The lighting on your subject can have huge effect on the success of a realistic drawing. In this video, you'll learn how bad lighting may be ruining your portrait drawings. The problem may not be your drawing ability but what you are trying to draw.
You can have the worlds best drawing techniques at your disposal but unless you understand how and where to put in light and shadow, your drawings will not look very realistic.
In my live drawing workshops, I hold one-on-one sessions with my students where they are encouraged to bring in some of their previous work along with the reference photos they used. This time is spent talking about how they could improve their drawings. I often tell them, that given the reference photo their using, I wouldn't have even attempted to draw that subject. Even if it's a great photo with lots of detail, if the lighting wasn't done in a way to give the subject volume and dimension, the resulting drawing will most likely be disappointing.
It's impossible to make a drawing look realistic with out shading. Without shading, it's a line drawing. Shading is what makes a drawing look three dimensional, and is the only way to create realistic looking textures. It seems self evident, but the place you add shading is in the shadows, or places that are gradually turning away from the light.
Using the flash on your camera is one of the worst ways to get a good reference for your drawing because it obliterates nearly all of the shadows. If you are drawing from a photo with virtually no shadows, what are you going to shade?
This video demonstrates how good and bad lighting effects your results. It's a short clip from my "Realistic Drawing with Light, Texture, and Contrast" tutorial. For people interested in adding more dimension, contrast and realism in their drawings, this is the tutorial I recommend starting with.
For more information about my realistic drawing techniques, drawing tutorials and Live drawing workshops: visit: www.jdhillberrytutorials.com/
19 янв 2020
