Empty Space

Happy new year! I’m happy you like the lighting in my stuff, I struggle a lot withit and I’m not proficient with it, but it is my favourite aspect of drawing :D Personally I just did whatever I want with my art and just drew lighting that kind of looks good without really knowing why , that’s why I improve so slowly and my fundamentals are so bad even after drawing for so many years. It was meant to keep art interesting and fun to me, I wouldn’t recommend it to people whose aim is to seriously improve. Here is what I would actually recommend.

An understanding of colour theory is essential to deciding correct lighting when you are not sure about your options for each piece which, most of the time, you won’t be sure! Trying to decide lighting without colour theory understanding is kinda like trying to speak a language without knowing grammar, so no matter how many times you have to read and reread material about colour theory and still don’t understand it, do it until you ~get it~! here is an excellent lighting tutorial that encompasses many aspects of lighting in easily understandable terms that Suqling recommended. http://androidarts.com/art_tut.htm

You can give your brain practice even without drawing, by training yourself to ask questions whenever you see something that you normally would not think twice about, like the colours of buildings and things outside your windows at various times of the day, or anything you see that you think are “pretty” without wondering why. You will learn a lot about why things look good, in logical terms, which would actually help you incorporate the concepts into your own work.

As for approaching it in your own work, the location of lighting and the material/texture you are dealing with is crucial. Always decide on a location of the light source(s), even if that decision is “light source is ambiguous”. Strong and soft lights cause different kinds of shadows, warm and cool lights cause different kinds of shadows, a flash light in the dark vs sunlight all around cause different shadows, that’s why knowing where the light is coming from, as well as knowing colour theory, will help you basically calculate the correct lighting for each situation even if you have no idea where you want the picture to go.

You may ask, “but wouldn’t that make all my pictures look the same, if there is only one way to calculate correct lighting?” It might at first, when all you are concerned about is being correct, which it should be when you are learning, just like how you don’t learn slang before grammar. Only when you understand the fundamentals can you freely add your own personality to the way you see and express lighting in a way that makes sense, just like how only when you truly understand realistic anatomy can you really draw in cartoon/anime/whatever style you want without making your art seem like you drew eyes/heads/hands too big because you didn’t know they were supposed to be smaller.

But this is something I have to do alone.

Ampersand Logo by John Randall