Bobby Chiu digital painting class, assignment 2!

Wow! This class was really challenging.. but worth it. This is using brush control playing with the opacity and flow. For Bobby's class you had to use the swatches provided and then on the second part of the class using mask layers. One issue I did face was that my (using clip studio paint) paintings couldn't get as dark as my boyfriend's (who is using photoshop), we were both using the same method and I think where the issue lay was with the layer masks. However I didn't want to deviate from the process because I wanted to learn this way so when I am working in-house and using photoshop I could use this work flow effectively. So these may look a little... iffty. 
Also due to bloggers confusing lay out I will write everything here and leave the images below. 

So lets begin! The first part of the assignment was fun, using a few tones to render a ball and a line cut .. thing. Something I realise I have done throughout this assignment was making the bounce light way too strong. Using nothing but a hardbrush was really hard but this has taught me so much,, it's taught me to try and be more patient and to experiment with edges a bit more. I think the fact the assignment looked so simply when Bobby was doing it threw me off since I thought I would be able to do this assignment every day for a week, However I did these over a few days and really tried to put my all into them. I think I still have a long way to go, I notice now as well looking at the one with the wiggly line that then i made the values too dark in areas. 

Thinking about the second part of the assignment... I think my brain exploded a few times while attempting this! I think even though my darks weren't as pushed as much as the reference I still learnt a lot and I think painting in a limited value range is useful for me because I still need to learn that not everything needs to have a lot of value range! For example the mushroom there, if I were to paint in just an illustration I feel like I would of pushed the values to the extreme, but in this its shown me that, that doesn't need to happen. I really like how he chose to put flower with beautiful petlas and an ear in this challenge. since the flower has a lot of softness and subtle shadows and the ear has a lot of hard shadow and a few drastic value changes, where the flow it more so flows beautifully and the forms are more soft. 

Try 1:

Try 2:

Try 3:

Additional tasks from CTRL+paint:

Welcome... you have unlocked a super secretly bonus level! I attempted this CTRL+paint class alongside the bobby Chiu one so I could practice the technique with these shapes, I also used the soft and hard round brush with this just to clean up the shapes since I found it really challenging to keep this neat, but that's what rubbers are for- right? you got to make a mess when creating art! I think this is one of those things you look at from afar and think it looks ok, but when you zoom in you can see a lot of awkward brush marks. I think I have a lot more to learn when it comes to brush control I think I need to get a lot more comfortable with making the flow and opacity lower and use a bigger brush to get a smoother gradient.