I ask for artistic advice

[mbarco]

I used Photoshop to color a drawing of an moderately deep marine Ordovician environment that I had done in pen. I ask you for some advice on shadows, the "depth" of the water (foreground vs background),...

I would like to make it a little more realistic. Thanks a lot for your help

[rocket]

first little work on it 

[mbarco]

First of all: thanks a lot.

Than...I'm trying to understand: do you suggest darkening the background and increasing the overall contrast?

[Kane]

In terms of realism, you might want to consider the play of light in water. Light acts a bit differently in water, casting its own pockets of light and shadow upon anything that is there. Various colours/hues will be muted at that wavelength. Here is an example:

[mbarco]

right, but I imagine a seabed at (well around) 15m (50feet).

I don't know how much light it illuminates

Edited March 28 by mbarco

[Kane]

The more the depth, the less light. Do a search on Google for undersea photos to get a sense of how things appear.

[North]

Water also absorbs colors.

Blue color penetrates deepest and red is absorbed first.

So you also need to consider do you still want to keep more colors on your work.

 

Edit: My wooden eyes did not spot that Kane already mentioned this.

Edited March 28 by North

[Mahnmut]

Hi,

here are my 50 cents:

Expanding on what the others said-

 

As North mentioned, realistically, there is close to no red and very little orange light in 15 m depth. To make the image more interesting you could assume that your imaginary viewer brought a white lightsouce with them that fades in the distance, but shows reddish detail thats up close.

That you have a flat ground makes it somewhat easier to apply the mentioned properties of underwater lighting: the further up in the picture, the more water is between the viewer and the object, thus the darker and less red it appears.

For nice caustics and appearance of the underside of the surface I´d recommend looking closely at underwater photos like Kane suggested, maybe using some free ones as layers in photoshop.

Best regards,

 

[ftlcgi]

If you ad a blue filter you should mask out the bottom part of the filter on the seafloor, so it gets blue on the far side, example here

https://www.desmog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/seafloor-nodules_credit-noaa-okeanos.jpeg

 

Ad more algae on the "horizon" to break off the line, and ad some blur on the far algae and make them darker, ad some algae in the foreground to show the view through them, exagerated example here:

https://st3.depositphotos.com/6633222/16437/v/450/depositphotos_164377632-stock-illustration-underwater-scene-with-tropical-coral.jpg

I just saw that the first image had a faded background with dark algae, i think it looked more natural than  the second

 

For even more artistic effect you can ad more backgrounds farther and farther like this

https://st4.depositphotos.com/33603760/40774/v/450/depositphotos_407749904-stock-illustration-sea-underwater-background.jpg

 

Keep adding more details like shading, trilobite tracks, a bit of vignette, etc, soft improvements will count but don't overdo

 

Adjust some of the colors, gray out the pink and orange they are not thet visible in deep water, i started with pink and purple seashells but ended up with more muddy colors and i'm more happy with them

https://content.invisioncic.com/e327962/monthly_2024_03/bivalves.thumb.jpg.92d278acfc1188b9fb225a9849544334.jpg

 

You can use an underwater image (like the one mentioned by Kane) as a layer on top of your drawing and blend it as screen instead of normal and get something like this if you want

Edited March 28 by ftlcgi

[minnbuckeye]

 I personally would maintain non blue colors but keep them toned down. This is shown nicely in this drawing. Yes reality is blue at the depth you are wanting but my eye prefers some color. As another suggestion, bring more specimens to the foreground as also depicted in this image.

 

[Mahnmut]

10 minutes ago, minnbuckeye said:

 I personally would maintain non blue colors but keep them toned down. This is shown nicely in this drawing. Yes reality is blue at the depth you are wanting but my eye prefers some color. As another suggestion, bring more specimens to the foreground as also depicted in this image.

 

 

That one is made with AI, isn´t it?

[BirdsAreDinosaurs]

My two cents, if you want to illustrate something from scratch without blending in photographs: I agree with keeping more colours in the foreground and fading to the blueish tones in the back.

 

Add some more details and textures to your creatures. Darken the shadows, both in the sand and other places, to create more depth, coherence and contrast.
 

You could create layers of textures and blend them in at different levels to create depth. I also agree with the suggestion to add some large creatures in the foreground to create depth. They might also function as eye-catchers.

 

Good luck!

[mbarco]

thanks everyone for their advice!
I think the photos inserted by you have too powerful lighting from above, I put an example of a seabed at 15m depth:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Moorea_Aito_Depth_15m_Samuel_Etienne.JPG
I could imagine a light facing the viewer that illuminates the scene, preserving the closest warm tones and then gradually disappearing.

Probably increase the texture of the terrain, general contrast, darken,...

[rocket]

22 hours ago, ftlcgi said:

If you ad a blue filter you should mask out the bottom part of the filter on the seafloor, so it gets blue on the far side, example here

https://www.desmog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/seafloor-nodules_credit-noaa-okeanos.jpeg

 

Ad more algae on the "horizon" to break off the line, and ad some blur on the far algae and make them darker, ad some algae in the foreground to show the view through them, exagerated example here:

https://st3.depositphotos.com/6633222/16437/v/450/depositphotos_164377632-stock-illustration-underwater-scene-with-tropical-coral.jpg

I just saw that the first image had a faded background with dark algae, i think it looked more natural than  the second

 

For even more artistic effect you can ad more backgrounds farther and farther like this

https://st4.depositphotos.com/33603760/40774/v/450/depositphotos_407749904-stock-illustration-sea-underwater-background.jpg

 

Keep adding more details like shading, trilobite tracks, a bit of vignette, etc, soft improvements will count but don't overdo

 

Adjust some of the colors, gray out the pink and orange they are not thet visible in deep water, i started with pink and purple seashells but ended up with more muddy colors and i'm more happy with them

https://content.invisioncic.com/e327962/monthly_2024_03/bivalves.thumb.jpg.92d278acfc1188b9fb225a9849544334.jpg

 

You can use an underwater image (like the one mentioned by Kane) as a layer on top of your drawing and blend it as screen instead of normal and get something like this if you want

Great solution. 1000 times better than my 5 cent 👍👍👍

[mbarco]

Compared to the drawing I presented in my previous topic (a drawing of an moderately deep -15m/50feet- marine Ordovician environment):

I gave a more bluish tone to the water, I added some gradual blur towards the background, I removed red/orange (except in the foreground, where I imagine that whoever has come down uses a light source to illuminate the scene). I think it has become a little more realistic, but something is still missing?

(I don't want to add big blurry elements in the foreground)

 

[Mahnmut]

Nice!

Some ideas:

-the whitish plantlike organisms fade rather abruptly, (that is, the most distant ones are not very much "blue-shifted"), could mean that they simply do not grow further than that. Adding some faint ones further back could improve the impression of depth.

-Maybe take that blue just a little step back toward the green

-I think the absence of highlights at the zenith in your 15m-reference pic is not due to depth, but to the cameras angle, there would be a bright spot visible at daytime when looking up. if you want to include that more realistically you could make the image higher.

-The sunrays could be stronger

-To add interest and sense of depth, you could fade out the light like a vignette also for the foreground, like a very big spotlight

-you could fade the big yellow structure very slightly towards the parts that are further from the viewer, maybe colour the inside also.

-When you imagine the main source of light to be with the wiewer and not sunlight, there would be shadows pointing away

-I think I see some "ambient occlusion" where your objects sit on the ground, could be stronger imho.

-I do not know if its realistic that the swimming organism furthest away is now a dark silouette, but I like very much how it looks

 

Best regards,

J

 

[mbarco]

Thanks a lot for your help. Two explanations: the "big yellow structure" is a cystoid (I have 4-5cm plates), the "swimming organism" is a conodont. Interesting advice, I'll try to add some in the next few days. I don't understand what you mean by "ambient occlusion".

[Mahnmut]

Hi again,

thanks for introducing the models!

Ambient occlusion as far as I know is a term from computer graphics, not sure if the phenomenon in nature is also called so. Basically it means the (concave) corners and edges do look darker because the ambient light is occluded and does not reach those places as much.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambient_occlusion

Best regards,

J

[mbarco]

5 hours ago, Mahnmut said:

Hi again,

thanks for introducing the models!

Ambient occlusion as far as I know is a term from computer graphics, not sure if the phenomenon in nature is also called so. Basically it means the (concave) corners and edges do look darker because the ambient light is occluded and does not reach those places as much.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambient_occlusion

Best regards,

 

 

Now I've understood, thanks a lot for your explanation

[mbarco]

Last test:

[Bringing Fossils to Life]

I just found this topic; good job, water is difficult to illustrate! I have learned a lot from this thread. I especially like you conodonts; very few seem to add them into their Paleozoic artwork. Keep painting!

[mbarco]

Thanks a lot for your comment