How to create dynamic lighting in Photoshop

Creative works of art often use the techniques of color, composition and light design to resonate between the audience and the artwork.

As a concept artist, our goal is to touch the audience, so that they have a profound emotional connection with the work. One of the important means of achieving this goal is "lighting design". In this discussion, I will use the light and light to build the field, the scene creates the visual interest and the emotion.

My creative process is to discover ideas through simple sketches and then import them into Photoshop to paint them and finish them. I will use different shades of light to redo the scenes several times to create a series of different emotional rhythms. This can greatly enhance our ability to use the narrative of the picture. Like a musician, use the height of the emotions to divide the whole movie climax, rather than a single tune.

I use light and shadow to design the focus for each scene. I will certainly first set the theme of the scene, and then give it the design of light and shadow. The concept artist must, like the photographer, display the design focus in the housetops and hide the elements that disturb the rhythm of the picture in the dark. This process can bring emphasis and emotion to any part of a scene: The sky, the background, the medium or the foreground.

I now invite you all to be a master of light and shadow design. Only by mastering the core concepts of drawing, color, composition and lighting design can you create a work that will impress the audience.

1. Sketches and preliminary ideas

I like to make up my mind on the sketch book first. I found this step to be quite enjoyable, because without any pressure, I could play with my ideas and enjoy myself. Here, I am using a Pocket sketch book (the calligraphy Artist log) and Prismacolor VeriThin (Perak horse) orange color lead. The building was inspired by a trip to London's Westminster Abbey. For visual impact, I deliberately use three point perspective to show this scene.

2. A rough hue

The finished rough tones are drawn from pentel water-soluble ink brushes and watercolor brushes. Remember, technology is not important here: any medium will bring you a full range of value. The advantage of simple sketching is that at this stage your work begins to become clearer. It should be noted that this stage is present only on the surface of the object and the contour of the façade.

3. Placing background

Here, I set up a stormy sky and misty gray scene. I like to have warm washing first and then use neutral color to lay the background. This natural light and visual interest in the scene created a style that was rich in impressionism. In short, this stage is the process of changing from a light sky to a dark ground.

4. Large Silhouette

I will create constituencies for the main elements in the image, such as clouds, building layers, doors, windows, and trees. And then I'll save each selection as a channel, and I need to use them when I need to click on their profile.

The light in the sky emphasizes the central building and darkens toward the edges of the surroundings. Gradually, the contrast of other buildings is becoming more and more virtual, because they are not so important.

5. Details of the light

Now that the approximate scene has been basically confirmed, I can now begin to add the details of the building and illuminate the light on the roof.

I used eye-catching illumination at the top of the middle building as a close-up. Here, we complete the basic image, but it still has a shortage. I will be perfecting it in the next step.

6, Crackling!

A concept artist must design such a light, it is like the wind, like the sky, like the earth to the audience crying. So, I changed everything in the painting in order to draw the lightning that can't be ignored.

Now, the background disappears into the sky, the warm patches in the sky contrast with the lightning, and the original glow is limited. Unfortunately, we can't apply the lightning to all the pictures, so let's draw some ...

7... Zombie!

I know, I know, zombie This topic is a bit outdated. But our main emphasis here is to shift the center of gravity from the sky to the character. I try to use some strong contour light to visually increase the importance of a character or a major object.

8. Romantic Pink

I must confess to the following: Have you noticed? My previous work was more biased towards dark and gloomy style. Indeed, we are artists, we all like the Dark department!

I've seen too many ambitious artists who can handle the dark and sullen atmosphere with just one tone. And that's what makes us stand out from the crowd, so this time I'm going to use pink, the opposite of the zombie screen tones, into the picture.

9. Create a lot of atmosphere

One of the tricks of Impressionism is to use backlight. This is a wonderful lighting setting because it enhances the simple contours of the scene and allows the uniform warm light to flow through the entire screen.

As a result, a large amount of light makes the whole space of the picture look vivid. In order to increase the visual interest, I added some cold sky light to the distance from the sun to fill the picture atmosphere.

10. The Magic of the Night

Well, now that the warm sunshine is over, I can't help but return to the dark style. This is a very good opportunity for us to figure out the details of the trade-offs. In this painting, shadows devour most of the details and some unimportant contours.

11. What's inside?

Now in this picture I used to want to calm the night light, because the light is not the creation of the environment of the drama conflict, more people feel that there is something inside.

This is a great opportunity for me to focus our attention on the interior of the building, so I light up these windows. Scenes like this are often used in movies to explain the story before switching the camera inside the house.

12. The Ultimate of Light

What I want to emphasize here is that you don't have to rely on lightning to show a strong scene. I create the atmosphere by combining the top light with the air to make the light in the scene more penetrating.

13. Comforting the light of the mind

I admit that I am not a new age person, but I still have to be able to express the natural magic of light. At the end of the day, the glare of the sun gradually reduced, and the contrast of light and cold is increasing, this is the "Golden Hour Light" magic.

This is because at that time the red wavelength of light can penetrate the atmosphere, and the blue wavelength is reflected in the atmosphere, resulting in a darker light and stronger warm and cold contrast.

14. A day with full illumination

I accidentally went back and talked a lot about emotions and plays, so let's go out and enjoy the next ray of sunshine. The secret of the strong light is hidden in the shadow, and the bright light tends to make the warm hue suddenly transition to the shadow.

Only in the day of full illumination, the plane casts a blue shadow from the sky, and you see a clear shadow.

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