Thursday, August 18, 2011

Practical Lights, Part 3

This is the third installment on practical lights, which are lights that appear inside a picture.



With imaginary subjects, we have considerable latitude in how we adjust the color balance and intensity of a practical light. For example in this scene of the sleeping barns in Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time, I let the lamp influence a small area of Will’s sleeping basket, and then introduced cool moonlight across the forms of the sleeping dinosaurs.

This would not have been possible in an photographed scene, but it served the mood of the painting.

2 comments:

Aaron said...

I always feel that's why you can't replace traditional illustration with photography, because you can create scenes and lighting structure that you can't really get with photos. Sadly many areas seem to be gravitating towards cropped photoshop images anyway (ex. the downturn in the use of art for movie posters/ads). Even many of the best photographers are limited to what they can capture of the physical world

Unknown said...

I agree with that William except that Photoshop can also combine environments.

I did my first drawing with multiple light sources IN the picture (a still-life). The effect was eerie, and not what I expected. http://nicolecaulfieldfineart.blogspot.com/2011/07/harry-potter-inspired-still-life.html