Light and Dark

Over the weekend I incorporated improvements to the digital drawing that I'd been working on last week.

The most obvious difference is that the characters have gone from very dark grey to pure black, which makes them pop out more against the background. To go with this I've also outlined them with light grey so that they also don't blend in to each other (Or, in the case of the gargoyle, into their own wings). Other differences include the cityscape in the background having been moved and added to, so that it frames the characters, and the addition of ruts in the dirt road and a crashed anvil to add some visual interest to the foreground.

Moving on to this week, I started studying how to draw objects to suggest that they're actually being illuminated.

Here we have the same object (basically just a folded sheet of paper) being illuminated from two different angles. The top version has the light coming from a source above and to the left, perpendicular to the left plane of the paper. This puts that side in the most direct light, which makes it the brightest lit. The middle plane is at a different angle, and so it is hit by less light, which makes it slightly darker. And the final plane is angled so that the light can't directly hit it, which puts it in shadow, making it MUCH darker than the other two.

In the bottom version, the light is coming directly from the right. This means that the right side is the most directly lit. However, since it isn't perpendicular to the light source, that means it's not lit up as brightly as it could be. Additionally, the fact that the light is coming -directly- from the right, means the other two sides are in complete shadow. It's the same object, but because the light is hitting it differently, it looks completely different.

This diagram shows how light interacts with multiple objects at once. The highlight is where the light is striking the main object most directly. The midtones are still receiving direct light, but not as much of it, so they'd be a little darker. The portions of the object in shadow are the darkest, since they're at an angle where the light can't hit them directly at all. However, there is another object behind the main one, and the light can reflect off of it back at the main object. This allows light to slightly illuminate areas that would otherwise be in shadow, making them appear brighter than they otherwise would. They won't be as bright as any area in direct light, but will still be brighter than if they were in total shadow.

In this study, a (very rough) cylinder is being illuminated from the side. Contrary to what might be expected, the middle is the darkest portion, rather than the far side. This is because reflected light is hitting the far side, but neither the main light source nor the reflected light is at an angle where it can hit either the middle or the top of the cylinder, hence, those two areas are the darkest.

You can see if you look at the bottom that this cylinder actually started as a hexagonal extrusion, and that was so it could be shaded in flat planes. Once that was done, the planes were blended together to give the illusion of a curved surface being lit up.

This study shows what portions of a sphere are hit by a single light source. In the top image, the sphere is being hit directly from the left, and so it can be divided in half to show that only that side is being lit up. The rest of the sphere is in shadow, as the light can't curve around to hit it. In the bottom image, the light is coming not from directly left, but from more towards the viewer and a little below the sphere. It's still illuminating only half of the sphere, but now a greater portion of the visible surface is lit up.

That's all for this week!