Hello!

Welcome to my tutorial on thinking in planes, as related to lighting and shadows. My name is Bag and i've been painting in CSP full time since 2017. I've been painting digitally since 2009, and worked as a game dev since 2011.

This tutorial combines my 2 favorite subjects in painting, sci-fi and lighting! Hope this helps, feel free to message me on twitter if you have any questions.

Step 1 - Sketching in basic shapes

To start off, already in the sketch stage, i think in large simple shapes, it's essentially 4 cubes and a sphere, with some "odd angles" on them. Thinking in basic shapes from the start makes lighting much easier.

Lasso selection and fill. If working at high res, i recommend making this a selection layer (ctrl + left click on the layer to select your silhouette, select > convert to selection layer).

 

re-selecting the silhouette processes much faster at higher resolutions when using selection layers vs ordinary raster layers.

 

Step 2 - Basic values

Block in basic values. Establishing these big values is a very important step, the way you arrange them could change the entire feeling of a design!

 

A mistake many beginners do is to keep all the values of their designs too close to the middle gray, which makes it a bit "muddier". Working with 3-4 values in flat shapes like this makes it "impossible" to muddy up.

Step 3 - Light direction

Establish the light direction, try different ones if you don't know what you are looking for. For this one i already had an idea of what i wanted to see.

If you aren't used to calculating cast shadows yet, practice with the most basic shapes first, remember this is essentially 4 cubes and a sphere.

I fill the shadow areas with a solid blue color, just as a reference later for how the shadows are going to fall.

Step 4 - Refining values

Finish the base values, based on chosen light direction. For this one i simply worked with 5 values (0 (black), 3, 5 (mid gray), 7, 10 (white)).

If one part of the helmet was a value 3, i'd simply make the shadow one step darker (in this case, value 5). This is just to establish the light and shadow relationships, you can increase this contrast later if you wish!

Time to start refining values. Think about the planes on every object. For example this visor, it has 4 (or 5, if you count the one we cant really see) planes you need to consider, how you are going to treat the values.

 

Even though Plane 1, 2, and 3 are all in shadow, they each still have a unique direction, that can influence the planes shadow value, or color.

 

Learning how to think about planes, is key to learning how to approach "realistic lighting".

Values refined. 3 shadow planes on visor are now different.

Slight ambient occlusion /contact shadows.

For round shapes, like the top part of the helmet, you can just imagine it being segmented in 3+ angles, or make it a perfect smooth gradient, up to you / style you are going for!

Step 5 - Colors

The basic strategy now is to simply look at the gray scale values, and start replacing them one by one, that way you can keep track of the small nuances in lighting and think of the color changes.

Already in the gray scale, i tried to think about how the main helmet color should reflect on the visor, and vice versa.

Refining.

Step 6 - Local colors

When the basic colors are blocked in, i start to change up local colors of things, the visor now has 2 colors, a colder one and the main orange.

Replacing parts of the orange is the exact same process as with going from gray scale to color, simply decide where you want to change the color, and make sure you keep the planes and their lightness in mind.

To match the general picture, I've kept the top plane a bit cooler (just like on the white part of the helmet), and the side planes a bit warmer.

Step 7 - Adding details

It was looking a bit empty, so i added some detail. Just keep planes in mind, as usual.

The "jaw" was looking a bit boring, so i added a bluish part to balance up against the orange.

Zooming out far, while painting sometimes can reveal to you if some planes are too light or too dark, if they kind of stick out too much or too little.

 

Step 8 - Final

At this point, you can keep refining to your own taste, the process would be the same. Always mind the planes, of everything you add to your painting!

As a final image, I've converted the image to gray scale, and drawn over to show all the planes, illustrating roughly how my thinking on planes was in every area. There are some areas where i leave planes a bit sloppier, since i don't want everything to be as sharp everywhere.

Here's a bonus image close up. It was painted in 4k x 4k resolution