From the course: The Elements of Composition for Illustrators

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Establishing value and contrast

Establishing value and contrast

From the course: The Elements of Composition for Illustrators

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Establishing value and contrast

- So once I got that figured out, I started to think about the structure and the form. I had all the line work, I had to think about the value, and the value is really important because the value is the first thing I think about when establishing contrast throughout the whole scene. I need to think about what the darkest dark is, and it's where my eye is going to tend to go, and the viewer's eye is going to tend to go. So, identified the very small figure. Now, the figure I made smaller on the back of the bird so it looks like more like a horse-to-person relationship. I made sure that she had a dark value in her outfit, and also the tools and the paintbrush, the eye and the talons were dark in color. So you sort of, the eye's going to pop through this overall shape and in many ways, the shape of the bird and the figure, I outlined it several times to figure out what is that shape, and where will those points of interest be?

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