introduction

hi my name is Shanmen Riddi . iam an aspiring concept artist from northeast India . In this tutorial we will learn about how weather affect the colour and light of the subject that we are drawing.

 

just a quick note : this tutorial is not essentially a "HOW TO DRAW " but rather a guide to understanding the fundamental aspect and some technical aspect so YOU can implement this on your artworks using clip studio paint :)

 

understanding the fundamental aspect of weather is essential for painting an environment , since weather conditions play a key role on determining the mood of your artwork .

how light works

there are a few things which we have to understand about light before we paint .

• light always travels in a straight line

• there are two types of light direct light and diffused light

• direct light produces hard shadows and diffused light produces soft shadows

• light is always bouncing off surfaces

 

examples of direct light

-sun

-flashlight

examples of diffused light

• skylight

-moon light

 

Overcast weather

here is an image that I have painted which is under the influence of a diffused light (skylight )

as you can see there aren't any hard shadows ,its all soft shadows . the light under the diffused light is never as strong as the light win the direct light .

 

the colour of the light in this case is blue because the colour of the skylight and because the colour of the light source is blue the shadows will generally produce a warm colour shadows (which in this case is a muddier brown )

This however isn't a rule and only general norm which yields good results .

SO HOW TO LIGHT THE SUBJECT UNDER AN OVERCAST DAY?

simple . anything that is facing upwards will receive the blue skylight and on the contarart any plane that is facing downwards will will receive a warm soft shadow.

night weather

weather at night generally has little to no light . the only source of natural lights in the night weather are moonlight (which reflects the light it receives from the sun ) and some mushrooms and some glowing bugs.

 

since this is about a the weather so we will not be including any artificial light source.

 

here is a quick process of how I do what I do :)

first we have to do a line drawing of the subject .then make another layer and put the layer below the line drawing as a base tonal colour .

quick reminder to keep the tonal base colour as flat as possible and not do any extra shading in this stage .

the next thing to do is to make another layer on top of the sketch layer , then set that layer to multiply mode as shown in the figure 2.

 

the use the fill tool on the left side of the menu ( shortcut G) and use a cooler temperature and fill in the layer

no we have this picture which is reminiscent of the night scene. now is the fun part where you make another layer on top of the multiply layer and paint .

next step of this process is to define where the darkest accents are ( the parts where is absolutely no way light is ever going to reach ) these areas are also called occlusion shadows .

the next step is to put the light sources that are affecting the subject , in this case it is the moonlight and the glowing incests.

the same thing applies for the moonlight ( the planes that are facing above will receive the moonlight and the planes that are facing down won't receive none)

snow weather

this weather is very similar to the overcast day . Infact it is almost like the overcast day minus the snow .

The planes of the subject which faces upwards will receive snow and the planes which faces downwards will probably get no snow .

sunny weather

sunny weather unlike the other weather conditions above is lit by a direct light and not diffused light . so the main point of difference here that the cast shadow will have a darker edge as compared to a softer ones in the above pictures.

 

In figure1 we see that the subject even though it is under a direct sunlight , it is still affected by the skylight ( hence warm light =cool shadows and cool light = warm shadows.

In figure 2 we see a phenomenon called bounce light or reflected light . as I have explained previously that light is always bouncing off surfaces.

A very distinctive feature of the sunlight is that it always give out decisive hard shadows unlike the other weather conditions we have seen before.

another fun trick is to make another layer and put that layer in colour dodge mode . this allows you to make quick adjustments to increase the saturation in the light area.

character under weather conditions

In this section we will be lighting a character under the influence of weather.

here is the fun part if you can light basic forms then you can definitely light a character because here we will be using the same strategy that we have used to light the sphere previously.

 

 

character sketch

this was a basic sketch that was done by me and below this layer there is another layer in which I did put the values .

on the back ground there is the logo which has been blurred out .

 

blurring is a natural phenomenon which we humans experience on a regular basis .our eyes adjust to depth and thereby blurring the things which are not in focus .

 

the blur was done using Gaussian blur .

it is to be noted that what ever is that you wish to blur. must be kept in a different layer

the degree of the blur also needs to adjusted . In my personal estimation the blur needs to somewhere in the middle .

character under natural weather

in here the character is under the natural light .

once again In here I have used the multiply. layer to apply the colours . the multiply layer was put on top of the sketch layer

character under overcast weather

in this case the character is lit under an overcast day or a cloudy weather .there aren't any hard shadows . the character is lit by a blue skylight.

 

 

character under sunny weather

just the the sphere that was done previously same technique has been used in order to light this character.

he is under direct sunlight which is a warm light which produces cool shadows and sharp cast shadows .

another thing to keep in mind id that whenever the sunlight comes in contact with the skin it creates a warm saturated reddish accent , now that is due to the translucency of the skin .

character under snowy weather

in this the character is under a snowy weather . he is lit by the same light as an overcast day just with the addition of snow .

one think to understand there is that even snow has volume so it will react to different weather conditions differently.

character under moonlight

now the character is lit mainly by the moonlight which has a soft cool blue accent in the character .he is also lit by the glowing insect .

 

IT IS ESSENTIAL TO UNDERSTAND THAT I AM USING THE SAME TECHNIQUE TO LIGHT THE CHARACTER AS I HAVE LIT THE BALL.

FINAL THOUGHTS

this is the full process that I personally use . if there is any doubts or any critiques or aid needed please feel free to reach out to me on either here or in Instagram . I always answer back :).