hey welcome to another fundamental Friday I'm Tyler Bourne the lead concept artist working with Tyler edin over at brush saw studio so a really great way to add visual interest to our pieces whether it be an illustration or prop or character design or something is contrast contrast adds a lot of visual interest and it allows us to lead the viewer's eye where we want it to go for example the focal point and when I say contrast what probably comes to mind is value contrast light versus dark but that's only one example of contrast in reality there's many more so let's look at some examples so as I've mentioned we have value which is light versus dark but then we also have size contrast such as big shapes versus small shapes most of these by the way can be reversed so a small shape Will Stand Out Among a bunch of larger shapes next we have Hue or color and what I mean by this is warmer colors versus cool colors one human isolation will stand out against the rest the same thing happens with saturation you can work with higher saturation and lower saturation a typically higher saturation tends to draw our eye next we have shape contrast if you have one shape that's different from all the rest it'll stand out then we have Direction contrast and this refers to the direction of our breast Strokes or Mark makinging then we've got contrast in density which is noise versus areas of rest then we've got contrast in the edges of our Mark making so hard edges versus softer edges again hard edges tend to draw our eye a little bit more especially if they're surrounded by softer edges next we've got texture contrast which is texture versus no texture typically one area with a lot of fidelity or Texture will draw our eye it's similar to the density noise versus rest one then we have contrast in our breast Strokes you can have tighter more refined breast Strokes versus looser more expressive brush Strokes so let's take a look at some artists examples Hey I wanted to thank you Tyler B for coming over on the channel this week and giving everybody an awesome demo and I wanted to let you guys know it's thanks to you and your generous Support over on the brush sauce patreon that we are able to make content like this possible so of course we have links below for everything as well as we are running uh Tyler and I the other Tyler and I are running a group Men mentorship uh via patreon as well you guys can check availability on that the newsletter of course has all that kind of info and upcoming release dates with that said I'll let Tyler get back and do his thing catch you guys later so the first one we were discussing is your simple value contrast dark versus light and light versus dark in this example by John S you can see that there is no guess work as to what our focal point is it's the darkest part of the image sitting right up next to the the lightest part of the image so it's the area of highest contrast while you can have all kinds of contrast or lack thereof throughout your piece typically the areas of highest contrast will draw our ey so typically you find these in your focal point both these examples from John Sweeny are a dark shape over a light shape but the opposite is also true in this example by Nick gindro you can see that here we've got our lightest shape right up against our darkest shape so our eye goes here as a focal point this piece is also a good example for our next option which is size contrast here this big sort of antenna radar dish thing is our main focal point and you can see that while there are variations of smaller shapes and medium shapes throughout the piece this by and large stands out purely because it's so much bigger than everything else the opposite is also true you can see that in this example from M Des Shambo we have a small little spaceship flying through our it's surrounded by these giant clam or oyster type shapes and while there are a lot of size variations for these objects because you want a variation of big medium and small by and large all of these objects are quite big compared to our ship which is relatively small this helps the ship Stand Out amongst these larger shapes next is Hue or color contrast here we have an example by an artist you may be familiar with Tyler edin you can see that most of this piece are cooler colors it's mostly blues and purples and greens and while green can be either cool or warm and we start to get a few little warmer Hues in the green I'd say overall the greens of the vegetation in this piece are cooler greens and then we have this lens piece which by far is the warmest color in the illustration we also get a few pieces here and there with all of these examples yes we want to draw attention to a focal point but typically we don't want it to stand out so much that it sticks out like a sore thumb or feels alien to the piece so you can draw attention to your focal point and then pepper in a few little areas that help support your focal point and again even though these are mostly cooler colors I would say this patch of grass that starts to get a little bit warmer is also helping to support that warmer tone in the focal point another example of this is from Simon stalenhag again we have a predominantly very cool kind of color palette here and then this house which is our focal point starts to get some warmer colors even though this is hugely desaturated because we're in a cool environment we get some sort of reddish brown colors there and then we get some warmer sort of Tans and oranges even though they're diluted because of the cool environment and then finally of course we get the nice hot spot of warm color similar to the Hue and color we can look at saturation saturated colors versus desaturated colors this is a great example from Aon Zana here where we can see that our focal point here and some of the surrounding areas get a shock of saturation by contrast the rest of the piece is very desaturated it's actually a very grayscale piece and that makes the saturation of the sand stand out that much more here's another example from M dble and you can see that because the fire has such strong saturation in it the rest of the piece is very desaturated and feels dull by comparison this draws our eye to the focal point next we have shade cont typically we want to use a variation of shapes in our illustrations or pieces and by having some shapes play against other ones we can purposefully draw the viewer's eye notice that in this piece by Eton most of the shapes because they're natural sort of vegetative shapes a lot of them are rounder forms so we start getting a lot of this sort of thing happening everything is arcs everything is curves and everything is relatively soft by contrast our focal point which is this big rock here is by far the most square or rectangular shape again you don't necessarily want these things completely in a vacuum because it might stand out a little bit too much so we start getting a little bit more of these little square shapes here the harder edges among the softer edges of the vegetation but you can see that even in the Rocks as we move away from the focal point even they start getting rounder we start seeing some of those arcing rounded shapes on the Rock Sandy kind of areas by the shore here we also see that some of the Rocks start to get rounded off here just a little bit here as we're still close to the focal point and then these ones get more of that rounded shape even these ones here they're a little bit stronger in shape with some hard edges but overall they're a lot more rounded than this one here's another example from Aton and really we have sort of the same thing happening here a lot of the vegetation has more sort of rounded softer shapes to it with the Rolling Hills here you see we get a lot of these natural rounded sort of organic shapes and by contrast the castle is so man-made it's so hard edged that it stands out this really helps to make it stand out among all of the more organic shapes of the surrounding landscape this piece also demonstrates our next example which is contrast of Direction we've already established that this man-made hard Edge surface of the castle stands out against the more organic forms of the landscape but the landscape also creates a lot of Fairly horizontal lines here i' say almost the entire piece is roughly horizontal lines and again by contrast we get a lot of vertical lines happening in our focal point here with the castle so of course if it wasn't already obvious you can compound all of these different examples together you're not necessarily using one or the other you can use any kind of combination of any of them next let's look at contrast between noise and area of rest this example from Spar is a really obvious one our focal point which is the ship and a few little other areas of Interest smaller ships are really the only areas that have any real sort of detail or Fidelity to them they're the ones that get the most visual noise so that's where our eye goes in contrast the background is just these really wispy clouds we don't see much there's not much to look at there so these provide areas of rest you need a good balance between these because our eyes do need to rest within the image if it's all chaotic all the time then nothing's special if everything is special then nothing is special so you do want a decent balance in this example I would say most of the piece is areas of rest and most of the noise is just in our focal point so that's where our ey is being led here's another example from Ian mchu and you can see that the same thing is happening here I apologize the quality of this image I know was quite poor but it still depicts the idea quite nicely look at all the little brush work happening here all the little shapes the variation of values and Hues there's a lot of visual noise happening here in this Machinery but by contrast there's not much going on in sort of this grassy Hill type landscape or in the sky in the background it's a lot of just kind of smoky Haze we don't see much going on because of this our eye is drawn to the higher Fidelity of the Machinery but you can see from this example from Max hey here that the opposite is happening this image has so much detail and so much Fidelity there's a lot going on everywhere and again of course there's a few different things happening one of which is we get our brightest bright happening here but I would argue that we also get our largest area of rest amidst this sea of detail and that will draw our eye next we've got hard edges versus soft edges you can see here in this smar example that most of the brush work in the background is all quite soft whereas a lot of the edges in the spaceship start to get a lot more hard and more defined the same thing happens in this piece from John Singer sergeant in our focal point which is the face we've got some pretty strong hard edges happening whereas as we move further away from the focal point our edges become softer and in some cases are lost entirely once again in this example from Marco bchi we get a lot of hard edges in the foreground elements especially the tree bark here and some of the lines in the birds themselves those shapes become Bolder and the edges of those shapes have a harder Edge to them whereas in the background all of our edges are extremely soft next let's look at contrast of texture areas of more texture versus areas of less texture in this example from Andreas roacho we can see that our main tree here gets the highest Fidelity and the texture is most obvious whereas other trees in the background and moving away from the focal point are getting softer and softer for an even Bolder message he's got that stronger texture right up against the softer backdrop where there's no texture here's another example of the same thing from Grady Frederick you can see that Grady is putting all of his texture in the cabin or building it self there's some hints of texture happening on the ground plane but it's more subdued and then by the time we get to these rocks in the background and the clouds in the sky there's no details or textures showing through at all they're just becoming bold shapes here's an even Bolder example from Grady now this one is a study so overall there just is less time put into things like texture you can see that he did still put a bit of time into putting texture into this building and the Rocks once we get to the ground plane the clouds and the sky there is no texture whatsoever lastly let's look at brush work in this example from John Park you can see that in our focal point with the character and the horse the brush work starts to get a little bit tighter the sizes of the shapes get a little bit smaller he's effectively defining his subject more specifically with tighter brush work whereas things like foliage on the ground gets a lot looser and a lot more expressive he's just sort of hinting that there's some sort of vegetation but we don't really know what it is we can sort of guess that it's patches of grass or bushes or something maybe a few little cacti here and there but we don't really know because it's not that important he's leaving the brush work be loose because he just wants to indicate for context as we move back in the distance the brush work becomes even bigger and Bolder here's another example from John and you can see that in our focal point the brush work starts getting Tighter and more defined whereas in the background this is very loose and expressive you'll notice with the last few examples we looked at things like noise versus areas of rest the hard edges versus soft edges texture versus no texture and tight breast Strokes versus loose brush Strokes we're essentially achieving the same ends really what we're doing is having some areas with higher Fidelity and then some areas with lower Fidelity with the soft edges we're essentially getting less Det detail because everything is being blurred and we're effectively doing the same thing with the looser more expressive brush strokes but you can see that technically there are still some pretty hard edges in this brush work but it is getting looser and less refined than in our focal point okay thanks for sticking around and watching I hope this gives you some ideas for future pieces do let us know in the comments what you'd like to see in future fundamental Fridays as always thanks to Tyler edin for having me back on the channel I co-run the group mentorship with Tyler edin over on his patreon so definitely check that out the link will be in the description below you can also check out my channel here on YouTube the link to that will also be in the description thanks for watching and we'll see you next time okay bye