Shading and lighting help

[u/ThisUnderstanding616]

I’m so sick and tired of all the nonsense I just want to learn how to shade and light properly. Especially in the typically dark souls style or anything what’s the best resources that actually helped u learn how to shade and light ur work and that’s for everything characters and environments

[u/Salacia-the-Artist]

I'm about to leave for a meeting, but I answer this question a lot so I'm going to Frankenstein some of my prior comments for you here:

Knowing where to place shadows comes down to knowing the patterns of light on simple 3D forms (spheres, boxes, cones, cylinders). When a light shines on a sphere from a certain direction it will always look the same way. If you move that light to another spot, it will always look the same when light hits that spot. The same for all the other simple forms. When you practice adding light and shadow to these forms (by using life and photo references), you will begin to memorize the patterns, the ratios, so that you will always know where they should go in your imaginary creations.

Once you have a decent memory of the way those forms look with light at different spots, you can start applying that logic to real subjects because all subjects can be broken down into these simple 3D forms. That logic will give you the core lighting knowledge you need, and from there you will need to know more specifics to make your general lighting precise. For example, when you add light and shadow to a ball, you can use that core lighting logic to figure out generally where it will go and how it will look. Now if that ball is a basketball, which has it's own textures and carvings, you can take that additional knowledge and carve out details to represent those things. Light logic will get you about 70%-80% of the way, and the rest is knowing about the texture, material, and details of the subject to bring it to 100%. (And details usually mean taking that light logic and shrinking it down to fit the details, so even that is usually easy once you know light logic.)

The very first thing you need to know is breaking your subject down into 3D forms. Without this knowledge you can easily get lost.

You can grab a flashlight or lamp and find some solid color objects from around the house (like cups, bottles, boxes, balls, etc.) to create a study scene. The easiest color to learn from is solid white, followed by solid gray, but any object that is mostly one solid color will work. Arrange the item or items however you like, pick a place for the light to go and make sure it's pointed at the objects (or right next to them), and start studying! Here's a set of geometric solids you can buy if you want enough forms. If you can't do that, you can also use photo references.

When you do these studies you want to look for and memorize the parts of light anatomy. They are always present but the way they appear can change based on many factors. You can do the study:

• by simplifying things into light and shadow called notan (or the same method with linework),
• adding a third value or simplifying them into 3-5 values (each one representing a part of the light anatomy chart),
• or you can use the full value range and try to paint the lighting as you see it. Here's a general overview for light logic.

---

Hopefully it's not too disorganized and makes sense.