Tips on Lighting

[Chakram† 0]

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Edited August 2, 2014 by Kiyoshi-Kitten

[NightFell† 0]

If you'd like I can help with some redline-ing when I get home from work later tonight! I don't think my wiggly lines from a mouse in MS paint will be too useful to anyone

[Rythe† 0]

As much as it isn't glamorous and might even sound boring, take a sketch pad around your place and do still art and scenery. Especially pay attention to and try to capture light and shadow.  You may even want to fiddle around with lamps, windows and subject matter to get the sort lighting you want to try to draw in your home.

 

More than any other suggestion, I think that will help you figure out how to draw light. 

 

Maybe after you get a good grasp on realistic lighting, the stylized lighting that really makes pictures pop will come much easier.  And there's plenty of artists around DA and FA with examples that can help you get a good idea of where to go when you want to try some of the stylized stuff.

[Chakram† 0]

As much as it isn't glamorous and might even sound boring, take a sketch pad around your place and do still art and scenery. Especially pay attention to and try to capture light and shadow.  You may even want to fiddle around with lamps, windows and subject matter to get the sort lighting you want to try to draw in your home.

That actually sounds like a fabulous idea, but I am currently working on my pile of requests. I can do that later :3

[Alsek† 0]

One of the most important things with lighting is to choose the direction or directions the light(s) are coming from and to carefully consider where the shadows would then fall.  For example,  most of the shadows in this pic are on the lower right side.  So,  the highlights in the eyes should be on the upper left.  There shouldn't be shadows on the left side of things (like muzzles) so much.

 

Hope this helps!  ^^

[Direlda† 0]

Taking reference pictures can also help.  Pick an object and take several shots with different sorts of light:

• Backlit
• Directly overhead
• Various angles from the sides
• Natural lighting on a sunny day
• Natural lighting on a cloudy day
• Flash directly on it
• Combinations of lights
• Flashlight (i.e. directed light) vs lamp (indiscriminate lighting)

Giving yourself a library of different lighting scenarios to go back to will help refresh your memory when you aren't able to easily reference it in person (if it were a cloudy day and you were drawing scenes set on a sunny day).