TODAY'S FEATURED POST

Second Time’s the Charm

Lauren Panepinto

Alright, I've been avoiding writing this post because it's going to be some tough love. But I was just at IlluXcon this past weekend, and I had a few good conversations that came up around this topic, so I want to get it down in words so more folks can see it. And if doing portfolio reviews for 20 years has taught me anything, it's that if a topic comes up over and over again,…

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EVERYDAY ORIGINAL

The Penny Drops in Derry

YESTERDAY’S POST

Image

Short Take: Foreground Darks

Gregory Manchess

August 6, 2025 - Recently in one of my online classes for SmArt School, a few students were having trouble creating visual interest in their compositions. The pieces lacked depth. The culprit wasn’t the design of the main elements, but the distribution of values. Generally, the students think of the background as dark, but they also wanted to put their main subject in dark clothing, and all the darks in the subject were the same darks as in the background. They initially thought the farther away from the foreground subject, the darker the background becomes. But unless they were depicting someone in a subway, or darkened room, the background can be lighter. What was necessary for them to gain depth and enhance the silhouette of the foreground subject was to slightly lighten the background color value and allow most…

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