Lighting Principles for Digital Painting by S.Smith

Lighting Principles for Digital Painting by S.Smith

Hi there, in the first two images are my first two tries and the following are my final results! See the difference in making efforts! Thanks to teacher Sam Smith. I hope to learn more especially in a more complex project.

I spent days or more than a week to create all of these. I followed every detail I could learn from Sam and played the videos again and again until I make it things right. I know there are flaws in my work but improvement is very visible!

Photoshop application and a wacom cintiq 16

I followed every little thing Sam had said in the video and played again and again how he did it. The technique plays within shadows in multiply mode, lighting in Linear dodge mode, and reflections. One of the main key to have consistent appearance of every objects is you should build the base color of them. Add a little shade or color variations to objects in order to minimize effort in shading shadows and lighting.

After building up the base color of objects, add shadow in multiply mode according to the color of environment.
*I added orange on skin after shading the highlight.

Add highlight in linear dodge mode. Color of highlight depends on the source of light. Add Orange color next to highlight when painting skin to show the translucency of the flesh.

Add reflection. Color of reflection may vary according to the light source.