Fundamentals Series:

Form Lighting

Murry Lancashire
 Contents
01 How to start:
01 What is Form Lighting?
02 Abstracting to Planes:
03 Simple Beginnings:
04 Visual Language:
05 The Anatomy of Light:
06 Simplifying the problem:
06 One Axis Lighting:
08 Two Axis Lighting:
09 Three Axis Lighting
10 Form Textures:
11 Point Lights:
12 Light Softness:
13 Ambient Occlusion:
14 Light Bounces!
15 Value Compression
16 Silhouette:
16 Brushes:
17 Exercises:
17 Carving Copies:
18 Textured Surface Exercise:
19 Wireframe Exersize:
20 Subdivision exersize.
21 Tracing WireFrames:
22 Photo Study types:
23 Where to from here?
01 Introduction
How to start: The objective of these lessons is to take a structured
Form lighting defines and solidifies subjects in approach to learning, which mitigates a lot of
a 3-dimensional space, and without a working the heartache of learning the different elements
understanding, work tends to look flat. concurrently.
In order to learn this fundamental, an artist needs to
develop a high level of observational skills, a functional When an artist reaches a high level of proficiency, they
understanding of the mechanics, and reasonably are able to create the illusion of realistic forms without
developed draftsmanship. the need for reference.
1.1

What is Form Lighting? 1.2

In many images in
this guide, we will
To start we need to define our feature arrows to
make finding light
terms: direction easier!
• Full-Light: The section of form
directly facing the light source
• Half-Light: The section of form
not directly facing the light, but
not yet in shadow
• Core shadow: The shadowed
section of form, which is facing
more than 90 degrees from the
light.
• Cast Shadow: Any section While lighting itself is an intuitive We should think of shading and
where light is occluded by concept, it is useful to differentiate form as a perspective problem, one
objects between the section form lighting as being specifically where we need to know the angle
and the light communicating form through value. of light rays vs the angle of the
• Terminator: A line between the It is common for artists to form. Instead of dealing with edges
Half-Light & Core Shadow. be proficient with correctly or line, we are sculpting form by
• Plane: A plane is an abstraction representing core shadows, but changing values and shapes.
of curved surfaces into a flat have more difficulty with half-light.
surface in order to make it Half-light, as a result, is the main Form lighting is the illusion
easier to paint. focus of this guide. of form through changing
• Value: The brightness of a
shade or colour. Form lighting isn’t a skill that is seen values.
as a necessity for many art styles,
such as cell shading but is a crucial
element for approaching realism.

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

02 Planes
2.1
Abstracting to
Planes:
We can approximate the value of a
plane if we know the angle of light
vs the surface in which it hits. With
90 degrees away receiving no light,
while facing it receiving all of the
light.

One of the most common planar

models of the head is the “Asaro
Head” by John Asaro, as seen in
Figure 2.1.

2.2

Sketching like this lets us focus on planes as well is that it provides an 2.3
sculpting the form without losing efficient way to abstract brushwork.
focus to smooth blending. This is With many famous painters such
desirable because solving an image as John Singer Sargent providing
in flat tones will allow us to focus elegant realism by abstracting to
on the big picture of structure and planes.
composition in our images.
Planes simplify painting
When your image looks solid form into thinking about
with flat planar shapes, it will give
you a good idea of what the final angles
image will look like. This can be
considered solving all of the hard
problems in your image.
One major benefit of dealing with

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

03 Flat Carvings

3.1

Simple Beginnings: 3.2 3.3

The simplest possible way to start
thinking about form is that a change
of value implies a change in form.

This is most easily demonstrated by

painting a flat carving, as it allows
us to play with this concept without
being concerned with drawing or
perspective. Form Change = Value
By painting in shapes where the
change:
top half is dark, and the bottom half If we start painting these reliefs with
is light, you create the illusion of just 2 values, we can start to carve
forms carved into a flat surface. As out and plan what our final forms
demonstrated in figure 3.2. will be.

Start out by using a hard round With this technique, we have got
brush with no blending, and play the basic mechanics of pushing and
around pushing and pulling shapes. pulling forms working.
We can think of these as deflecting Photographic textures with lighting can
forms and is what will create the be thought of as carvings Studying
appearance of texture on a surface. photos like these are a great way to
practice accurately copying tones and
sculpting form.

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

04 Form Rules
Visual Language:
4.3

In order for form to read accurately, you need a

minimum of three tones.

4.1

When we use this on complex forms (fig 4.4) and add

one extra tone, we are now able to sculpt features
and communicate form more accurately. Additionally,
the only places where the shadow and lit tones are
touching is where there are cast shadows (bottom of
the nose). This is a visual pattern that holds up all the
way to realism.

4.4

In Figure 4.1, adding the half-light tone removes

ambiguity from the form and changes it from being two
triangles, to looking like an embossed diamond.

As a general rule, a continuous form must pass through

every value as it rotates in order to preserve the illusion.

When we break this rule, we create an

ambiguous read and cause the illusion of a By stepping down to just two tones, we are relying
on a much more graphic read which conveys bolder
floating form. decisions, at the sacrifice of communicating accurate
form.
4.2
Once we understand how to sculpt form with just three
tones. it becomes an easy task to add more clarity
to our rendering by adding more intermediate tones
until we end up with a smooth form that is properly
controlled.

4.5 Learning how to add

more steps and smooth
your rendering without
losing definition is a skill
in itself. We explore this
The other role of sudden jumps in value is to in a subdividing exercise
communicate cast shadows. This can be observed on on page 20, along with a
the right side of figure 4.2, where the inner cast shadow range of other hands-on
study exercises.
is tighter than the other gradients.

When viewed from another angle(fig 4.3) we can see

how the forms are both connected with the backing,
but lacking connecting values creates a confusing form
read. This is something to avoid

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

05
5.1
Falloff

45 degree plane from the light is

The Anatomy of around 70% the full strength of light.
The exact number will change, as
Light: Lambert shading specifically refers
As a plane rotates away from a light, to parallel rays, so a softer light will
the value drops at a geometric, not have a softer fall off. (this is explored
linear rate. This phenomenon is on page 12 in "Light Size").
one of the most important things a
painter can memorize and can be This effect becomes more obvious
thought of as the anatomy of light. when we observe it with colour. As
we can see in figure 5.3, rendering
This is referred to as Lambert’s with a darker half light will cause
Cosine Law. Which states that the colours to appear muddy, this is 5.3
strength of light hitting a plane is a light is around 70% the full
5.2
cosine of the angle between a ray
and the surface. strength of light.

cos(surface angle from Practising shading from life in

light) = strength of light. addition to the exercises detailed
from page 17 are effective ways to
This means that moving between internalise this math
full-light and half-light, the value
changes are very subtle.

While this may seem complicated,

as a painter, we mostly need to
internalize that half-light tones are something we will want to avoid.
brighter than we would expect. As
a rough number to memorize, a a 45 degree plane from the

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

06 Light Axis
Simplifying the problem:
By axis, we are referring to cartesian coordinates, and
When an artist first starts learning perspective, they how many axes we need to think about in order to
will typically learn one point perspective using a box compare the angle between planes and the light.
aligned with the horizon to simplify understanding.
From there, an artist will learn two-point, three-point By simplifying the angles, we simplify painting.
and so on. We are able to do the same thing with When practising these, think about the axes as
lighting by having a progressive series of tasks where difficulty levels. If you are struggling you can always try
we increase the difficulty gradually. moving down the difficulty levels in order to make the
logic simpler, and move back up once you understand
Let’s call this One Axis, Two Axis & Three Axis Lighting. it.

6.1

One Axis Lighting:

The simplest possible lighting is vertical sunlight.
In reality, this lighting isn’t particularly useful in
illustration, but it is a logical starting spot.

To work out modelling values, we just need to think

about if planes are facing up or down. If they are facing
the sky directly, they will have full illumination, and as
they rotate, they will get darker until they are facing
the horizon, and any forms turning past that will be in
shadow, as demonstrated in figure 6.2
6.3
Painting demo:
1. Using 2 values, block in your general shapes. for
planes pointing above the horizon, use a bright
tone, for everything facing below, use a dark tone.
2. Add in your half-light areas, these will roughly
be everything facing more than 45 degrees from
vertical, but not exceeding the horizon. On this
teapot, the body is a truncated cone, so it will be a
flat value.
3. Once we have worked out our 3 value read, we
can smooth it out and make our rendering more
polished. Make sure not to deviate too much from
the previous step
6.2
4. Add in any final polish such as specularity.

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

07
7.1
One Axis

7.2
Figure 7.1 is an example of this
logic on a much more complicated
model

By simplifying the values, we can

see this alignment of planes more
clearly. I have chosen to simplify
into 4 values in this example to
capture more detail in the half-light.

We can see that the top of the

shoulders and top of the head are
in full light, while the front of the
shoulders and face are mostly in
half-light, leading into core or cast
shadow.
7.3
In figure 7.2 on the forehead,
On human figures, there it is easier to see how the side
will usually be a noticeable view corresponds to the angled
view with the value shapes,
plane shift from the front communicating the same forms .
plane onto the top plane of
the shoulders. Whenever you are struggling with
detecting the form in a reference,
It is tempting to rush our studies flattening values will simplify the
into practice but we must issue, and make it easier to see the
remember that if we get this underlying patterns. When concentric forms are facing a
light source, we end up with rings that
simplistic version of lighting correct, are identical in value. This causes cones
moving on to more natural lighting to flatten out completely when lit from
will become easier. above

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

08
8.1
Two Axis

Two Axis Lighting: of the underlying math allows us to problem solve

when things are going wrong, and allow us to develop
The next difficulty level is to rotate the light so that it studies that will make shading second nature.
is at an angle to our subject, but still parallel to the
picture plane.

However, there is a fact that makes this easier, if we

were to rotate the canvas back, counteracting this 8.2
angle, we see that two axis lighting still uses the same
logic as 1 axis lighting, except that we just need to keep
track of what angle the light is at. This makes it an ideal
step up in difficulty.

Rotating a 2 axis light back to vertical makes

it a 1 axis light.

When we don't want to rotate the canvas, however, we

can instead locate a plane on the model that is facing
the light source and keep track of it. Once we have this
we can compare all other planes to this plane.

We can observe in figure 8.2 just how tightly we can

map our values onto the planes of this faceted sphere.
It is not expected that we attempt to make our brains
do math in order to shade, but instead, being aware

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

09 Three Axis
Three
9.1 Axis Lighting
The next difficulty level is to bring
the light source forwards, so it isn’t
aligned with the picture plane.

Just as we could with 2 axis

lighting, we can rotate our image
and turn 3 axis lighting into two
axis lighting, so that our only
variable to keep track of is how
forward or behind the light is.

When we aren't aligning it with

the top of the canvas, however,
we need a method to solidify
light direction. We can do this by
finding a plane on our subject that
is facing the light source and do
comparisons between this plane
and other planes to work out what
values to use.

While the idea of painting this

final difficulty level is daunting,
remember, that you should not
progress up a difficulty level until
you have managed to get realistic
results in previous exercises.

Painting demo: 9.2

1. Rotate your drawing so that one
axis of your intended lighting is
facing up. Now we want to find
a plane that is pointing towards
our light, to solidify the light's
depth. Block in your full light
and core shadows.
2. Add in the half-light,
3. Subdivide and blend
4. Rotate back to its normal
orientation, and add specularity
and extra polish.

By thinking about the axes of a light

we can solidify and always know
where our light source is when
painting.

If the light is behind the object, no planes directly facing

the light will be visible in the image. Instead, you can pick
a plane facing directly opposite the light source, and
compare angles against it.

Anytime you can solidify a light direction with a landmark,

painting gets easier

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

10 Texture
10.1
Form Textures:
Because of Lambert’s Cosine law, we will observe
that texture is most visible right next to the
terminator.
Texture is most visible right next to the
terminator.
This is because texture surfaces tend to only
modify the surface a small amount. So in the lit
area, those changes result in negligible value
change, but close to the terminator, this effect is
exaggerated.

This is a useful fact that can be easily abstracted,

as it means we can create an illusion of textured
from that communicates just by focusing on the
form changes near the terminator, and the eye will
deduce that the entire surface must have some sort
of texture.

10.3
We can see this expressed in figure 10.1,
with how the surface texture is far more
pronounced approaching the terminator. This
is also expressed in that many subtle parts of
human anatomy are close to invisible when
fully lit, but are very pronounced when in
half-light.

Glancing light angles cause subtle

anatomy to be exaggerated, as
shown on the hand models.

The texture on the back of the hand is also

far more evident in half-light. Be very careful
Direct lighting will
of this effect on human faces, as this is a de-emphasize
large driver on what light angles look best anatomy and
on different faces. Light direction is a tool texture.
to emphasize or de-emphasize form and
texture.

10.2
You can think of
textured surfaces as
the same thing as
the "Flat Carvings"
on page 03, The
only difference is
that we need to
communicate the
underlying forms as
well. While glancing
lights will emphasize
anatomy and texture.

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

11
Point Lights: 11.1

So far we have explored only

sunlight, which is the easiest to
learn due to rays being parallel.

Unlike sunlight, point-lights have

rays that fan out, meaning we need
to compare planar angles to a
floating point in space, and that the
light will get weaker with distance
from that point.
As viewed in figure 11.1, we can see
how angle comparisons are a bit
trickier.

Inverse Square Law:

Because light rays fan out from a
point light, the strength of that light
will fall over distance. The strength
of this means that every time the
distance is doubled it will be at a We can also notice that while the 11.2
quarter of the strength. We can two examples between sunlight
observe this in Figure 11.2 and point light have a similar
value range, the sunlight appears
to be brighter because there is
Point lights need to more light to bounce around and
illuminate more form with illuminate shadows. This is a large
difference between artificial lights
the same amount of light, as and sunlight. This, of course, can be
the distance from the light counteracted by more point lights
grows. and reflectors.

11.3

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

12 Light Size
12.1

Light Softness: reason about form, as diffused light

is distributed more evenly around
The size of the light source a curve, reducing the observable 12.2
dictates how soft the light appears. effect of Lambert’s Cosine Law.
In Figure 12.1, the statue on the left
is illuminated by a tiny point light, It is also important to note that
causing strong crisp cast shadows. scenes with soft lighting tend to
While the right has a fairly large have a greater overall brightness
soft light with indistinct shadows. as they have the least contrast.
This is caused by photons being
emitted from a large surface Soft light is generally considered
instead of a single point. to be more attractive, especially
on portraits, as they de-emphasize
Soft lighting is caused harsh features on peoples faces,
by the size of the light and so it makes the added
The appearance of specularity also changes
difficulty worth learning.
emitting. This can also majorly when light size changes. They
become less distinct and more spread out.
include windows and doors This is something to watch out for as it will
when inside. change how colours work on skin depending
on the qualities of light

Soft lights are harder to paint

because it makes it harder to

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

13
A render of different
AO
depth and shape
holes, use this to
get a good idea of
AO mechanics
13.1

Ambient Occlusion: Ambient occlusion is actually 13.3

Ambient light is the leftover bounce a technique from real-time 3d
light from the direct lights in a rendering, but the logic suits us
scene. It is the reason why shadows nicely for illustration.
aren’t just black.
crevices and gaps will
When light hits a diffuse surface, it remove energy from
will bounce off uniformly in every
direction, losing energy in the ambient lighting.
collision. This causes a lightening
of shadows and is important The figure 13.1 shows how strong
for realism, with its complex the effect of AO is for various
interactions of light. shapes. Observe as the gaps
reduce in width while the value at
For the sake of painting in many the bottom gets much darker. This
situations, it is easier to think of holds up regardless of the shape of
ambient light as a uniform value the hole and is a fairly generalizable
across the scene, in which crevices approach.
and gaps will remove energy from,
giving us ambient occlusion.
13.2

Overcast days can be considered as

painting a directional ambient occlusion
that has more strength coming from
above. Planes still communicate up and
down, but shadows are soft and crevices
describe form.

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

14
14.1
Light Bounce 14.2

14.3
Light Bounces!
It is important to think of ambient light as not just removing energy
from flat shadows, illuminating surfaces after bouncing. For
example, in figure 14.1, the core shadow on the nose is very dark,
but when the cheek bounces light, it lightens up the tone while
retaining the same core shadow shape.

Be careful of copying ambient occlusions textures from video

games, where they don't take directionality into account as
ambient light is not equal from every direction. Because it is
directional there should be some amount of form described by it,
but a lot more subtle than direct light.

Mastery of how light bounces and illuminates a scene

can create awe inspiring illustrations, and more
realistic rendering.

One major challenge of ambient occlusion is it’s characteristic of

blending to black, which can easily overpower colours. This will
drop the saturation and chroma of our shadows, and we will end
up with muddy colours. This requires a lot of studies from life to
get the balance correct.

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

15
15.1
Compression

Value Compression If the entire image is lightened, it

15.3

implies a film or post-processing

The lighting that we represent in effect. If it is only on part of the
our scenes can be represented by image it implies that there is a hazy
different value ranges. atmosphere in front of the form.

We can expose the same image Photos of the moon during the
in different ways which will cause day are a good demonstration of
the values in the image to change, atmospheric value compression.
while still looking realistic. We can
refer to this as value compression, 15.2
and there are a few different
reasons for why it happens.

Regardless of value
compression, plane logic
still works, as it is based on
ratios.

Exposure:
When it is the atmosphere compressing
Cameras are able to take images the values, it is referred to as aerial
with different levels of brightness perspective. as we can communicate
by changing exposure. depth through value compression

Exposure will compress, or expand Usage:

the value range, starting from black. Compositionally, heavily There is a dreamlike
Film or Post Processing: compressed values on an object emotional feeling that
will draw less focus from a viewer. can be evoked in viewers
Outdated film technology in This is used in video games to
cameras was not able to go all the make backgrounds that don't through the use of value
way to black and would compress compete with gameplay. compression.
the values of the image in the
opposite direction of exposure, Mastery over value compression
causing the darkest values of an will also give you a strong toolset
image to lighten. to create depth in your images, and
draw focus in creative, daring ways.

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

16 Brushes
Silhouette: 16.1
16.2

If we have an internal texture and

form, we need to make sure our
silhouette mirrors this, otherwise,
the texture we painted will appear
to be printed on the surface, and
flat. This can be deceptive with
silhouettes facing the light, as there
will not be much value change
depicting texture there.

This is a common issue, that will

reduce the level of interest and
realism of your images.

Brushes:
Brush choice can make your
time learning lighting smooth or
difficult. Commonly pros will talk
about the benefits of using a hard
round brush, with no opacity, and
to a beginner that wants to make
smooth highly polished illustrations,
this may sound counter-intuitive.

But really what is being suggested

isn't about tools, but more the Using exclusively hard brushes is
mindset that comes from using a difficult task, but doing so will
such tools. force you to think about lighting abstracted versions of texture.
and abstraction, and will result in They tend to be much more useful
We can break the most common improvements with your speed, for painting environments than
brushes into a few categories. There brush efficiency and your ability to characters. The majority of digital
are a number of novelty brushes for define regions and forms with fewer artists will use simple hard brushes
different effects but understanding strokes. for a bulk of work, and for a minority
the pros and cons for each will save use textured brushes to speed up
you a lot of time. Soft: laborious tasks.
These have blurred edges and will
Hard: lay down large indistinct areas of In 16.2 this is an example of using
Hard brushes lay down a solid block tone. While they might seem like both hard and textured brushes
of tone, without much variation in they are a good choice for blending, together to create a natural-looking
the surface, and usually has a few it is easy to misuse them and surface with natural variation, with a
different versions. Either having the fumble the careful form lighting that strong form read.
opacity set to the pressure of your we have been attempting to create.
pen, to blend, or to have no opacity, Ideally you should have a
forcing the painter to correctly I find the main use of soft brushes is use for all three types of
chose values and lay down a to create subtle ambient occlusion,
specific value initially, instead of or for aerial perspective, where brushes, as each have pros
slowly building it up. form read is not so important, but and cons that will speed up
otherwise, I recommend avoiding or improve your work.
To break away from the digital look them.
of these, put some subtle texture
on them to break up the edges, Textured:
as brushes in real life never have Heavily textured brushes tend
perfectly hard edges. to be much more specialized,
allowing artists to quickly lay down

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

17 Exercises

Exercises: We want to start developing a To start, chose a reference, and

very subtle sense of form turning, using a very small amount of
These exercises are all about first using hard flat brushes, but values, start blocking out the flat
conceptualizing planes. They are then move onto blending out shapes of the forms, spend some
not a replacement for traditional and emulating the look of our time on this to make sure you are
studies, where we copy images and references. using accurate values.
make notes, and those should most
likely be the bulk that you do. These I recommend doing both Then start to refine and take to a
studies are designed specifically to mechanical and organic details. high level of polish.
get you thinking in ways that make
more intuitive.
1 Our goal is to make
our study as close to
Take your time with these, it is good
to complete them as a supplement indistinguishable from the
to your normal drawing studies over reference as possible.
the space of a few weeks, as we
want to make thinking about planes While this may seem like a simple
a habit. exercise, controlling value to angle
Hopefully, you will be able to think 2 planes takes a lot of practice, so
of your own creative exercises it is worth spending the time on
on top of these to help your form this exercise to really get it right,
lighting' as harder lighting tasks rely on our
ability to do this.

Carving Copies:
I believe a good place to start
with painting form is to work from
reference and copy both organic The reference files I have used are
and mechanical details on flat available in the included studies
planes. folder.

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

18 Texture
Textured Surface
Exercise:
Expected time: 1-3 hrs.

The goal of this exercise is to learn

value control when sculpting texture on
a curved surface. We want to be able
to paint small deflections of form while
preserving the underlying surfaces.

Go to the included exercise folder, and

open up the folder called "Textured
Surface Exercise", and open 'exercise
one'. There are multiple exercises with
different shapes to attempt this on.

The right object is intended to be a

reference to keep track of the surface
as you paint, with the balls on the
surface being there to let you see the
orientation of the surface. We are only
going to be painting form, so don't
worry about changing the local value,
but you can do that at the end with a
multiply layer if you wish.

Start out painting a small area of

texture to a high quality, start out just
painting a few bumps, while looking at
the spheres for light direction.

You can sample towards the

light to push the plane out, or
sample closer to the shadow to
push it away.

Expand the area, making sure to slowly

turn the light with the surface. It should
start to become obvious when you
used the wrong values if you zoom out
and the overall form is getting lost.

I recommend obtaining varied

reference textures and attempting
to paint them, as you will find the
brushes and approaches for different
shapes change. I would also suggest
attempting this exercise with
mechanical details such as panel lines,
plate armour, bolts, etc.

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

19 Fill

Wireframe Exersize: 1
Start out by grabbing a half-light tone
Expected time: 45 min from the sphere, and start placing
To really internalize the idea that them comparing the angles of the
Value change equals form change, head to the angles of the sphere.
we can use an exercise that gets us
to make a 3d looking object using Once you are happy with that, start
only the paint bucket tool. grabbing more and more subtle
tones, pushing and pulling the forms
Go to the included files and open until it feels natural. Setting the paint
the folder 'Wireframe Exercises". bucket tool to a low opacity lets
Open Exercise_01, Do not turn on the you slowly change the value of the
answer sheet folder, this is only to polygons.
check your working AFTER you have
attempted the task. Once you are happy with your results.
Turn on the answer sheet folder, and 2
The file has a wireframe of a head, compare it to your attempt. After this,
and a low poly sphere, which it is a good idea to either attempt
indicates light direction. This first it again or fix your first attempt and
exercise already has a cast shadow make sure you understand where you
painted on the model, but later went wrong.
exercises in the folder expect you do
do that task manually. The meshes these exercises are
made from are also included as .obj
files.

Set your paint bucket tool with these

settings. Select the layer called
"shade me"

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

20 Subdividing

Subdivision exersize.
Expected time: 1-2 hrs

In this Exercise, we will explore the idea of using form

to sculpt and explore rather than to use form to match
some preconceived idea or drawing.

Open up exercise_o1.png from the Subdivision Exercise

folder. You will find a cube, with a poly ball representing BEVEL
the lighting.

We will grab a hard brush, with no opacity pressure,

and start bevelling the cube with values from the ball.

We want to bevel it into some sort of more complicated

form. I usually try and make it some sort of head shape,
but you can attempt to turn it into any form you like.
Our main goal is that we want to make sure we chose Continue to bevel until you have a relatively smooth
the correct colour for each bevel, and have the illusion surface.
of form correct at every point.
You will know you succeeded if your painting ends up
You can check your painting for mistakes by looking like a low poly 3d model.
looking for parallel planes, they should have
identical values. Conversely different angles
need different values.

Once you start pushing out and making overhanging

forms, you will need to start projecting out cast-
shadows onto the form.

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

21 Wireframe

Tracing WireFrames:
Expected time: 45 min

With lighting, often the biggest difficulty is understanding

the forms we are trying to represent in the first place.

This exercise is about deciphering the forms from our Start on a

lighting knowledge and drawing a wireframe on top of a small area
photo.

Find a reference image with clear lighting, and open it

up in your favourite image editor. lower the opacity of the
image, and on a new layer, using a straight line tool, start
on one area of the reference, and start to draw square
polygons on the surface.

try and keep the shapes to either triangles or rectangles,

as using polygons with more can leave areas ambiguous.
Slowly grow out your drawing until you cover the entire
area that you are attempting to understand.

As a bonus exercise, you can shade your new wireframe

the same way as we did in the fill exercise with a different
directional light. Expand
out
We can use this technique anytime you get
confused with the form of your own paintings.

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

22 Photostudy
Photo Study types:
There are many ways to study photos,
but studying them in different ways will
emphasize different skills and ways of
thinking. These are just a few.

2 Value Study:

In order to learn how to simplify to core

shadows, we can interpret photos into
just 2 values, black and white. This will
require a lot of finesse to define shapes
and proportions, but if done correctly you
can achieve very impressive results that
give the impression that it was made from
a photographic base.

This exercise is best to do with graphic

images with simple compositions and one
dominant light source.

3 Value Study:

Following on from 2 Value studies, we can

add an extra value, but instead of making
it 2 values for the entire image, we want
to limit each material to 3 values. So we
will have many more than 3 values in our
study, but in each area, it will be only 3
values.

This will teach us about modelling forms

with the minimum of values, and how to
make functional images with flat values.

You may also attempt to do an image

wide value compression on this, but I
would wait until you are confident with
using accurate values.

Full Value Study:

While we have explored a lot of creative

ways to study values, we cannot dispense
with the value in doing full studies, as they
force you to use every skill explored.
You should be doing both quick studies,
and long-form studies.

Ranging from quick 30 min efficiency

studies to 20-30 hr high detail studies
done over weeks. Working at different
timescales teaches very different and
important skill sets.

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

23 Afterword
Why learn when there is
technology?
It is worth taking some time to think about how artists
can compete when compared to ever more competent
technology and artificial intelligence. It is my personal
opinion that these tools should not be looked at as
competition, but rather, as tools to elevate ourselves
as 2d artists, both as training tools and as ways of
generating elements of our art.

But this means that we have a great need to hone our

personal skills so that we can combine our handcrafted
images with 3d and neural net generated art, or we will
end up not being able to successfully combine them.
It often looks obvious when an artist that is using 3d
elements is not able to paint to the same level, as it
becomes a very strong contrast between things they
painted and things that the computer did.

I believe 3d is an amazing study tool that painters

should take full advantage of in their studies. It lets
artists test assumptions, remove variables and imagine
alternate physics. Humans are prone to mistakes
while computers only do what we tell them, so
understanding the strengths of the human mind vs
machines is vital.

Where to from here? I look forward to seeing what you do

with this new found information on form
Hopefully, you now have a good understanding of
what form lighting is, and how to practice it. If I say lighting.
that lighting is a perspective problem, you should now
understand exactly what I mean by this.

Your understanding of the forms that you copy from

reference should increase as you attempt these
exercises while recognising errors in your own
paintings that can easily be fixed.

You should be beginning to see areas where

better form lighting could improve your art!

All of the exercises explored can be used as

techniques to think about and simplify problems in
your own paintings. If you are struggling with painting a
texture on a creature, you now know that painting a ball
and duplicating it over the surface will help you align
the lighting direction, or that if you are struggling with
painting cheeks, mapping out planes will help you to
solidify their rendering.

Fundamentals Series: Form Lighting

© Murry Lancashire 2018

 Thanks to

Ash - for editing and being amazing!

James- for helping me out in hard times, and editing!
Xavier for the Asaro head photos.

Emmanuel
Vilandris
Kanjiman
Devin Platts
Pete
Kev
Artur
Taylor
Jordan

Resources used

http://lincoln3dscans.co.uk/
https://pixabay.com/en/fog-mist-landscape-forest-
nature-594286/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/the-o/28197283739

Thanks to you
for supporting
independent
art education!