer feels when they look at this image and so by by creating this lighting right here it's drawing your attention right to the face rate to the gaze and it's he's looking at something off screen he's he something has caught his attention and it starts to create a story in your mind and we're doing that all through lighting which is so cool so what do we do next the next thing I want to do is I want to work within the shadows so within the shadows we're gonna have lighter areas and darker areas there's places where there's less bounce light and then there's going to be areas where there's bounced light and so I'm gonna create another layer that's set to multiply and I'm just gonna I'm gonna go with another cool gray maybe not quite halfway dark or halfway halfway down and I'm gonna start creating more shadows just a little bit deeper it gets a little deeper in here I'm gonna change my brush up you notice too that I only use really two brushes I'm only using two brushes there's a there's a shot there's some stuff out on the balcony where they after they've done the magic carpet right yeah and shoot hold on my brush isn't working right there we go there's a couple shots in there actually it's when he comes to her balcony and then then they they ride off together then there was and I also did some Aladdin in there there's there's this big controversy where there's a scene where people claim he's saying good girls take off your clothes or the cat where Rogers coming up and he's going to shoot shoot take off your clothes I don't know where people get that I thought but in that scene where he's showing him away I did rajae and I did Aladdin so I actually animated that shot where people say he's saying that and he doesn't see that and and I don't know I think people just want there to be some kind of conspiracy that Disney is doing something bad but you know having been there when we were making them my know firsthand that it just didn't happen yeah yeah there was also a scene where jasmine is that she's it's the next morning after the magic carpet ride and she's brushing her hair in the mirror and then her father comes in and she gets something goes Oh father I've had the most wonderful time she spins around I animated that yeah so there's you know there's a few Jasmine shots I did in there not tons but if you have more complex yeah that was the most complex shot I've ever done or he's he's spinning swinging in perspective in a circle and spinning and then the swing has to get smaller and smaller and while he's on the spin has to slow down and then start going the other way all while he's acting and talking yeah that was a long time okay so I'm just I'm just touching little areas because I want to start thinking about reflected light as well so now once I once I've kind of darkened up some of these areas and you can see we've got about 70% of it done this is this is kind of our base and now it's a matter of darken up some of this up here now it's a matter of just hitting select areas of detail and that will carry it you don't you know I want I'm gonna hit some detail in the face but um you'll see you know I'm gonna put a new layer on top and this is gonna I'm gonna set it to normal and now I'm just gonna be painting right over the top of this this is my base and now I'm just gonna what I'm gonna do I'm going to do things like I'm going to grab the local color right here or the surface color and I want that to be a little bit lighter so I'm gonna go warmer with it and brighter grab my pastel brush and I'm going to just and I'm painting right over the top of the the drawing layer and I'm gonna keep it very loose still let me go a little darker a little warmer and I'll make adjustments back and forth all all over the place like so now one thing you can see in the photo and the reference that's pretty clear I hope it shows up with what you guys are seeing but if you look underneath this is a really good example of reflected light let me push I'm gonna push the saturation because I want you to see this I've really pushed the saturation but if you look underneath the chin look at that green light that's under the chin that's an example of bounce light there is so much green down here and white fur that it's reflecting that green light being bounced from that you know the Sun lights hitting the even in the shadow areas it's bouncing up its company-owned it's catching light from the sky and bouncing it back up and it's catching underneath the chin all through there and so I want to get that into my image now I don't want to go that strong but I wanted you to see that because that that helps anchor it helps to anchor your subject in the environment when you can start bouncing light from the environment into your subject then that it starts to feel like it's part of the environment so here I'm going to grab I want to grab that color but I'm gonna jump to the green air no too green now maybe go a little bit more into green maybe a little bit brighter and I'm just gonna start to paint excuse me right along here might a little too green I'm gonna come back a little grayer maybe a little darker cuz I don't want to go too strong yes to be honest with you I don't I have a lot of books in my collection but I don't study books a lot I try to get out I look at other artists as much as I can so there's that but I don't I try to just get out and paint from life as much as I can I learn so much more that way and I know that sounds like kind of a cop-out but I don't I don't look at a lot of books I don't because I feel like there's only so much you can learn by looking at a book you have to get out there and you've got to get your your your easel dirty you got to get your paper dirty and you got to you got to really work you can't learn unless you're doing that's the best way to learn art you got to do and so that being said I try to get out there and do as much as I can so there's a little bit of Bounce like coming up maybe underneath here just a little bit sure yes yes I'm sorry so as you can see I'm what I'm doing here is I'm hitting the shortcut on that on the keyboard is hitting the left and right bracket so right bracket brings it bigger left bracket brings it smaller and so I'm constantly writing that as I'm as I'm painting so there we go so I'm coming in here and just working it and I want to make sure that I'm not creating too much contrast right off the bat so you can see right here there's a lot of contrast there so I'm gonna erase that back a little bit and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna come back and just pull back on the on that value just a little because I don't I don't want to go too bright too fast and I keep everything mice personal style is somewhat loose so I see it's still too bright so I want to go a little darker my personal style is somewhat loose and so I don't I don't like the labor everything I don't want it I don't want to labor it and so I try very hard to just get in and get out and you know I'm a big advocate for a little can go a long way so you know brush texture are the fur textures that sort of thing that I'm trying to create I don't need to render the whole body in order for the person viewing it to feel like there's a fur texture going over the whole thing it doesn't take much I've got a quick lighting question here Justin lighting question if the object that you're painting is in a blue hue and an orange warm light hits it how do you manage the gray areas and the core shadows that's a really good question and it really it depends on it depends on on light intensity it's going to depend on the intensity of the base color of your of your object because obviously you can go vary it can go gray very easily and you don't want that to happen so it really comes down to just experimenting with the dump what you know what is going to be more dominant is that is the is the the object going to be more dominant or is the lighting going to be more dominant and that's those are some of the issues that that you need to answer yes could you explain why you use the different blend modes you used multiply foreshadow overlay for lights yes so overlay just tends to heat when I use a warm bright color it heats everything up and brightens it multiply literate does literally that it multiplies with the color underneath so it's going to create something darker so it creates great shadows I've discovered so that's why I do that and then when I'm painting I'm just painting traditionally basically over the top of that when I'm creating reflected light changes in value just to that's where I'm adding the details and and kind of working the the form a little bit and so all three of those blend modes working together with that especially with the normal blend mode on top really kind of pulls it together and makes it feel like a painting so I'm working with in my graze on what I'm trying to do is I'm grabbing some of the grays and I tend to go a little lighter in places because especially in dark and dark and dark areas there'll be areas that are going to show off light a little bit more here I want to go a little bluer a little brighter like places like here and the eye I'll just create a little bit of I like to go a little more push the push the the contrast or the the compliment you know between I might even go a little bluer in this shadow to play against that yellow orange in the light like so and you'll see it tends to play it tends to work a little bit more like light and shadow it's gonna feel a little bit more like lighting shadow now I'll jump back and forth and here like I want to go kind of bright with it now and really kind of deform the deform define some of these areas here and just I'm just hitting little areas of accents to accent all right I got another question can you pinpoint what makes scar look like a villain Mufasa look like a good guy I've always loved the contrast between them um why did it do that I don't think it's pure look I think it really has to do with the performance and that performance the voice performance will will will affect the way you feel about the character and the you know plus scar feels a little bit sickly I think which I don't know I mean it's he just doesn't look healthy and so I think that's part of it Mufasa is big and strong but once again he's got a very strong character and I think that helps you know James Earl Jones really did a great job in the reading for scar or for Mufasa and I think that really affects the way you feel about the character it really does so just undoing little bits of highlights along the edges here well yeah exactly it's like Timbo when we did Tembo Tembo is a swahili word for elephant so he so he was I see I used cool I wanted to do something warm so he's uh he was an elephant and his name was elephant so there's a little bit of light hitting there but in the shadow area I wanted to go cool maybe a little brighter there actually maybe a little brighter it's catching a little bit of light off the sky right here he's Tim names Tim but this really is whoops um what did I do oh there we go there's really there's really not a lot sorry just real quick to us yeah um it's really thinking about once we get to these detail areas it's thinking about where is the light gonna be a little bit brighter what's that temperature and really kind of going at it from that point of view and you can see we're really starting to get something already that's I'm just you know starting to work for us go ahead Dustin sorry holy moly really yes creature art teacher calm on that website I have all kinds of lessons Photoshop brushes all kinds of stuff so check that out creature art teacher com+ I've got a YouTube channel it's Aaron Blais art is the is the URL there we go I'm just we have a twitch question are you going to keep the lines of the sketch or are you going to just paint over them I'm going to paint over them and in some instances I'm going to erase them like here I don't like those lines right there so I'm going to erase them but I'm gonna paint over them basically right here I don't like a great there I don't like them and what I'll do instead of having those lines they I'm going to grab that and I want a value change there so I want this to be a little brighter whoops it up here want that to be a little brighter even a little brighter than that it's grand there we go so yeah little things like that that will make the shadow area you're gonna push the shadow a little bit feel better there we go they already answer the how many layers yeah oh I could have 30 layers it really comes down you know in the beginning it's the basic layers are the sketch rough sketch finished sketch local color first layer shadows layer a pile of lights reflected lights so that's what seven six seven layers and then and then whatever I do after that periscope question what type of areas are best to use soft shading as opposed to sharp crisp shadows shocked Chris Chris shadows are usually something that's closer to the object and so it's gonna cast a sharper sharper shadow and there's a hard there's a hard change between light and dark like the edge of an object something that's further away from the from our character is gonna cast a softer shadow so there's you know it really depends on several different elements so there's that so I'm going to go a little warmer a little brighter and I'm going to create you know a little bit of lighter a little bit more light in the in that area as well you can see you know within your shadows you'll have areas they're gonna be later question YouTube question can I just quickly show all the layers one by one yes I can do that what happened up here what is that I don't know okay so let's look at these layers one by one so I'm going to turn everything off first layer that I started with was my rough drawing there it is and I and I knocked the opacity way down all right then on top of that I did a kind of a more tied down refined drawing so there's that the next layer that I put in there underneath those two layers was my local color so I went in and I wasn't painting light and shadow I literally was just painting what the color of the fur was and because of a cougar has different colors within the fur that's what this pattern is the next layer was finding the light and dark well basically was finding the dark I wanted to paint where the shadows were so I added this and because I'm having a very limited area where the light is hitting most of this is in shadow one thing I forgot was my background I added this background underneath everything okay so so the the shadow layer really kind of defined my light and dark pattern now the Lexx and that's set to multiply the next layer and I really wanted it to enhance the light area was I created a layer set it to overlay got a warm a brighter color and I enhanced that warm light next was right here I pushed the shadows in certain areas a little deeper just to create a little bit more depth and then on top of that I start working the light and dark within the shadows and the lights I'm pushing brighter areas and the brights and I'm pushing reflected light and brighter and darker areas and it's in some instances in the shadow areas and I'm just going to kind of work through the entire thing in this way so there's that so do you use great for shadows I'm using and when I set it to overlay I'm actually using a tinted it's it's it falls in the gray range but it's I never use anything straight gray which is just black with white mixed with it I never do that I'm actually working with warm or cool grays and you're gonna find that most color falls within a gray range it's very rare that you actually get pure color most color and nature has a lot of gray mixed with it it's the fact that you when you compare it to other when you compare it to other colors it's the colors around them that will make them feel pure or grade down so complementary colors will make each other feel like they're more pure colors that are similar to each other can gray each other down it is being recorded as we speak so here I'm going a little bit warmer and a little bit brighter and I want to get in here and paint some of this fur you can see but I'm still staying within you know if you're looking at the value scale from one to ten I'm only going about a half a step off in some of these value ranges when I'm painting in some of these fur areas just to define them don't need a whole lot of detail in here I want to keep this nice and simple so I'm gonna I'm gonna jump all over the place right now I'm gonna brighten up this area right along here and I can add some fur textures go ahead Justin sorry everything I'm talking about right now that I'm showing you is color theory when I'm talking about warm again school when I'm talking about value changes and lay a light and dark all of that has to do with color theory it's so right now I'm just not using a lot of pure color and so because of that the color is going to be a bit D saturated but I'm still thinking about complementary colors I've got you know basically blues in my shadow areas the opposite of blue is yellow not yellow but orange I've got orange and yellows in the in the warm areas and in the light areas so there's the first basic bit of color theory rate in it that right there I'm using complementary colors and my warm and my light and dark areas they're all so warm and cool so I'm playing those those off of each other yes my my friend Ronnie if you go to creature art teacher calm ronnie has an excellent course that he created Ronnie Williford on just exactly what we're talking about on color theory and how to make it work for you could you explain what artistic workflow is well artistic workflow is just it's basically whatever your workflow is so for me my artistic workflow is a certain way that I work you know towards creating art artistic workflow is that's a it's a very loose term and it's basically for whatever you do artistically but I mean artistic workflow can applied it differently to different artists because we're all we all work differently never gets old okay I'm gonna so here I want this I want to make this feel like it's going around so this is gonna it's gonna show a little bit of the sky above so I want to go a little brighter with it and a little cooler as if it's catching a little bit of sky Coop's I'm on the wrong layer a little bit of sky let it fade out there we go maybe a little bit up here yes I think I tend to say cougar but they're all obviously the the right term no that's not true no they're all they're all they're all the same species there are just different names for the same thing yeah but then your hat and smoking okay okay put that in your pipe and smoke it so now I'm just I'm really just adding little bits of detail here and there that just give but you'll notice I'm I don't have to do a lot you can see we're getting just with little bits of detail we're getting a lot of mileage I'm gonna go a little brighter quite a bit brighter because there's a nice light rim around the ear your digital watercolor and oil paint brushes truly capture the real thing well that's just like your opinion man say that one more time sorry I just completely went to the big lebowski when you said you know I would normally say no but I've been fooled before you know I've seen some really good digitally produced fake oil paintings and watercolor paintings so I've been fooled but normally I would say I don't think it could but I was wrong especially Scottish technology voice recognition technology it'll lift you're talking to yourself yeah why do I keep doing that all right so I'm just adding little bits of areas where it should go a little darker it should go a little lighter and this I'm it's just adding whoops I'm hitting the wrong there we go like right here I want to go a little darker where it comes off the ear it adds just a little bit of interest interest easy cowboy I know yes we've been to Mexico a couple of times the last time we were there we were there we were there last year in Mexico City we happened to be there when the earthquake happened and we were actually trying to get home to beat the hurricane so we literally went from the earthquake in Mexico and got back to Orlando in time to board up the house for the hurricane then we had a big hurricane party on the porch remember that night dust we had the hurricane party on the porch we imbibed in a little bit of cocktails as the storm came that's right I remember when the storm was at its peak and we had some liquid courage and we're out there with a flag and screaming at the screaming at the store here I'm just adding little details does your knowledge of Wildlife grow out of your interest in art or vice versa it's my interest in art and my interest in wildlife are fairly separate although I love to paint wildlife I would be interested in wildlife whether I was interested in art or not that being said I've learned a lot about wildlife through my art in my pursuit of finding my subjects I've learned a lot about them so here I'm just trying to get the pupils in but I want I don't want to go too hot and heavy on them and I like the reflections that are in the in the reference I'm going to use those I'm going to create a new layer just for them and I don't want to go too light so I'm gonna pull back right in here what's a little black spot under cat's eye a little black spot oh there's a there is a in the corner of the eye there's a right where the tiered the tear duct did I guess it's a tear duct or whatever it might be not tear duct but the the corner of the eye that comes down I don't know what that's called but um it tends to be dark black and on most big cats it's that way and that's part of their don't like this one I'm gonna change that don't like the way that looks there we go there we go that feels good now I'm gonna go a little brighter towards within the within the reflection itself there'll be areas that get a little brighter and you want to go very tasteful with it that's all you need boom right there bump bump bump maybe I go a little black no I never used black in my paintings ever that's um there's gonna be a little reflection of the sky in here cuz it's wet wait what there we go and I like just hitting a little bit of blue in there just to just a just to play against the concede just to play against the all the warms in there all right Poochie happy birthday Poochie I don't sometimes like I often like to let that sketch layer come through it just gives the painting a little bit of life and uh but there's areas that I don't like it like right here get rid of it get rid of it and then I'm gonna go back yeah and we're gonna go a little dark for that lip we are an hour and 40 minutes into this which is pretty par for the course as far as how much I get done on something like this are we they're gonna go even darker with like really deep oh maybe Yellowstone National Park yeah yeah Manny he oh man oh Manischewitz so for those of you that don't know my good friend Manny is listening he's on he's a big part of expedition art he got me involved he started it and he is a great guy really wanting to a true conservationist and just got back from Africa and he and I and Nick we this past summer we went out to Montana together where we just had a fantastic time chasing wildlife and just doing all kinds of fun stuff yeah we came up with the Yellowstone National Park jingle no not at all I struggle with it as much as the next guy but I've I've worked at it long enough that I can work my way out of the struggles but no I do not feel like a master I would be afraid if I started feeling like a master I know something was wrong because I'll never I don't think anybody ever truly masters in that but I do want to at this point I want to add I want to add some whiskers I want to add some details because those are going to help define how much more I have to do I'm going to I want to get a wave a little bit from the details in here let's I'm gonna go ahead just throw a layer I'm gonna do a whisker layer and on a grab maybe about that value with whiskers you just got a just got to put them in just got to do it know they're set around the nostrils like they usually are but that being said they're gonna be a little bit more pronounced yeah there they actually are supposed to be there they're on they're on house cats as well no question YouTube's question do I ever draw animals like sharks fish and marine mammals I do not very often but I do when I was a kid especially I was obsessed with drawing sharks I lived by the ocean I had caught sharks you know as a kid and I was just obsessed with drawing them no see I've only heard that once what is that kids I think that's the funniest cutest thing I don't know why I love that oops I want to go brighter than that so that helps a little bit it gives us a little sense of but I want to be more painterly I'm not getting enough paint earliness in here it's still feeling a little clean so I'm going to go underneath these oh I got another question another question from YouTube do I own any real skulls or skeletons of wild animals what's a good way to get your hands on them ethically well that's that's a tough one find him on roadkill that's how I used to get him when I was a kid going out in the out in the woods I tend to go do want to get real skulls I go to taxidermy shops so that you know it depends on how you determine how you define ethically because a lot of these have been hunted but this is a real one right here this is a cougar skull and ironically enough we're drawing a cougar today but this is a male cougar that I got at a taxidermy shop in in Wyoming now I recommend bone clones if you want to get if you're interested in skulls bone clones here's an African lion and this reproduction it's a cast this is a beautiful cast you know other than the color being slightly different you really especially from a distance you really can't tell that this is a cast it's beautifully beautifully done and so most everything I I get nowadays are cast because I use them as reference I'm not worried about whether they're real or not here's another real one which happens to be another cat this is a bobcat little Bobcat skull and but I use them really to look at the angles of profiles and you know helping the sockets are for the eyes and things like that so yeah so that's that's that let's get into I wonder if I got to finish this so let's get in here I want to grab that color I'm gonna go a little brighter a little warmer with it let's just see I do both I do both now I like to take a lot of photos because in the time that it takes to do a photo or the time it takes to do a drawing I can shoot about 500 photos so but there's something about drawing that you can't get through just photos and so I really try hard to do both because when I'm drawing I'm really recording in my mind the look of that animal and that's really important to me yeah I think I know what you're saying like Picasso oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I agree and honestly the one of the things that I've learned is actually something on my teacher told me back then is that a master admits it's that he's like he or she still has much to learn oh yeah a master is never really a master right I mean there's exactly if he knew this I think there's another quote that I've heard before is like a master as has failed more times than a novice has tried yeah that's a really good one Dustin actually that's a really good one and one things I personally say always is you know the you know the quote like practice makes perfect yeah I usually say practice makes better yeah this to me there's no it's just II guess perfect there's always a flaw you're right it's just there's it's just a matter of how big the flaw good point it's actually a really good point yeah I'm gonna soften this shadow edge or this look got it I keep hitting the wrong button soften this shadow edge here so keeping trying to keep it warm and really just going back to lighting again specifically you know think about the first thing to think about is value you know you're light and dark patterns that's really gonna define your basic lighting okay what's what's in shadow what's in light the next thing you want to think about is that it's temperature you know cool cool and warm cools being in your shadows most of the time warm being your light areas most of the time and working within those here I'm just catching the edge of the neck just catching little areas that I think are gonna catch a little bit more reflected light I just purchased your inktober tutorial that you put out it was great is there a particular marker that you recommend for your well I mean I use Copic markers for the grays and that sort of thing and then for the light areas I use a faber castell faber castell yeah pit pit marker other thing meant to say for your greys but you wrote it excellent wrote it as your grace oh yeah well my grace yeah you know because I am graceful name that movie somebody named that movie just let her finish she was the voice of Betty Boop yeah yeah so now I'm kind of I'm just staying loose notice how look how loose I'm being with some of these patterns in the background because I really want I want the attention to be right here on this cat yes it wasn't supposed to be you but she got it so me wrote it before she said yes the blessing but Dante got it correct - it doesn't unless you're working with colored charcoal in which case it's the same as painting so it doesn't really here I'm adding a little bit of detail around the eye right there I want to get some nice yeah okay so that I want to jump around a little bit jump around jump jump around I want to get rid of I'm gonna get rid of the drawing around the chin there and there [Music] with white ink oh and a brush tip yeah because I use it and it doesn't have a brush tip that's pretty cool so I'm gonna do something no I actually was pretty good at sports so I didn't I didn't I didn't have that problem yeah yeah it was on the wrestling team I kinda I I was a little bit of a scrapper I wasn't a great wrestler but I fought a lot I wouldn't say I fought a lot but I iced I stood up for yeah we actually did a lot of sports in the animation studio ya know but I you know I am terrible I'm terrible at basketball horrible in basketball except I can spin the hell out of a ball you could I can spin the hell you gotta give me a break man not the same build I was what I was doing any passer he'd be called a B here so I'm gonna give it some some light some dappled light in the background this is 300 dpi I am working at 300 dpi and the size is 20 inches by 16 inches 16 correct see that's what I want it's a nice bright light back there in pixels I don't know what that is did someone draw it alright so here I'm doing some slightly out of focus while very out of focus dappled light to get him to stand out like he's a shadow in the background that's what we've been talking about the whole time I really it comes down to it really comes down to mood and you know what are you trying to get across and here like for this I'm looking at I'm looking at not just the the color but also the value I want the value of this hot green in the background to really be brighter than the shadow area of the cat so the cat is silhouetted against that light but I also want to go really hot with the color to make it feel like it's in the light it's you know it's it's catching sunlight outside the shadow area she had green eyes i from what I know there it's great I haven't updated yet yeah yeah so there's that yeah ok so I'm gonna go I'm gonna go over the top of that again now I'm gonna go back to my greens that I was painting with and now watch this because I've got because that Austin was your inspiration for Nala did Dustin inspire you also for a character no unfortunately I didn't I didn't have any other characters that really had any looks that I could pull from Dustin although the kids hello attack it's my old friend but um but uh you know the kids were always a source of inspiration just for seeing how they would react you know with what we would do you know when they came into the studio it was really a lot of fun to to to see them you know sometimes the kids would be in the studio and Mickey and Minnie would come into the studio and it was just it was so much fun and really made it reminded you about why we do what we do and then we held you as human shields when we got into rubberband fights for you yes actually you're absolutely right when I was doing king of the elves you guys were part of that you're I forgot about that you perfectly right so here I'm just going very quickly very loosely creating some foliage I'm not gonna really work it that much go ahead Dustin sorry do you prove your students using an education source education source yeah I don't see why not as long as if the people you're interviewing with knows who that is no I don't mind if it helps then that makes me happy yes very much would you like to work for Disney again but not for 3d animation but stuff like character design and concept art if it you know my Disney days are over so there's that but um if there's something came along that was really cool and they wanted me and I wanted to do it then yeah who knows right whoa whoa whoa not so fast there we go just about done you do something else and it makes it even better yeah well that's um oh I got I've got a question from Dustin up here from Nick what's the best paint to learn to paint with watercolor oil acrylic if you never painted before I started drawing again after 20 years and I'm wanting to try painting I think watercolor is good because it can be really difficult but it's it really it's very forgiving at the same time acrylic can be really forgiving because you can paint over the top of it opaque and and that's fine but I think a watercolor really teaches you discipline yeah I think it I think it teaches you discipline and I think it's a good one to start with personally personally personally specifically Norwegian I can't think of anything I may have and not not realized it no I'm not I bowed out of that because the the subject kind of changed and so it wasn't up my alley so I didn't do it am I going to do a spooky drawing for Halloween yes I am yes because it follows our Tuesday next week our Tuesday livestream falls on Halloween Day No so here I'm just I don't know if I like all that so I'm just gonna go ah I'm good I've got different pieces hanging up and yeah I don't know you know it's been a while since I've really sold any original work you know it's I don't know what to tell you that's kind of funny Halloween is Wednesday sorry yeah uh sorry yes you're right Halloween is Wednesday I haven't my head for the last couple weeks that it was Tuesday I know it's Wednesday I just I just slipped but we're still gonna do Tuesday are you in the future going to sell prints of your sketchbooks for artists to collect I took cool idea sure I've never thought of that but I like that idea so here I'm just adding a little bit of reflected light on some of these surfaces back here give them a little bit more gray that out a little bit more oh they're putting in a roof if you hear pounding in the background my neighbors are putting out on a new roof or they're not doing it the roofers are but it's been a pain in the butt because I've been trying to shoot new videos and all you can hear is pounding hammers pounding in the backgrounds yeah I got a twitch question first one any plans on going to Sweden any time soon no I do not have any plans on going to Sweden although I would love to second second question I'm really considering getting a premium membership stream membership on your website got any new courses coming that you're able to talk about yeah well first of all it's full of course is if you've if you haven't gotten any there's already a ton of courses on there but we've got a brand new course coming out from Ronnie Williford on plein air painting which is going to be great especially if you live in Sweden because Sweden is a paradise for plein air painting and and then also I've got my acting for animation course coming up in about four weeks on on creature art teacher comm and so there's two right there we've also got a sculpting course that's going to be coming out in the next few months we've got I've got another course coming up that I'll be doing after this one on a couple of them on watercolor painting oil painting in the studio or I'm going to take you through an entire process of how I do an oil painting a wildlife painting some of my wild life's work so there's a lot of stuff coming up so you you know if you a lot of people if you're able to talk to anyone that's already gotten the court or gotten the the membership talk to them because we've had we've one thing I'm proud of is that we've had a lot of good customer satisfaction what are you laugh-in at Butthead [Laughter] oh I've got some really embarrassing stories when it comes to that but I can't I can't share them here I love Bob Ross love him Rob Ross brought rah I want to be the new Bob Ross Bob Ross brought arc to the masses and he was kind hearted and he was good and he he really really did a good thing with what he did and I would love to be able to do what he did so I'm just going through and hitting little details here and there we do video yes we will be doing that it probably will not be me there'll be someone else that I can't announce yet but it's an ex Disney artist that actually did layouts on on Mulan and on Brother Bear and on Zootopia figuring out the staging and yeah and actually it'll be it'll also cover a little bit of environmental design as well so I think we're getting down to the down to the wire I think you know for what this is this is a pretty good place to stop I would probably go a little bit further with it just to feel it's still feeling a little bit polished in my opinion I'd want it to be a little less polished I'm just adding a little bits of dark and light the membership the premium membership includes everything so if you get a premium membership you can download everything on the site and it's yours forever that's the benefit of being a member there we go it's catching little bits of light here a little bit of light they're just hitting little details now well it's really keeping control of your color is a big part of that and try to think of your your light and dark areas as big shapes first you know you got to think of them as shapes and try to stick with that that's a that's a big part of it I'm gonna go a little I need to go I don't need to go a little darker with our cat go home multiply actually no I don't need to do that I want to go over here and this one that's the extra dark area hey thank you I like that you know what if I can get Glen Keane to do a course on the website it will yes I will strive to do that yeah I wish it was that easy Glen is very busy so I'm just gonna push this back just a little bit there we go your future earth teach programs are slowly turning into a curriculum of for school are you planning on actually transitioning to school um yeah I'd like to do that we're trying very hard to get schools to start officially picking us up rather than doing it on their own so that's something that we're very interested in doing down the road I'm Gary Larson yes there we go I like pushing that dark just a little bit maybe pushing the dark a little bit more back here as well getting that head to pop a little bit better I'm gonna get these light areas to pop a little better there now you can see getting a nice I like to go back and forth see how it reads now I want to do one last thing I'm honest oh you know we haven't done you know we should do we should save it yeah so let's do I let's put everything in the group I'm going to copy that group and I'm going to I'm going to merge the group so everything is on one layer now see that everything's on one layer now I want to I want to rough it up a little bit I want to lose some edges I want to create some fur one thing I like to do is I'm going to come down here and I've got this brush it's a lot of dots you see that and I'm going well actually I want it on my smudge tool which I've so I've already got it set up there and I've got it set at 65% but watch what happens I can so only create a little bit's assert Oh was it see I'm just gonna go through and just rough up a few edges and create fur you see that especially on the chin right here take it right on the chin I try not to geek out try I try not to geek out I'm trying to talk about art and some of their experiences and and whatnot and whatnot do you watch Explorer warg live cams I do I haven't seen the polar bear one but there's the one for the salmon run for the grizzly bears up in Brooks Falls I watched that one pretty regularly well you know what I didn't finish the fur in the ears up here yeah um I can do it now I sometimes I didn't do it on this one it's like I kind of liked it but it feels pretty good it's gonna lose some edges there do you ever keep copies of the image without flattening in case you ever want to go back or is that just a waste of space no I do that's why I I'll keep a I do one folder that has everything in it without being flattened and then I have another folder that went out folder but I have another layer where it's everything's flattened so I can always go back to the original so here I'm just I'm just creating fur you can see little bits of fur using my smudge tool tool there you can feel that can you feel it hey we got drunk together sorry we we had drinks together all right so I'm gonna push image adjustments hue/saturation let's push some of that saturation I think it might I'm pushing the saturation right now we're getting some nice fur happening let's put a layer over the top of it I'm gonna set it actually to overlay see what this does I'm gonna grab some orange a little darker with it I'm just I'm gonna knock I'm gonna knock three times on the ceiling if you want me there we go and I'm gonna knock the opacity way down just give it a little warmth yeah there we go I like whoever said it needs a little hint of red I like it because it plays really nicely against the warm Sun the greens yeah but against the warm Sun you got it because it's playing against the Greens should you always have cool shadows in warm laid areas or vice versa nine times out of ten you're gonna have cool shadows and warm light if you have an area that's light and dark that being said there's certain lights which lighting situations artificial lighting situations where it's not necessarily going to be that way so so that's that I need to find my plants my foliage brushes where are they here no looking for my foliage foliage foliage all right no it's not that one sorry I'm late up the brush like oh yeah this well this is uh this is the new updated version of Photoshop yeah yeah so it might be this one yeah here this so now what I'm gonna do what's this I've grabbed this this is actually a grass brush that I created foliage but I use it as a smudge tool and watch what it does it can oh I don't want it to do that I don't want to paint I want it to smudge I got it I've grabbed the wrong one no it pulled the gutters off that was about it but other than that it didn't do anything I'm still going through here sorry gotta find I don't that's not intentional so I do like those colors but it's it I'm sure it just comes through accidentally it's my subconscious mind where are the brushes I'm looking for here we go right yeah yeah no yeah found it so watch this so first of all let me do this so I'm gonna knock this back no not all of them a good number of them I did make oh look I see how let's see how this foliage brush kind of softens the edges when I use it as a smudge tool I love finding you know things like that I like I like softening edges there we go there we go did you play a kite of the highest heights y-yes yes I did MARY POPPINS I've seen the trailer which i think is pretty pretty cool-looking I think it's gonna be awesome yeah it definitely brings back quite a bit nostalgia of the of the original and it's a sequel to the original it's not yeah it's not a remake like all these other ones are it's an actual air so I think I think in here I want to have some foliage coming in over the top I want some grasses to break that up you have a tutorial on making custom brushes yes I do um on my on my website I have a whole section in my painting there we go did might have a digital painting in Photoshop I have a course and there's a whole section on that course where i show you how i make my own brushes and we go through the whole the whole bit so i just want to just fill that out just a little bit I like this kind of calligraphy approach to doing the grass get some of these leaves off there want to break up some of that space he's coming through the grass there we go now you feel look look how dark it is in this you know in the color range down here but because I'm working over such a dark area you know the value of it is pretty light so that's the other thing to you know make sure you really look at your values because something that's is seemingly dark can can play light when it's next to a darker value so you want to get used to that there we go so he's coming through the coming through the brush coming through the brush there we go so there's our cat for today you let's see I wanna let me go back to my smudge tool I think I'm gonna sneeze okay I'm good I'm good couldn't hold it back these people that hold their sneezes back they go [Laughter] cannonball snot that's good where we're at two and a half hours were into this holy Smokies we got to get done Dustin why didn't you tell me it was taking so long this is too long okay I'm just gonna finish this up here uh yes I try to think about the kind of composition I'm gonna do before I it's not really canvas size as much as its canvas proportion Africa yeah Kenya Kenya no Africa is a big continent so Kenya and Tanzania now granted that's the only part of Africa I've been to so far so I might find you know there's a good chance we're gonna be going back to South Africa in February and I might find we're thinking about maybe trying to get to Kruger National Park which we might find is even cooler so I don't know a little loading your sneezing back might make you implode I believe I agree I believe that is true I personally don't hold back my ceases no you don't meet you [Laughter] alright we're done Oh actually you know what I want to do open I'm gonna put some grunge texture on it yeah and then I'm gonna put a cheat I'm gonna cheat a little bit yeah so let's open this creature right here and I've got a nice grunge layer right there I drag it over edit free transform I'm gonna rotate it and put there and put there I'm going to increase I have been using reference I'll show it to you in one second can can you please show a black and white version yes I can do that here we go I'm just going to go in here and lighten this up get rid of some of the grunge on here maybe some of the grunge there and let the left rest of it just kind of sit remind me later okay let's get this whoops clean that up there there so we got a nice clean face that feels pretty good now one last thing I'm gonna flatten oops merge layers so I flattened it all out I want to go through and I'm gonna grab my soft brush right here I'm going to knock the opacity way down to 8% I'm going to go to color dodge and I'm gonna grab a super warm color and bright and I'm gonna just try just for the heck of it do it on extra layer I'm just gonna heat up some of the background a little bit get it to pop heat up his eye area here maybe huh get that nice and hot maybe right there maybe a little bit right there [Music] the one I'm using I can't remember if I made this one our downloaded it I make a lot of them I may have downloaded this one I'm pretty sure my next live stream will be Thursday yes so oh you know what I forgot oh no I got a save but I got a sign it I'm just gonna grab a nice middle green put this back to normal let's go back to our small brush there and go back to normal there and let's blow this up bring it over he'll oh hell yeah and that's way too distracting I'm gonna knock that value way down there we go much better there it is there is our painting where we talked about lighting so once again I want to show you guys I know this is a long one but I really enjoyed it and I am going to show a black and white version so don't worry here's what we started with as our reference let me get rid of this guy so look at what you can do you know don't let that reference be dictate to you what it is you're gonna do you can do whatever you want okay and let the reference be an inspiration for whatever you do after that and so that's I wanted dramatic lighting that's I wanted to show you what I think about when I used when I create lighting let the lighting design the lighting in a way that's gonna allow you to create more drama for your piece and guide the eye guide the eye to the places that you want the eye to look so you know most of my contrast in detail is in the face and it's in the expression that's where I want you to look and so that's what I've created so that is my approach to lighting let's look at a black and white version of it let me do this and let's go to image adjustments hue and saturation let's just draw all the saturation right out of it so now you can see even though with it black and white you can still feel the drama because I was very careful about the values meaning light and dark the areas where I wanted more attention I allowed there to be more contraire which is in the face detail that sort of thing and then I let everything kind of fade away after that so there's there's the black and white version there's the color version black and white version color version okay so that is my approach to lighting so I hope you guys enjoyed that thanks a lot if you guys stuck with me for the whole two-and-a-half hours that was fun I'm gonna be back again on Thursday doing another livestream but until then go out and put some beauty back in the world seriously and be nice to somebody because there's a lot of people out there that need us to be nice to them and and it's just not happening so let's make somebody's life better and put your grocery card away and and with that I'll just see you guys on Thursday thank you so much for hanging out with me for the last two and a half hours and remember go over to creature art teacher calm that's creature art teacher calm my website and check out some of the stuff we've got over there I will see you Thursday Dustin hi guys Scotland [Laughter]

Channel: The Art of Aaron Blaise

Views: 26,458

Rating: 4.9769011 out of 5

Keywords: The Arts, Animation, Art, Illustration

Id: 97--Bc3XO38

Length: 155min 53sec (9353 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 23 2018