Ben Winfield Illustration: Painting

Thursday, 6 April 2017

Fundamentals of Lighting lesson 1.

Finally! I recently started another Schoolism course. The last time I did one was back in 2015 with Dice Tsutsumi and Roberto Kondo called Painting With Light and Color, which I found super beneficial. The one I started last week is called Fundamentals of Lighting by Sam Nielson.

Wow. I must say that this course is exactly what I needed. The first lesson Sam jumps right in with the Properties of Light and Advanced Lambertian Reflection, throwing in a bit of quantum probability for good measure. I won't go too deep with what lesson one covers, but rather show you how I tackled the homework assignment.

The assignment required that I paint and light a simple scene in greyscale. All that we were provided with was a basic line drawing and a light source, and it was up to us to render the final form.

Below is my final image, after I went through and critted my previous test. The illustration is painted to Photoshop CS6.

Final painting.

Below is the scene I painted before I went through the critted lessons. From what I interpreted the shadow isn't particularly true to the light source which you can see in the image below. The "terminator" is also not very accurate.

First painting.

Following some of Sam's tips I created the light rays, and mapped in the shadows and their falloff as well as what I hope to be a more accurate terminator. The green line is where the terminator would more likely be situated, and the purple markings are an indication of the shadows.

Lighting guide.

I must just put out a disclaimer that I am doing the self-motivating subscription course, and my work isn't individually critted by Sam. The changes I did to my first pass were done by observing the crits to a fellow "classmates" artwork which are provided as part of the course material.

Terminology and links:

Terminator: The area where the form transitions from light to dark.

Some of Sam's brushes: Linked from here and here.