Paint With Light Front of Mind

Painting With Light in Mind is Essential For Realistic Artworks

Light is probably the most critical element of art you need to master if you want to paint realistic artworks. Here’s a little insight into why I believe keeping light front of mind is so important. You will also find a few tips on how I apply light and shade in my paintings.

Getting Your Head Around It

The objective, when creating a realistic painting,  is to take a 3-dimensional scene, as we see it in real life, then re-create it in a two-dimensional way. However, we still want that scene to appear 3D.  When you think about it, that is quite a challenge.

So how do you we do it?

I’m a bit of a thinker, a left-brain artist if you like. So I have spent quite a bit of time pondering this question when trying to create my own paintings. Now that I am explaining my painting process to others in my online art courses, I find it’s time to put my thoughts into words.

The first step, in my mind, when changing a real-life scene into a painting is to determine what it is that makes the human eye able to visualise scenes in 3 dimensions. How do we determine the shape of an object or the fact that I can see that one object is in front of another?

The answer I came up with is that it is all about the light.  More specifically, it is the way light reflects on the surfaces around us that shows us a 3D picture in our minds.  So it follows that the light is really the most important thing we have to consider when trying to turn a 3-dimensional picture into a 2-dimensional painting.

You might say painting is more about colour but differences in colour can only be seen because of  differences in light.

• If there were no light we wouldn’t be able to see anything, there would be only darkness.
• If there was total light all we would see is brightness or white
• All the different degrees of light in-between are what we use to create a picture.

Using Light and Shade to Show Form

Every surface we can see is reflecting different amounts of light and shade.  That is why we are able to distinguish shapes.  In painting we refer to the amount of light and shade as the tone.

Most beginners’ painting courses will start off by showing you how to paint something round like a piece of fruit, say an apple.  Every part of the curved surface of the apple is facing a different direction but the light is usually only coming from one direction.   Therefore, the light will be hitting each part of the apple at a different angle and will consequently be reflecting a different amount of light. Each part of the apple will appear to they eye as a different tone.

Adjusting the tone of your paint is how you make the apple appear round.  You use a lighter tone for the areas that are being hit by the light (the highlights) and a darker tone for those that are hidden from the light (the shadows).  The gradual change from light to dark is what gives the apple its spherical shape and makes it appear 3D.  In painting we call this showing form.

When showing form, the way you decide exactly where to put the highlights and shadows is by identifying the direction from which the light is coming.  

Identifying the light direction is the first thing I do every time I start a painting and I recommend you do the same.  If necessary, you can even draw an arrow on the edge of your painting surface to help you remember.  This will help you because you must continue to consider the light direction throughout the whole painting.

Light and Shade on Flat Surfaces

But what about when you are dealing with flat surfaces like, say, a building.  Let’s say you are painting a white building with a white roof.

Suppose there are two walls of this building visible in your painting so you paint them like this.

It certainly doesn’t look much like walls at this stage because you can’t see which direction each wall is supposed to be facing.  

Identify the Light Source

Once you identify the light source it becomes obvious that one wall will be reflecting more light than the other. Due to the angle, one is hidden from the direct light and will therefore be in shadow.  Let’s say in this case the light is coming from the top left. Therefore, the wall on the left should be painted in a lighter tone (a highlight colour) and the one on the right in a darker tone (shadow colour).  The wall on the left is not completely white because the light will be hitting it from about a 45 degree angle. You can see now, though, that the corner of the building becomes visible.  

Consider the Angles

When you add a roof (also white) another angle is introduced. So again, there will be a different amount of light reflected and therefore a different tone should be used.  The roof surface on the left is being directly hit by the light so this will be the lightest tone. The roof surface on the right is hidden from the direct light but not so much as the right hand wall. Therefore it will be not quite as dark. The more different angles there are, the more tones you will need to use.  Remembering where the light is coming from will help you to decide which tones to use.

This building now appears 3-dimensional but it still doesn’t look that realistic.

Refine the Areas of Light and Shade

That’s because in reality, each wall will more than likely also have different areas of light and shade.  Applying light and shade to a single plane can give the appearance of texture to a surface. It can also show cast shadows and reflected light from surrounding surfaces.

Watch the video below to see how the building starts to look once light and shade is added to each surface.

These images, of course, are a computer illustration, not a painting.  If this were a painting I could introduce more variation of tone to make it look even more realistic.

When painting in a realistic style, I apply at least 3 different tones to every single object I paint.  This is what I call my tri-colour method and I teach it in all my classes.  The tri-colour method gives me a methodical approach that I can use to paint any subject with confidence. It’s easy, no matter how complicated that subject may be.

Light and Shade on Rough Surfaces

So now let’s look at something a little more complicated.

When it comes to painting really rough surfaces like rocks, figuring out the relationship between highlights and shadows becomes a bit more difficult.  The general principle, though, still holds true.

Each surface plane on a single rock will have a different tone. Within each plane there will be different variations of tone. The placement of highlights and shadows depends on both the light direction and the angle of each part of the rock.

When painting rocks I like to start with about 3 flat surfaces, each with a different tone. Then I begin to refine each surface, adding all the nooks and crannies with areas of light and dark.

One thing to remember here is that the more light, the greater the difference will be between the lightest light and the darkest dark. This is called the tonal range.

In this little demo I have used only one colour, Payne’s Grey. That way I can demonstrate that showing form is all about the light, not the colour.  Normally when I paint greys I like to use a variety of colours to give a more vibrant effect.  I call this deconstructed grey. 

Mastering the Use of Light and Shade

So you can see that whatever the subject matter, considering the light is essential to creating a realistic painting.  Knowing that, though, doesn’t automatically make it easy to master the art of light and shade in every situation. There can often be many other factors to contend with such as reflected light or filtered light.

However, painting with light in mind is always going to be a game-changer for creating realism no matter how complicated the subject matter. Having a systematic process to use is what makes it easier to figure out the difficult stuff.

Being a logical thinker, I needed to create a simple formula that I can use to work out how to use highlights and shadows in all my paintings.  That is how I arrived at the tri-colour method. The tri-colour method can be used on any subject using any painting medium. Best of all, it is easy to remember.

Find out more about my tri-colour method for mastering light and shade by checking out my online art courses. You can find them at the Blue Beach House Art School. I also have heaps of free stuff in Free Art Resources section of this website.