It's time to grind fundies anon.

1. Pick a ref
2. Do a 2 value study
3. Post results

https://x.com/noahbradley/status/1926292493953347818
Our guy Noah disavowed two-value studies thoughbeit

>melted ai porcelain cat
the limits of fine artist creativity

>>7610476
> I think they're a counterproductive exercise
Finally someone agrees with me.
What's more practical:
- start seeing values and forget about (be more creative with) hues.

>>7610422 (OP)
I'm gonna do a shitton of these.

I used grey as bg cause my eyes are sensitive, so ignore that.

>>7610422 (OP)
>AI
kys

>>7610513

>>7610516

>>7610517

>>7610519

>>7610520

>>7610521

>>7610524
I'll be back with more whenever.

>>7610528
Lol thats not how to do value studies. Your light istoo bright and shadows are too dark. Grind more permabeg.

>>7610545
Pyw

>>7610545
>no work posted
Yawn.

>>7610545
Yeah, that head was the worst so far. OP visit the /beg for more reference.

>>7610483
>>7610515
Artist's name is Will St. John and it was painted with oil on linen in 1980.

Stop embarrassing yourself.

>>7610763
>it was painted the year he was born
actual retard

>>7610770
>ummm actually you got one detail wrong so it doesn't matter that I've embarrassed myself like a dumb twitter retard

>>7610776
>calling others dumb twitter retards
>cant identify ai
>thought his birth year was when he painted it
>not a shred of shame for being an actual retard
now THATS embarrassing

>>7610776
now you're going to say 'its painted so it cant be ai'
yeah he painted it, he painted slop, still makes it ai, dumb ass zoomer

>>7610476
His art sucks though.

>>7610808

>>7610513
>>7610516
>>7610519
>>7610520
>>7610521
>>7610524
>>7610528
>>7610732
using hatching and lines defeats the point of the exercise

>>7610732

Nigga if you wanted to do hatching then do it properly. I'm assuming you watched 5 minutes of dynamic sketching and thought you could rush through it.

>lacks rhythm
>lines made without regard to form
>no gradation
>shitty references
>lacks composition

Go practice in pencil first retard.

>>7610975
Got it, but why is this if the exercise is in black and white anyways?
>>7611026
I spent at least a half hour on each of my studies. I'm using a hard round brush without pressure and really fucky stability, so it's an absolute struggle to get the lines looking right.

I'll try to be more mindful of my lines, but maybe I'll just try doing this exercise with a Copic on paper so it's easier to have control of my linework.

>>7611026
>more than 2 colors
>buy my brush
pyw

>>7610476
>Two value studies are useless
>Photo has dogshit lighting

I uh... don't think he ever learned what the two value study is supposed to teach. Why does anyone pay attention to these clown ass 'teachers' again?

>>7611036
You can do it in whatever two colors you want, it doesn't really matter.

>>7611098
I get your point, but I meant why can't I use gradation (hatching)? Sorry if this is dumb, but how else am I supposed to express midtones/etc.?

>>7611137
You can use more values if you want, but in most cases you can define a composition with just two. And that's kinda what you're supposed to be getting out of this, not to overcomplicate your framing and get distracted by micro details.

Like here in mine, the composition is too simple on these portraits to clearly define with just two values, so I threw a third one in there one some.

>>7610476
he's right, with the added preemptive rebuttal that artists that thrive on graphic pen-and-ink "two-value" styles like mike mignola a la hellboy are exact in their lighting choice to have their graphic shadows read well and make sense, which isn't really something you can do when attempting to copy a reference.
3-value scale studies are great to actually find specifically core shadow (50% grey is almost always too dark for an in-light midtone), and 5-value scale studies are the gold standard imo, since any painting that you can do in 5-values will easily hold up well both with color and with edges better defined in the later stages, assuming you want to continue to take it to color and refinement after you get to that point
you obviously only have two tones to work with in pen-and-ink, but pen-and-ink artists are graphic in their work anyway, and cheat value all the time for midtone textures, readability, and emphasis

>>7611153
this is a good study, but you kind of proved his point: there's so much lost in the bottom half of that image that could be revealed with one additional tone

>>7611137
the point of a two-tone value exercises is to be able to identify and recreate groups of shadows and light in concrete shapes. hatching is counterproductive to that.
that's not to say there's no value in doing two-tone hatching pictures, that's a very valid form of rendering form. it's just not a two-tone value study.

>>7611181
>>7611184

Cherrypicking cases a bit, though, isn't it? Yes obviously there are instances where two-value doesn't work. Like references with very undefined shapes or low contrast. But like, square peg round hole. I wouldn't expect every exercise to work in every instance, and expecting otherwise is either dishonest or retarded. If your reference is mostly muddled overcast values, no shit breaking it down into two values isn't going to help.

>>7610476
Eh I kinda agree it's not exacly good for learning painting but it is good for learning to subtract unnessesary details.

>>7611200
>Cherry-picking cases a bit, though, isn't it?
no. 2-tone works great when you are trying to teach the very basics of separating light from shadow on geometric wood blocks or fruits/simple objects in a classroom lightbox like these:
>>7610516
>>7610517
>>7610519
>>7610520
>>7610521
>>7610732
but every single one of these examples use some form of graphical abstraction to pull forward/push back a shape (outlining with white/black against an opposite background shape) or using an abstraction of midtone (hatching), which is not the exercise bradley is describing
for completeness, these >>7611026 are great, but some use an additional grey tone for clarity, and >>7611153 >>7610422 (OP) are the only ones that did the exercise "correctly"
it's highly dependent on the photo/studio ref you use
tl;dr - the exercise is fine, and it's needed for many beginning artist's to get a handle on value grouping, but it's so limiting that you should move on after like a week of playing with it, because it becomes both trivial to do and provides little further learning value, which is exactly what bradley elaborates on in the full thread.

>>7611221
Well yes, obviously like I said, some examples work better. I think you're discounting just how much contrivance goes into good value composition. Just because you're perfectly separating the values on some photo doesn't mean the photo has values worth separating.

I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it feels more like he got caught saying some dumb shit and had to retract. "It's counterproductive" and "It's sometimes good for learning value basics, and character silhouettes, and maybe composition..." are mutually exclusive takes. It's wishywashy as fuck.

>>7611232
>It's counterproductive" and "It's sometimes good for learning value basics, and character silhouettes, and maybe composition..." are mutually exclusive takes
they aren't, are you stupid or what?
if you have two options and one leads to worthwhile results less often than the other, using it is counterproductive overall even if it works out in specific instances

>>7611239
That's... not really what counterproductive means.

But you do you my guy. Go buy his overpriced 'art camp' thing if that's your jam.

>>7611232
>>7611239 is not me (>>7611221) btw
>I think you're discounting just how much contrivance goes into good value composition.
i'm not. notan is incredibly useful for composition blocking and even make great finished pieces, but students aren't doing notan as a finished piece; they're doing it as a learning experience. all i'm saying is hatching should not be used in the exercise, and the exercise is itself. whether the values when doing the exercise are "perfect" is irrelevant, since not only is no one claiming that the studies are ever perfect, but they also require abstraction in themselves anyway, since light obviously is not a binary scale and you need to use your gut to decide where light and shadow, or light and dark, make their transition, which is never a perfect process. you can get very fine and detailed textures with just black and white if you make details small enough, which again, plenty of pen and ink artists do, but hatching is a midtone abstraction by its nature.
>Just because you're perfectly separating the values on some photo doesn't mean the photo has values worth separating.
"values worth separating" is purely a factor of taste, which students may not have developed yet. it's both subjective and difficult to teach.
>"It's counterproductive" and "It's sometimes good for learning value basics, and character silhouettes, and maybe composition..."
in his defense, he did say they're "mostly useless", operative: "useless", in his OP and not what you've quoted, but i get that this phrasing can seem weaselly. idk man, the full thread is there if you want to read it. bradley seemed both reasonable and willing to level with the people that responded to him.
we can agree to disagree on this one and leave it at that.
i really don't want to derail the thread anymore anyway, since i'm not going to be posting work.

>>7611245
Uhm... actually... that's... literally... exactly... what... that... means... you... stupid... nigger... ... ...

>>7611260
Oh, I don't disagree with the hatching thing, but his reasoning is kinda nonsense, there's no reason you can't do a value study on any artstyle. Hatching just IS a representation of value. It's simply no longer notan if you hatch. But there's really nothing wrong with it if you're doing 3+ values, not that I'd recommend it, the lack of concise shapes you get with hatching is missing the point of the exercise. The problem, I think, with adding in too many values, is that your study stops being a value study and just turns into an unblended greyscale painting. Which is a helpful exercise in itself, I guess, but as some commenters point out, it's putting the cart before the horse for people who have trouble separating value from object. Which is basically everyone who doesn't know how to paint already.

>"values worth separating" is purely a factor of taste
I think that's part of what the exercise is meant to teach. Turning the composition into a binary makes it much less subjective what is or isn't effective and clear composition. And it keeps objects from becoming more than abstract shapes.

>>7611502
English lesson for the ESL:
'Not helpful' and 'less helpful' are two different things dingbat

>>7611733
>making the thing you want to happen less likely to happen
have they stopped trying to teach niggers to read?

>>7611209
> subtract unnecessary details
squinting takes less time desu

>>7611733
>if you have two options and one leads to worthwhile results less often than the other, using it is counterproductive overall even if it works out in specific instances
>That's... not really what counterproductive means.
>making the thing you want to happen less likely to happen
Take the L, anon.

>>7611866
If you do something that helps, even a little it makes the goal more likely.

Probabilities do not work retroactively.

>>7611897
you're fucking retarded

I did these for the first time more than a week ago. I wanna do more and move up to three values but I fucked up my wrist lately drawing too much other stuff. The first ones at the top I had no idea what I was doing but I think (?) I started getting it by the time I hit the bottom images. I was actually asking if I did these correctly but I didn't get much of an answer before.
I started doing these at the recommendation of this artist and people who mentored under him. The idea is moving up from 2 to 3 to 4 values either with the same study or new ones until you get pretty proficient at it.
https://youtu.be/6FOJc04-UKU

>>7611209
HOLY SYMBOL DRAWING.
No wonder you agree lmfao.

>>7613965
>Doesn't understand simplifying and using shapes
Retard

>>7611992
Absolute sovlfvl drawings. What's your blog?

>>7611992
When in doubt, sinix has the answer (in case anyone was curious). And Marco Bucci's 10 Minutes to Better Painting - Good Shapes video. I'll have to do more of these when i'm free from other studies. I might be juggling too many types of practice at the same time i'm kind of losing my mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QEGEBK6nIY
>>7614284
Thanks for the compliment! I only come here to post fundamental studies though so it won't be recognized. I'm not that good anyway, still working on that...

This was surprisingly a lot of fun. With the 2 value limitation, I immediately conjured the image of the Black Ops 1 cover art in my head.

>>7611992
Doing full bodies to get a little bit of anatomy practice as well. I hope I get faster the more I do them.
>>7616959
It's really fun practice! Working your way up to 3 and 4 values will probably be tougher but i'm learning a lot.

>>7610476
Noah Bradley is genuinely terrible. I've seen intoids on /ic/ who mog him. Utterly baffling that he's had any success as a teacher but then, I guess not really.

>>7610476
It's funny that he disavows this when values are easily one of his weakest links

>>7617644
this looks cool, whats the process?

>>7617644
I feel like you're going a bit too graphic with the value use. But maybe that's what you're going for.

>>7617747
Solid brush. You either paint starting from the lights or shadows based on how you see the shapes and carve them out. I'm still pretty new to this so I recommend watching the youtube videos I posted above (athoro/sinix/marco bucci) for a better understanding of the how to do the exercise and why you would do it.
>>7617749
I draw anime primarily so I think that's why it's coming out like this. Would making the shapes rounder and more organic fix it? Less lines? I do still have a habit of adding them. I was thinking it's ok as long as it's readable value wise and the end result is useable if I choose to render them later. I've sincerely been asking around if i'm doing these correctly but you're the only other person that's given some feedback.

>>7617757
>>7617749
It's less the shapes, and more the lines. It's not too bad, but it's something to watch out for if you care about that kind of thing. Shapes getting merged together isn't always something you have to try to avoid.

>>7617761
Ah, so it is the lines! Thank you, genuinely. I think I got a bit overzealous with the addition of the 3rd value whereas in the 2 values one I did a better job of merging the shapes. Looking back on these now yeah, I definitely started "drawing" more. I'll keep it in mind when I do these next.

>>7610422 (OP)
Tried it a little. The face was kinda okay but the metal is fucked in this. I guess when working with metallic things it should be a 3 value situation. Fun exercise.

>>7619352
you're using a lot more than 3 values and even varying the edge firmness with that low opacity brush. missed the exercise entirely.

>>7619808
Heh didnt mean to miss it but you are right. Should try different brush

focusing on shape design

>>7610476
Noah is a faggot and a queer

>>7620148
again adding more values with the brush opacity and texture. You should try using the "Pencil" tool or it's equivalent, so it's only 100% opacity or 0% opacity, with not inbetween

>>7614279
YOUR SHAPES SUCK NIGGAAAAAAA