Add Backlighting To Your Art

Hi, my name is Oyun Orka, a VTuber who tries to draw, and for today, let's talk about how to add backlighting to your artwork.

Backlighting is a technique I use often in a lot of my illustrations, as it’s relatively simple and adds a really nice effect to your art.

Backlighting Overview

But first off, what is backlighting?

According to Merriam Webster, backlight is illumination from behind.

There are a lot of ways to draw backlighting. You can go for a more intense look, with harsh lighting, very intense edges along the light, and a darker subject matter with high contrast.

Or, you can soften it up with either bounce light or some other light source in the front as well.

So essentially, if you want a top down view of this, backlighting is just where the light is coming from behind the subject, and you're looking at the subject from the front. Of course, it doesn't need to be straight behind the character. This can also be moved around.

If you simply wanted to light something like a sphere or circle. The easiest way you can add backlighting to a subject matter is just by using three different layers, each with separate layer modes.

The primary shadow layer set to multiply, the primary rim light layer set to add, and a bounce light layer- Usually I'd like to set this to overlay, but this can also be set to screen, add or whichever you feel like is appropriate for your own illustrations.

So there are a lot of ways that you can do backlighting, but the first thing to think about is: Where is the light coming from and what is the source of your light?

For this tutorial I'll demonstrate with three different lighting scenarios, one with kind of like almost a spotlight behind the character at night, one with a character in broad daylight with the sun shining behind their back, and another at sunset with slightly softer lighting.

Demo 1: Night

So before I add lighting, I typically like to draw the background first, just so I know exactly where the light is coming from, what kind of scenery I'm dealing with, and that way, I can better understand how the light will affect the character or the subject matter. For the scene, I'm kind of envisioning something set in outer space, almost like on the surface of the moon, so I'll draw accordingly.

Next, put all the character layers inside a folder.

Then, on a new layer, clip that to the character folder, then generally what I like to do is color pick a primary or predominant color from the background, in this case, this dark navy blue. And fill that layer.

Really quickly, if we're envisioning this as a planet, because of the light source is also affecting the planet that this character is standing on, there will be some indirect bounce light from this onto the character from the ground also being indirectly lit up by the sun. And then so to convey that, we'll be adding some bounce light just along the edges of this character, kind of coming from the bottom, along with the rim light coming from the back as well.

Below is a simple diagram as demonstration.

As I'm drawing highlights on the hair, something to note is that because hair is thinner than more solid parts of the subject, like the clothes or hands, I'm more liberal with applying the light around the edges here, just kind of imagining that because it's thinner, the light can affect more of each strand of hair a little bit further.

If you look at some examples of my old artwork with backlit characters, something that I want to note is that not all areas are evenly lit. If I set the saturation of this drawing to zero, you can see this area behind the character with the hair is lit little brighter than the other highlighted areas.

Because hair is thinner and finer, and some of the more solid parts of this drawing, a way to really frame a character's face if you happen to be painting a portrait, is to just use a light brush and draw in the light shining brightly on the hair from behind the character's face. This is because I want more attention to go near the character's face, here, so the hair behind the character is lit up more brightly in order to create a clearer silhouette.

Because the lighting is coming from kind of behind the character we can't really see, to better convey that there’s light here, I'm going to go ahead and add a little bit of airbrush just behind the character here. And I'm also going to just have on a new layer above the character and above everything else, just kind of have some light just peeking out on the side here.

Also, to go ahead and do a kind of intense light effect, I'm going to use a hard airbrush.

After correcting the rim lighting color for the skin color or warmer tones, I'll go ahead and add some finishing touches like highlights on the hair, even if it's not very realistic, just to bring out some more contrast. I also add some final filters, and we’re done with our first example!

Demo 2: Daylight

But what if you want a less strong source of backlighting or want more reflected or bounce light? Well, let's try again with a more sunny day light scene.

Here I'm going to use a photo that I took on a trip as a reference for this drawing. Using photos can be a great way to have a guiding point for how you want to light your drawing. So now that we have our background done, let's start adding the main layers for the rim light, just like we did with the earlier drawing: A primary multiply layer clipped to the character, the main rim light layer, and the bounce light layer.

This time, instead of envisioning at night, in the scene, I'm kind of envisioning my character standing in the sea with the surrounding ocean kind of reflecting light onto the character.

Because it's set in a bright daylight scene, I want to be sure to add more visible bounce light. For strong bounce light, what I usually like to do is first block in a big circle just right around the face, since that's typically where I want focus to be and then block in the rest.

Essentially, what I do is block this in and then go between adding more to this, for example, adding some more light where the hair is and then erasing where I don't want there to be bounce light in the shadow here. Also in the hair or just where there's clothes wrinkles.

A way to soften the light is essentially by selecting the lighting layer, then deleting the selected area from the multiply layer and then lowering the opacity of the rim light layer. This way, we have more of the original colors show through.

I also went ahead and added some overlay layers and filters. If you'd like to learn more about how I filter my art, please check out the below Tip.

And after adding some filters, we finished our second example with a bright daylight scene.

Demo 3: Sunset

Essentially the process is pretty similar to what we did with the earlier two examples. I'll start off by drawing the background based on a sunset photo I took from a trip, and this time I have the light kind of coming from the bottom left of the character instead of above or right behind the middle of the character.

 

An effect, I like to use with backlighting where the light source is visible is to have some of this light sort of peeking out from above the character. So while most of the background is drawn behind the character, I do add another layer to above the character as well and draw in some lens flare using a light circular brush.

I'll go ahead and vary the colors and sizes, and sometimes erase from the middle of the larger dots to get this lens flare effect. I also go ahead and use the hard airbrush like we did with the night scene, but this time the rays are above the character instead of behind it.

Moving into actually adding shading to the character, once again, I'm going to fill an entire layer with a predominantly kind of orangish brownish hue, which reflects the sunset.

This time for a softer look, instead of using a hard tipped brush, for the bounce light, I'm going to think of this as adding an additional light source in front of the character. Sort of like a soft camera flash or something similar.

I'll start by using a sort of warm grayish color, and then airbrush that onto the center of the character around the face and chest.

Next, I'll slowly erase from the edges where there’s shadows, just along the edges, like on the sides of the hair, on the sides of the face, the chin and behind the shoulders.

Once that's done, I'll set this to Add (Glow) and adjust the opacity of this to soften up the look. Finally, I'll go ahead and add in the backlighting here. This time it'll be a little bit more subtle, so I'll just very faintly outline along the edges here with a very bright yellow, just along the edges facing the bottom left of the character to indicate where the sunlight is coming from.

So once we finish adding the rim light, one thing you can do to add an almost glowy effect to your rim light is to create a selection from the layer you have your rim light on, and then go to your character layer or folder and click Select Overlapping Area. Once you have that selected, make a new layer above both the rim light and the character and fill that with a color of your choosing.

Once that's done, I'll go into Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, and blur that slightly. Once that's done I’ll lower the opacity and change the blending mode of that layer. This way it has a very subtle glow to your rim light. Similarly, you can also use the same technique by filling behind the character as well.

Finally, I'm just going to add some finishing filters like a gradient map blur and noise filters, and we're done!

And with that, you've learned how I handled backlighting in three different ways. One at night with very strong backlight and high contrast, one during the day with stronger bounce light, and one at sunset with the subtle backlighting and an additional softer source of light from in front of the character as well.

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If you’d like, please check out the video for a more detailed explanation! Thank you!