I am so serious when I say if you want to learn about light, you NEED to at least look at modeseven’s tutorials. even if you’re not pursuing a painterly style, this is all essential theory that can be easily adapted to different coloring styles. notice how none of these ever say ‘light with these colors and shade with these colors’? notice how this is teaching how light works on a mechanical level, and reminding the audience to adjust the actual colors they choose by context? THAT is good advice.
(if you’re thinking ‘wow I want to study more of this persons art!’ I encourage you to do so, but proceed with the knowledge that modeseven draws pretty much exclusively weird as hell kink art. sometimes wisdom comes from horny places)
Hey! Sorry to bother you, but I was watching the Speedpaint you posted recently for the Finn and Nico drawings and I was wondering. When shading the smaller drawings you added a line of brighter, transitional color between the parts that the light hit, and the parts in the shade. So I was wondering how do you go about picking that color?
what it’s representing is subsurface scattering. It’s a term used more in the 3D rendering field, but what it’s referring to is the way light passes through an object and bounces around underneath the surface. If you’ve ever been bored while holding a flashlight, you’ve certainly seen this:
The red you’re seeing here is blood and tissue being illuminated. Certain lighting situations can emphasize the translucency of a surface.
here’s a guide someone made that talks about how to choose the color, but doesn’t really explain why it happens. It kind of treats every surface the same, and it can be fine stylistically, but it’s important to know that not everything is going to react to light the same way skin does. A grape is going to reflect/absorb light differently than concrete.
^ notice how the edge of the shadow isn’t universally saturated. It’s only in specific locations.
What I’d suggest for you is not to think about it like “how do you go about picking the color”, but instead to just study how light works.
Dunno if anyone’s interested in these, but this was my latest assignment for CGMA’s Art of Color and Light class- this past week focused on how light interacts with different materials.
It’d be cool to try some different skin tones, I just used my own pasty hand for reference. Maybe even an alien species with non-red blood, so the occlusion shadow glows a different color where light passes through? Would it be purple for Namekians and green for Vulcans? (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧ possibilities
Also, the iridescent pearl wasn’t a requirement, but I enjoy Sailor Moon and suffering. If anyone’s got pointers on iridescence, I am all ears over here, because I clawed my way through that one screaming
Here’s steps for a painting that was pretty defining for me as an artist. It’s a bit older now, but still gives me feels and feels belong on a tumblr. Took three or so days I believe, all from imagination.
If you want to get good at lighting, I can recommend no better practice than ANIMATED lighting. Once you understand the basic ground rules, lighting animation turns into a simple task that just takes a lot of brute force to complete.
So the first image is just me taking that pillar and showing how the lighting creeps as the light comes forward. The basic ground rule is: if the surface is facing the light, then it should be lit. Otherwise, it should be in shadow.
The second image shows where I’m applying a “proximity” rule. That means that if the light is too far away from the surface, it stays in shadow. So in this case, I take the pillar lightblob and erase the bits that are further from the light.
The third pass is pretty much those same two rules being applied to all the other surfaces with very very rudimentary shadow casting.
It certainly does get kind of tiring, but patience is a skill that gets better and better the more you stretch it.
There is so much great work and so many helpful tutorials at this person’s blog.
