A simple critique about my lighting totally changed my process

Last month someone on here told me my digital paintings looked 'flat' and they were right. They said I was using too many soft shadows and not enough hard edges to define shapes. I spent three days reworking my latest piece with harder light sources and it popped way more than anything I'd done before. Now I always sketch in my shadows with a hard brush first before blending anything. Has anyone else gotten feedback that made you rethink your whole workflow?

2 comments

2 Comments

olivia_carr715d ago

david739 yeah I went full hard edge for like a week and everything looked like bad concept art from 2008. I test it on simpler stuff first like still life setups with one lamp. Found the trick is blocking in with hard brush at like 70% opacity then softening only the areas that are actually out of focus or far from the light source. Most of my shadows stay hard now, I just blend the core shadow transition a bit. Works best when you have a clear light direction instead of that default soft studio lighting everyone uses.

david73915d ago

Wait so like - do you find yourself overcompensating with harder edges now or did you find a good balance? I tried that hard brush method after watching some Marco Bucci videos and went way too far, ended up with paintings that looked like cheap 3D renders lol. What kinds of subjects did you test this on first?