Figure Drawing - Lighting the Figure

Light is essential to sight. Without light there is no sight, at least not with our natural eyes. Because figure drawing begins with seeing, a book about figure drawing should have some significant information on the nature of light and how our eyes perceive it. Understanding how light works on objects in a scene helps the artist create a feeling of depth and substance in a drawing. In Figure 7.1 the lighting on the dress indicates that it is a dark satin material. In nature the artist often doesn’t have much control over the lighting of a scene. About...
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Figure Drawing - Lighting the FigureC H A P T E R 7 Figure 7.1 The lighting shows what kind of material the dress is made of. ✎ Lighting the FigureL ight is essential to sight. Without light there is no sight, at least not with our natural eyes. Because figure drawing begins with seeing, a book about figure drawing should have some significant informationon the nature of light and how our eyes perceive it. Understanding how lightworks on objects in a scene helps the artist create a feeling of depth and sub-stance in a drawing. In Figure 7.1 the lighting on the dress indicates that it isa dark satin material.In nature the artist often doesn’t have much control over the lighting of ascene. About all that can be done to change the lighting is to wait for the sunto move to a better position. Once the sun is in the right place you had betterdraw quickly, though, because it will continue to move, changing the lighting.In the studio the artist has a lot more control over the lighting of a figure.In a studio situation the artist can change the lighting of the figure by movingthe light sources or by opening and closing window coverings. Too often theartist does not take enough time to make sure the lighting of the figure isexactly right. When using a virtual model, such as in Figure Artist, lightingbecomes even more critical because all lighting in the scene is staged in theprogram. Not only does the artist need to understand how to move lights, healso must understand how to simulate actual lighting effects from real life. 133Figure Drawing with Virtual ModelsTake a look at Figure 7.2. Canyou see any lighting problems?Would this lighting setup make agood figure drawing?In this chapter we will be lookingat how to light a figure. We willalso cover many aspects of shad-ing your drawings.Types of LightThere are basically two types oflight in drawing—direct light andreflected light. Direct lightemanates from a light source, suchas a light bulb or the sun. During anormal sunny day, the world isbathed in light with the sun as thelight source. If you were to lookdirectly at the sun (something yourmother probably told you not todo), you would be looking at directlight, as shown in Figure 7.3. The Figure 7.2 Is this good lighting for a figure drawing?same thing is true for a light bulbor a campfire. Anything that cre-ates light, such as a TV or a com-puter monitor, is giving off directlight.Reflected light bounces off ofobjects. We see the world aroundus primarily through reflectedlight. The yellow, green, and red inFigure 7.3 are all reflected light.The light of the sun is bouncingfrom the objects and reflectingback to the viewer. Figure 7.3 Light that comes directly from a light source is called direct light. 134 Lighting the FigureAbsorption, If the object is transparent, some of the light will pass through the only is blue light reflected, but it is also the only light that passesReflection, and object. In the case of a transparent through the blue object, as shown object, such as glass, almost all of in Figure 7.5. All of the other lightPass Through the light will pass through the bands are absorbed into the blue object. Figure 7.5 shows light pass- object.Light travels in a straight path from ing through the blue object. Notthe light source until it hits some-thing. When light hits an object, itwill do one of three things: It willbounce off the object, it will beabsorbed by the object, or it willpass through the object. In Figure7.4, light is coming from the sun.When light hits the blue object,blue light is reflected to theviewer’s eyes. All non-blue light isabsorbed into the object.The color of an object is deter-mined by the light that is absorbedinto it and the light that is reflectedoff of it. A white light contains all Figure 7.4 An object is blue because it reflects blue light.colors of visible light. If a whitelight strikes a blue object, all colorsother than those that are blue willbe drawn into the object. The bluelight is reflected. What makes theobject blue is that it is ...