Intro

In this article I will show you how to paint lights and how to incorporate them into your drawings to add life and dynamism to the scene. You will also learn how to render the environment to enhance the mood of the scene and capture the imagination of the viewer. To see the process in action, I suggest you watch the video I made, it will help you especially with the rendering part. Let's get started!

Create a light source

Let's see how to draw a light source, basically we need to play with the blend mode of the layer. First we need to create a "dark" environment where our light can shine, and then we are going to paint the light source.

Each light has its own characteristics, whether it is artificial or natural and many others, but before we go into detail, it is important to better understand the blend mode of layers.

To create the dark environment for our work, we need to use the following blend modes on the layers: Darken, Multiply, Color burn, Linear burn. You can also use the Normal blend mode and paint with darker colour values to create the right environment.

Once we have created the dark environment, we are ready to paint the light source on top of it using different blend modes, which are as follows Lighten, Screen, Color dodge, Glow dodge, Add, and Add (Glow).

We will also use Hard light later on as you will see.

One last thing, to effectively reproduce the different types of light, we also need to apply blur and adjust the opacity of each layer. Ok, now that you know all the basic ingredients, we need to create lights, let's move on to making them.

Artificial lights

If you want to add a light source, you have to consider whether or not that light is contained in a particular material. For example, in the case of artificial lights such as lanterns and neon light, we have to consider that they are basically a light source inside an object made of paper and glass, and the rays of light that are emitted to the outside are influenced by the paper of the lantern and the colour of the glass of the neon light.

In the case of lanterns, the paper will act on the light, giving it a uniform appearance, and the glow emitted to the outside will be very soft. If we look at neon, we have a light source that is coloured by the glass above it, and because the glass lets the light through more easily, we have clean edges around the light. So, especially with artificial lighting, always think about the object that contains the light and how that light can be affected.

So let's draw the light, first create a dark layer, in this case I chose a dark blue colour for the base. Now create a new layer on top of it with blend mode (Add or Add Glow), choose a light colour, I chose a nice light yellow, and with the figure tool draw the shape you prefer, in this case I drew a lantern.

The next step is to duplicate the layer with the light and apply a Gaussian blur effect to the layer below, this will create the glow area around the light. As you can see, the stronger the blur, the more glow you get. Adjust the blur to get the result you want.

As you may have noticed, when you duplicate the layer you also increase the brightness of the light and you can use this to your advantage, in fact you can keep duplicating the layer with the light to make it brighter and then you can merge all the layers together.

Take a look at the opacity values, as you can see I also adjusted the opacity to find the right balance of brightness.

It is very important to know that the brightest point of any type of light will always be white, no matter what colour you choose or what type of light source, if you want to highlight the

core of a light source it will always be white. So in the example above, if you look closely, I painted a white core in the centre of the lantern because that is where the bulb is in the lantern, but in this case the white is very soft because the paper softens the light.

You can use all that you have learned to reproduce the lantern and the neon light for virtually any type of light source, adjusting the opacity, the colour, the shape and, most importantly, the amount of light emitted. You will get different types of light. Look at the neon example, in this case the blur effect to reproduce the glow is less.

Light behavior

So far we have seen how to draw a light source, but the most important thing is how to draw the environment affected by the light source. In fact, we must remember that when we decide to draw something that produces light, such as a lantern, neon, and so on, the environment will be affected by the light. And of course, that's our purpose, so as you learned in the previous paragraph, drawing a light source is not difficult, but drawing the surroundings that are somehow affected by that light requires a little more attention.

If you are a beginner, I strongly recommend that you draw the spheres as you will see in the next few chapters, it is a good exercise to improve and train your eyes and hands to automatically see the areas that need to be shaded or highlighted.

To draw the spheres, all you need to do is use the figure tool and draw a circle, then create a new layer on top of it with a blend mode from the darken group for the shadows and a blend mode from the lighten group for the light, as explained in the first paragraph.

I promise you will feel the difference after drawing the spheres with all the effects I will show you, and you will be able to apply these effects to more complex drawings easily.

Light decay

When we consider putting a light source in our drawing, we also need to consider how strong that light source is, the intensity of the light emitted from that source will give a different mood to our image. For example, if the light is weak, the light will fade in a short distance, we can create a strong light fade to enhance the mood.

As you can see in the image above, the light barely touches the surface of the sphere, revealing it. The shadow merges with the background colour because the power of the light is too low to create an ambient light that could illuminate the entire surface of the sphere.

Edge light

Edge light is a fantastic way of highlighting your character's silhouette without having to draw the line art. In fact, when light is coming from behind an object, you will see a thin rim of light around the edges, which is a great way to give it a realistic feel.

Reflected light

Reflected light occurs when our object is close to another surface, so the light bounces from the surface to our object, and as a result you will see the colour of the surface reflected to the object, let’s also consider all the other rendering we have seen so far, see the picture:

As you can see, I have taken into account the decay of the light with a strong shadow at the bottom of the sphere, a very soft and thin edge light coming from the light behind, the occlusion shadow at the point where the sphere touches the ground, anyway I will explain occlusion in detail later in this article, and the reflected light at the bottom which is the same colour as the ground.

By the way, if you want to learn more about reflection check out the article and the video I made, you will find a detailed explanation with examples.

There is no light without shadow

Of course, when you think about light, you can't not think about shadows, so let's look at how to deal with shadows. After you've drawn the light as you learned in the previous chapters, you'll need to render all the parts where a shadow is formed. But there are a few things to consider, so let's look at the types of shadows we need to draw one by one.

Shadow soft edges vs sharp edges

An object or figure can be hit by direct light and diffuse light. The hard light is formed by the aligned rays of light and creates shadows with sharp edges. Diffuse light, on the other hand, creates shadows with soft edges. In the next image you can see the rounded shadow on the bottom of the sphere created by diffuse light, and another shadow on the top created by direct light, which has hard edges where the object creating the shadow is ideally closer to the sphere, and soft edges on the part of the same object that is further from the sphere. You can easily experiment yourself by placing a pencil in front of a light source, trying to cast the shadow of the pencil on a curved surface, moving the pencil

close to the surface and observing the shadow.

Occlusion

When two surfaces are very close or touching, they create an area where light cannot reach, these areas will be dark due to the occlusion effect. These areas are very important in drawing, they are constantly used by professionals not only in realistic work but also in manga and anime style.

To better understand occlusion, imagine a cloudy day where the light from the sun is well distributed in the air. In this scenario, you don't have any direct rays of light, so you won't see any defined shadows, but every object will be evenly lit, the only shadows you will see are the occlusion shadows, these shadows will define the edges of objects and the environment.

More light sources

We have seen different types of shadows, but what happens if we have more light sources, yes, you will also have another shadow created from a different angle. And the first shadow with the second will create an intersection that will be darker. See the next image:

From theory to practice

Now let's put all the principles we've seen in the previous paragraphs into practice. I suggest you watch the video to better follow all the steps of the process.

Multiple light sources and smooth transition

The first thing you need to do is apply flat colours to your work, or you can render your work by drawing the occlusion shadows and applying colours according to the direction of the light, as I have done in the next image.

Once you have your image coloured you are ready to apply the ambient light, since ambient light is basically light that comes from anywhere, you just need to choose a colour that is generally the same colour as the sky. Create a new layer, set it to multiply blend mode and use the Fill tool, in this case I chose a dark blue colour, adjust the opacity, in this case I chose 80% opacity.

Now you are ready to draw the parts hit by the directed light. As this type of light comes from an angle, you can use the same technique you learned when drawing the spheres; think of your drawing as made up of parts that resemble simple surfaces. See the next picture:

Create a new layer on top, this time with the Hard light blend mode, and paint your light following the simple shapes, keeping in mind the volume of each shape. Don't be afraid to make mistakes, keep tweaking and adjusting, use Ctrl+Z to undo a stroke you don't like. Use a reference if you feel lost, it is always good to look at a real-world reference. In this image I used the Smooth watercolour tool a lot, both to colour my original character and also to apply light, I love this brush as it allows you to shade very efficiently without using any other tool, but feel free to use any brush you prefer.

At this point the effect is already very satisfying and adds a lot of mood to our drawing, as you can see I also varied between soft edges and hard edges on the shadow to give the feeling that something is in front of our subject, which gives a more realistic look. To obtain the result in the picture above you need to add the final touch, by creating a transition effect between the

light and the shadow. Choose a warmer colour such as orange. On the hard light layer, select Lock transparent pixels and use the transparent watercolour brush to draw a very smooth edge to create a warm and smooth transition between light and shadow, as you can see in the picture above.

We gave life to this work but we can go even further adding a second light. Repeat the same steps from the beginning, but this time change the direction and lower the opacity because it's a secondary light. I suggest hiding the layer we painted before not to be confused while painting the second light. Select a cooler color like green or blue and paint the light from a different direction, see the next picture:

Now turn visible the layer with the main light, and enjoy the result, isn’t amazing!

Have fun mixing a warm light with a cool light, you can now change the value of these painted lights by simply going to Edit, Hue/Saturation/Luminosity and Colour Balance. Play with these values to find the balance you like, also try inverting the main light with a cool colour and the secondary with a warm one.

Edge light in practice

I have talked about the Edge Light effect and how it can be used to highlight the silhouette of the character by creating an edge of light.

So, we have our character on a dark background, I chose a black colour, create a layer on top with multiply blend mode and fill the layer with a dark colour.

This time instead of drawing the light in another layer as we did in the previous paragraph we are going to use the Eraser tool or you can also choose a brush that you like and press C on the keyboard and it will act as an eraser keeping all the characteristic of the brush, which is a fantastic feature in Clip Studio Paint.

Now following the edge of your character erase a thin part around the edges and alternate with soft edges and sharper, as you can see in the next picture around the neck I create a very soft transition because the light embrace the neck and the edge effect is not as hard as in the rest of the image.

Bokeh effect

You can often see the bokeh effect in photographs, which adds a nice touch to the scene. I will show you how to recreate this effect in your drawings.

The effect is to have the subject close to the ideal camera in focus and the background very blurred, so that any light in the background appears as circles.

The first step is to prepare the background, create a new layer with the Multiply blend mode, fill it with a dark colour and adjust the opacity.

Now create a new layer with the mode Add (Glow) and draw the lights with a very light yellow. In this case I wanted to create a scene representing a typical Italian festa, with all the lights on the balconies and the illuminated shops by the sea.

Now merge the three layers and go to Filter, Blur, Gaussian blur I used a value around 30.

To give them a more shiny look, create another layer and use the airbrush tool to draw a very soft white glow around the lights.

Now we're ready to draw the main lights which are at different distances from the viewer, as this is a bokeh effect these lights will appear as circles of different sizes with different levels of blur, the further away the lights the blurrier and the closer the lights the sharper.

In the following image I have created different layers, the layer at the bottom has a higher blur value and the layer at the top has almost no blur. Another important thing is to draw the circles so that they overlap, so that they create a brighter zone that is the result of the combination of the two. As you can see:

To create this image, I used the character with the Edge Light effect that I showed you in the previous paragraph.

Painting intense light with the mask method

I would like to show you another method of applying very intense light to a character. This time we will use a mask. First of all, duplicate the layer with the character, then go to Edit, Tone Correction, Level Correction. Adjust the level to darken the image, as I show you in the following image:

Now go to Edit, Tonal correction, Color balance, move the arrow at the top towards Cyan and the bar at the bottom towards Blue to get a blue dark environment as in the next image:

Right clik on the layer and select Layer mask, Mask selection. With the eraser tool or using a brush and pressing C on the keyboard, erese the part where the light hit the subject:

The result is already cool and satisfying, you are revealing part of the drawing of the layer below. Next, create a layer on top using the Hard Light blend mode and choose a warm red colour from the palette. With the airbrush tool, select a very large size and draw a very light shade of red.

Create another layer on top, this time using the Overlay blend mode. Use a soft brush to draw an edge where the light and shadow meet to create a reddish transition.

Now for the final touch, create another layer on top with Normal blend mode and select Black in the palette, select a large size with the Airbrush tool and paint on the parts of the drawing away from the light to increase the darkness.

The result is stunning, isn’t it?

Enhance the mood

In this final chapter, I want to use all the techniques I have shown you so far, mixing them in a different type of work, and I want to show you a series of adjustments that you can make to prepare your work and the background to better integrate the lighting.

So let's take this work that I have done.

I have drawn the three characters on a different layer of the background. The first thing I want to do is create an illuminated version of my characters. Go to Edit, Tone Correction, Tone Curve and change the values as I show you in the next image:

We have darkened the occlusion shadows and lightened the rest of the image. Now click on the menu in the Tone Curve window, select Red, and modify according to the next image:

The image is more reddish, now select Tone Curve Blue from the menu, modify the curve according to the next image and click OK:

Our characters are bathed in warm colour and ready for the next step. Now that we have our base, duplicate the layer and go to Edit, Tone Correction, Level Correction. And change the values as I show you in the next image:

As you can see, changing the values is like turning off the light. But we need to make one last adjustment before we paint the light. Go to Edit, Tone Correction, Color Balance and follow the next image again:

At this point we have two layers, one with the characters lit and the layer on top with the characters darkened but with a more blue colour on them, now repeat the same steps to darken the background.

We will make a mask on the layer with the darkened characters and on the layer with the darkened background. I suggest you watch my video to easily follow the whole process.

Right click on the layer and select Layer mask, Mask selection. Now we can paint our lights on the character and having them on a separate layer is super convenient. This time, instead of creating a simple multiply layer with a dark color, I wanted a more refined result to enhance the clarity of the moonlight and get a better final result, you will see the difference at the end.

Use the eraser tool to "paint" all the illuminated parts on the dark character and background layers. Remember to Lock transparent pixels on the character layer.

Create a new layer with Hard Light mode on top of the character's layer and clip it to the layer below. Select the Transparent watercolour brush and draw the warm transition as shown in the previous paragraph.

Create another layer of Hard Light and clip it to the layer below, then use the Airbrush tool, this time selecting a warm orange colour and paint a soft light on the character and background.

Create a new layer Colour Dodge, clip it to the layer below. Use the eyedropper to pick up the colour of the moon and paint the back of the characters.

Create two layers with Add (Glow) blend mode and use the figure tool to draw the inside of the lantern and the moon with the appropriate colour and apply the Gaussian blur effect as I showed you in the paragraph on how to paint light sources.

Ok we are ready for the final touches, create a new layer in hard light mode and use the marker tool to paint a bright spot in the eyes of the character, then create a new layer in normal mode and use the airbrush to select black colour and paint around the character to enhance the decay of the light.

This is the final result. What do you think?:)

Outro

I really enjoyed writing this article, as you learned light is basically everything, not only it creates brightness but also affects colors, reflections, shadows, and the overall mood of your work. Learning how to paint and render light sources will bring your works to the next level. I hope that you enjoyed my article and the video, as much as I enjoyed making them. If so don’t forget to drop a like I really appreciate it, thank you so much. See you in the next article! Bye bye!