Hi everyone! Chiken here.
In the last video, we
talked about studying and observing.
In this lesson, we will be learning about
what I would consider the most important concept.
Fundamentally, what makes a 2D image read as
a 3D subject is shadows and light.
I'm sure many of you have seen this sphere before.
I would like to break down the shadows
of this sphere because it can teach us
many important things about how shadows behave.
If we keep these characteristics in mind while
we're painting, it can let our artwork become
more believable and have more depth.
So from this image alone, we know that
the light source is coming from here.
And if we focus on the highlight side, which
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is this part, we notice that there are two
major parts; the highlight and this mid tone.
That's called the "half tone".
Obviously, the highlight is going to be the brightest point
because it is being hit directly by the light.
However, the half tone is not as bright because
it is only partially being hit by the light.
Moving on to the shadow side, we have the
"Terminator", which is where the light transitions into shadow.
If the light source is very
bright, the Terminator will be sharper.
But if the light is softer and more ambient,
you will get a softer or more blurry Terminator.
The Terminator is slightly curved because it
goes around the circumference of the circle.
So when we're drawing head, for example, and we have
a Terminator involved, it will be slightly round as well.
I have a little exercise later in this
lesson that really illustrates how that works.
And this area is what I like to call the "shadow body"
which is just the main body of the shadow.
It won't be as bad as the Terminator because of the
presence of ambient light moving on to this brighter part.
It is brighter because there's some reflected light
that's reflecting from the surface onto the sphere.
And this is called the "bounce light".
Take note that the color of the bounce
light is affected by the color of the surface.
Moving on to the cast shadow.
So this is the cast shadow, which is the
shadow that the object casts onto the surface.
Note that the further away it is from the
object, the softer and less sharp the shadow becomes
because there is more ambient light from the surroundings
reflecting onto the shadow and disrupting it.
Next, we have this really, really dark part called
the "Occlusion shadow" or the "Crevice shadow".
Basically, it's just a part where light just
cannot reach, and it's obviously the darkest part.
So I was out playing tennis one day,
and I took this photo, which I think
illustrates really nicely what we are talking about.
On the racket handle.
We can see the highlight, the brightest
part here, and the half tone.
Obviously, this is not perfectly round, so there's going to
be angles, but we can see those different parts and
here is the Terminator, and the shadow body.
Now, when we look at the shadows of
my hand, or my fingers, we can see
the Terminator here and the shadow body here.
And notice how the shadow body is slightly
blue and a bit lighter than the Terminator.
Because if you remember, there's
light from the surroundings.
And in this case, the light is from the sky.
That's why it's slightly blue.
Here we have a nice cast shadow, and
our crevice shadows are here, and here, and maybe here.
And the bounce light, here...
Notice how it's really red because the light is
bouncing from the racket handle onto my finger.
Yeah! So next time you're out in the sun, see
whether you can make little observations like this.
Okay, back to the sphere.
Let's try to paint it
so we really understand everything.
Start with the highlight,
and let's create the shadow.
We'll go in a bit darker at the Terminator.
Remember, it's a sphere, so it's gonna be curved.
And we're going to lighten the shadow body.
By the way, I'm using an airbrush,
just to make the gradients easier.
We have the bounce light.
Let's paint that in.
And the cast shadow.
I'm gonna do it a bit lighter than
the reference, just so we can really see the
effect of the shadow getting blurry as we go
further from the object.
And the dark parts here where our crevice shadow is.
Now let's try to put what we learnt into practice
while the concepts are still fresh in our mind.
I've prepared a line art here, and
we are going to shade it together.
Or if you like, you can use
a line art of your own too!
So right now, don't worry too much about color.
And we're just going to do everything in Gray
scale so we can focus on the tones.
It's always good to start at midtone.
So I've colored the background and the character Gray.
So let's look at her hair first.
I'm just gonna draw the arrows to
indicate where our light is coming from.
Let's start with the shadow side.
So we're gonna draw in the Terminator,
and it's gonna be curved, because the
head is kind of like a sphere.
And then the shadow body, we're going
to lighten it slightly, because of the
ambient light coming from all around here.
So it's going to lighten it a little bit.
Next, we can add some bounce light.
So, maybe the light is bouncing
from her cheek onto her hair.
I'm just gonna lighten it, just a little bit.
Not too much.
Just a little.
Maybe there's some on her hair here.
Or, it's bouncing on her
shoulder to her hair here.
Maybe some here.
Yeah!
So, do this sparingly, don't have to do too much.
And now let's move on to the highlight side.
So, for the half tone, I'm not really going to shade it
in because we can just use this as our half tone.
I'm just going to add in the light.
Very simple.
Now moving on to our crevice shadows.
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We can do this, not just on her hair,
so, I'm gonna create a new layer.
I'm gonna go pretty dark for this one.
We're just gonna find those areas
where you think the light cannot reach.
Maybe here.
I tend to draw it on the intersection of hairs.
You can see it's already starting to make
our illustration look more believable and more 3D.
Maybe behind her ear here...
And then the braids, there would be quite a bit.
If you do line art, you can
even include this in your line art process.
Yeah! And that's the crevice or occlusion shadows.
Next, let's move on to the cast shadows.
I think the horns will cast a shadow on her hair.
I'm just gonna draw very simple one here.
And remember how the further away it gets from the object,
the shadow gets a bit more blurry. So, we're just
going to soften the shadow a bit here.
Sharper around here.
It gets more blurry... And similarly here....
Since it's in the shadow, I'm just going to get an even darker tone.
Blur it out a bit...
And maybe there's a cast shadow on her
chin, so let's draw that in. Gonna Alpha lock it.
Our shadows are gonna be cast this way...
And again it's going to get softer as we get further away
and you can repeat those steps with the face.
So, I think there's going to be some crevice shadows here
in the hair, caused by the hair.
Just a little bit here.
Yeah!
And to finish up, I'm just going to extend the shadows
a little bit out here, where her hair strands are.
Just so it looks more like hair.
And I'll bring the light down.
And to really give her that 3D look,
sometimes, I'll like to get a dark shade, and go
around the head, just the sides, with an airbrush.
And that's it for our simple portrait! With just some simple shading our
black and white portrait already looks so much more 3D,
and have so much more depth.
For the mission, paint the
sphere and shade a portrait. Keeping in mind the properties of
light and shadow, as you paint.
In this lesson, we learnt about light and shadow.
In the next lesson, we'll move
on to colors, and color harmony.