Do you want to illuminate your art with artificial light, or do you just want to learn more about how to draw and color interior lighting? For today, let’s talk about ways you can illuminate your art with artificial lighting.

Color Temperature

Defining Color Temperatures

Before getting into the drawing demonstration, I’d like to first take some time to talk about color temperature.

So what exactly is color temperature? According to the Westing House Lighting Company, “Color temperature is a way to describe the light appearance provided by a light bulb. It is measured the degrees of Kelvin (K) on a scale from 1,000 to 10,000.”

So generally light bulb colors can range from warm to cool tones. Here I made a quick diagram of different lightbulbs at different color temperatures ranging from 2000 Kelvin to 9000 Kelvin. You might not see light bulbs at 2000 Kelvin or 9000 Kelvin very often since they’re at the very edges of this diagram, which means they’re either very warm or very cool.

But the middle range of colors and light bulbs, particularly ranging from around 2700 Kelvin to 6000 Kelvin, is what would be most common for average light bulbs. So let’s talk about the different colors of light bulbs.

But the middle range of colors and light bulbs, particularly ranging from around 2700 Kelvin to 6000 Kelvin, is what would be most common for average light bulbs. So let’s talk about the different colors of light bulbs. Let’s start with warm light. So warm light, which is around 2700 Kelvin is commonly found in residential lighting. It is used primarily in living rooms or bedroom, places where people want cozier warm and inviting vibes.

Warm Light (2700 K)

Let’s start with warm light, which is around 2700 Kelvin is commonly found in residential lighting. It is used primarily in living rooms or bedroom, places where people want cozier warm and inviting vibes.

It's also common in dimmer restaurants that want a more dramatic lighting mood or in hipster cafes!

Neutral Light (3500 K)

Next is neutral lighting, which is around 3500 Kelvin. This is common in commercial or industrial places and also commonly used in bathrooms, entryways or overhead lights. Neutral light bulbs are also common in supermarkets, where people will want to see what a product looks like under neutral lighting.

Cool Light (5000 K)

Next is cool light, which is around 5000 Kelvin. This is considered daylight, but it has a cool undertone and is used mostly for task lighting, which are places where you want to get things done. This is common in offices, kitchens, basements or parking lots.

Cold Light (6000 K +)

And finally, there's very cold light, which is around 6000 kelvin or higher. This is identified by the cool tones of blue hues visible in the lighting, and it's commonly seen in sterile environments such as doctor's offices due to the often brighter light. This is also suitable for use in aquariums and in horticulture to promote plant growth.

Color Temperature Applications

So, why does common light bulb temperatures even matter? Well, it doesn't have to matter for every interior drawing you do, but it's a helpful thing to apply to your art depending on what sort of context or mood you want to go for.

For example, warm light can suffer more cozy and intimate feel, and it’s nice to use it for more relaxing scenes such as when a character is reading something under candle light or while a character is relaxing in a bedroom.

Neutral lighting gives off a neutral feel so has for most applications. I personally like using it for mysterious or ambiguous scenes, since it doesn't particularly lean one way or the other in terms of mood.

Meanwhile, cool light gives off an industrial and sterile fuel, so I like to use it for city backgrounds a lot. Bright, cool colored light is also not very commonly seen in the natural world, so I like to use it for more industrial vibes.

So what about the other colors of light outside of just orange, yellow, white and blue light bulbs? Well, of course you can use any colors to light up your scenes even in interiors. There's a lot of different types of colors of artificial lights outside of the ones typical light bulbs. Honestly, you can choose whichever light color you want!

But if you don't know where to start, keeping in mind the context of the interior you’re drawing, along with light bulbs commonly used in that setting is a helpful way to get yourself started.

Drawing Demonstration

So now let's move on to the drawing demonstration. I already have a sketch pre-drawn, so let's start with that. For this drawing, I'm going for a diner booth at night. I'd like the character to be illuminated by some sort of warm light to give off a cozy diner feel and also have some more maybe cooler toned lights in the background from the city.

After finishing lining and adding flat colors the character, the dining booth, the table and the props, I don't render everything fully at this stage since I haven't decided exactly what direction I want the light to come from and where it should come from right now.

After finishing drawing the window frames, use reference photos and start drawing the city background.

When drawing city light backgrounds, a brush I really like to use to quickly add city light windows is the Raiku City Lights (BETA) brush on Clip Studio Assets store by raikukitty. I draw some horizontal strokes with it to quickly fill in some windows and then I set the color to transparent to erase some of the windows from it.

Next, I'll use the regular eraser brush to erase some of the windows so that it's a little bit more irregular. It looks a little bit rough at this stage, but I'll adjust it to properly fit the perspective of the building using the transform tool. I’ll set the layer to *Glow Dodge and lock the layer transparent pixels to start coloring in some different colors for the light. It’s totally optional, but just something that I feel like doing in this drawing just to add a little bit more color.

Cities often have all sorts of lights and depending on the drawing or what kind of mood you want to go for, you can simplify the colors or use a lot of them. In this drawing, I want a little bit more depth of interest, so I'm using a lot of colors for the city background.

Planning Lighting

Now that we finished that, I'm pretty much done with the base colors for this drawing, but there's no lighting yet. So using my references and also thinking about color temperature, I want to go for really cozy and warm lighting for the drawing.

I'll use a multiply layer to quickly block in some colors that I think might look good and also use an overlay layer to plan out some highlights. I put all of the layers that belong on the inside of the diner into a folder and then clip the multiply layer over that.

Now, you don't necessarily have to go for a warm tone. Lighting in a drawing can be completely up to you and what mood you want to go for. For example, if I use a cool tone, it would look something like this.

But for this drawing I want to go for a warmer tone, so let’s go back to the earlier layers and start planning out actual lighting. Now since the lamps are the main source of the light, I'll use it to determine where shadows are being cast and in what direction.

After finishing rendering the character and objects, since I want the light to be a little bit brighter on the lamp, I make a new layer, use an airbrush to quickly draw a bright orange hue reflective of the more warm, toned lamp,

I set this layer to Add (Glow) to brighten the visual look of the lamps.

And that's it! That's how I personally draw interior lighting, thinking of color temperature and different light bulbs.

If you’d like to watch the full drawing demonstration, please watch the YouTube video. Thank you!