Lighting Practice

So, here’s a before and after of a practice work I did. In this I practiced on lighting and shadowing.

                                                                              Here's an explanation and tips on how I achieve this.

Working time: 20 min.

Color used - Code:  9de991

Blending modes used:
Overlay and Linear dodge (Add).

Adjustments Used:
Color Balance, Gradient Map, Levels, Hue and Saturation. 

If you want viewers to wear shades when looking at the colors... Color Balance is a great adjustment to send viewers to the optician by adjusting the highlights.

At the beginning
In this artwork you have multiple light sources. So, on a new layer, with blending mode set to overlay, I used a soft edge brush with opacity set to 30%. I painted over the columns, the windows and along the ground (I painted some more later on).

Do you see how bright the door and windows are? I created a new layer, blending mode set to LD (Add) and painted over them with opacity 10-20%.

Light beams.
I used the pen tool to get a triangular path, fill with the same color, Gaussian blurred it with the layer’s blending mode set to LD (Add). I duplicated it and reduced both layer’s opacity to about 50-60%. I merged the layers and duplicated them along the other windows.

For the shadow, I used the pen tool to outline the shape of the columns along the ground. I blurred it and reduced the opacity. I erased some of the areas of the shadow because you have multiple light sources, and you want it to look like some of the shadows are overlapping.

Smoke and highlights
For highlights along the column, I used the pen tool. First, I used a hard edge brush with 50% opacity with the diameter about 1-5 pixels. I stroked it along the edges of the columns. This layer blending was set to LD (Add).

Smoke
I used smoke brush from Dan Luvisi brush pack. I set the brush opacity to 10%, with the layers blending mode set to LD (Add).  As you can see, I painted along the ground and on the beams; I erased the areas where the shadows are.
Remember I only used one color for the entire process. 


___________________________________________________________________________

Credits to the stock owners:

[Flower]
twins72-stocks.deviantart.com/…

[Building]
rockstocks.deviantart.com/art/…

[Brushes]
danluvisiart.deviantart.com/ar…


                                                                                                 

This artwork is not a premade, it should not be reproduced, copied and re-uploaded without my permission.