Ultimate Guide to Lighting and Illumination

Ultimate Guide to Lighting and Illumination

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chainsawgirl

How does one change the mood of a scene from dark and dreary to colorful and vibrant? Lighting is the easiest and most profound way to control the atmosphere of an artwork, without having to touch the characters or background. Today I’ll be sharing with you the most important concepts and tips I’ve learned about lighting throughout my years as an artist.

*All drawings in this article belong to me!

Youtube Tutorial

Basics of lighting

Clip Studio Paint has many tools that help you add beautiful and natural looking illumination inside of your digital artworks. But before I go over these tools, we need to go over the techniques of lighting. You must know the fundamentals to use the tools to their full extent!

Lighting ball

Light source: What emits light

Highlight: Place on the object light hits strongest

Midtone: Area in between light and shadow, ‘normal’ shade

Core shadow: Darkest part of the shadow

Reflected highlight: Slight brightness in the shadow from light bouncing off surfaces around

Cast shadow: Shadow on surface below the object from blocking light

Main directions of light

There’s four main ways light can hit a figure. The light can be from any direction, but the main difference between these categories is the ratio of light to shadow.

Front

Form

Rim

Backlight

Lighting ball technique application

Tools offered by Clip Studio Paint

Blending layers

These can be found in the settings for each layer, and what it does is change its effect. I’ll be focusing on the blending modes that can be used for illumination, which there are nine of.

Lighting blending modes

Color dodge: Lightens the base layer colors to reduce contrast and leaves behind saturated midtones

Glowdodge: Same as color dodge but to a stronger degree

Add: Adds color information of the base and blending layers, aka increases the brightness

Add(glow): Same as add but to a stronger degree

Soft light: Effect depends on the blending layer color, bright colors will appear like Dodge and dark colors will appear like Burn. Provides less luminosity than other modes

Hard light: Effect also depends on the blending layer color, bright colors appear like Screen mode and dark colors will appear like Multiply mode.

Vivid light: Both the Color Dodge and Color Burn effects are applied.

Linear light: Both Multiply and Linear burn effects are applied.

Pinlight: Lighten and Darken effects replace the colors depending on where the base colors are lighter o rdarker than the blending layer.

Light source types

Lighting is something that’s everywhere, almost all the time, with so many combos and types it’s hard to keep track of. Everything from the moon to a smartphone to a firework can emit light so how can we attempt to learn all of the types? Fortunately I came across James Gurney’s book Color and Light, where he categorizes light into 8 main groups. It’s been a great help for me and I’d like to share a bit of what I’ve learned with you!

Indoor Light Sources

Window light

-Bright, bluish

-Light fills room

Incandescence- glowing warm

-Usually candlelight or firelight

-Light doesn’t reach too far

-Casts deep shadows

Luminescence: glowing cool

-Like incandescence but with a cool color

-Can come from natural sources like ocean organisms

Indoor Electric Light

-Usually very bright, but this can vary

-Can range from cool to warm colors

Outdoor Light Sources

Direct sunlight

-Bright, yellow light

-Casts blueish shadows

-Blue bouncing from the sky can be found anywhere

Overcast sky

-Diffused light

-Bright colors appear brighter

-Little shadow is visible usually

Streetlights/night conditions

-Moon: blue/silver glow

-Other lights can be streetlights, neon signs etc.

-Light gets swallowed by darkness

Hidden light source

-Any of the above light sources hidden behind an object

-Usually only backlit

-Good for dramatic effect

Color Palette

Each lighting source had a different color palette. I thought this was interesting so I compiled the color swatches used in each drawing (before any effects were added to the color).

Last tips

Brushes

The brush you choose for your lighting is important! Usually I capture the area I want lit with the lasso tool, then use the gradient tool inside. If there’s blending needed I use the blend tool. For a glowing object I just use the soft airbrush tool.

Opposite colors

It’s a good practice to use the opposite colors for your lighting and shadows. For example, if you have a red light you’ll have a green shadow.

Ambient occlusion

I just learned the term for this recently, and it’s a complex sounding word. But it just describes how even when not in direct light, objects close to each other will have shadows between them. This is from ambient, or indirect light all around. You often see this in clothing folds!