Drawing Lessons: Light Movement in Drawings

INTRODUCTION

These drawings look quite alive. But their liveliness is not from detail since the detail between them is very different. Instead, their liveliness comes from the fact they are lighted alike. In each drawing, the light moves across the subjects so that both highlight and shadow grow darker farther from the light source. And, most importantly, this light movement is almost imperceptible, something I achieved using three techniques, which we’ll cover in this drawing lessons entry.

THE DRAWINGS

These drawings are ones I made from photos supplied by customers. (I am a professional portrait artist.) I used a Palomino Blackwing pencil on Canson pure-white paper with a kneaded eraser. I also blended the kitty’s eyes and nose using my finger. The kitty is 16×20 inches, while the couple is 8×10 inches.

LIGHT MOVEMENT

“Light movement” makes sense when you understand my general rules about light. (Besides being a portrait artist, I am also an art instructor at PSU!) My light rules are: 1) find the brightest light source and its direction across your subjects, 2) values grow darker farther from the light source and 3) values are darkest where two objects meet (secondary light sources like reflected light, which is the glow you can see under the woman’s chin, are sources I might write about in the future). My second rule gives rise to light movement.

I use the term “light movement” to mean the way both highlight and shadow grow darker as objects stretch away from a light source. Take the kitty drawing for example, which is lighted from the kitty’s left side. Both eyes are hit directly by the light. However, the highlights in his right eye, which is farther from the light, are darker than the highlights in his left eye. In the couple drawing, which is lit from above, the shadow under the man’s collar is darker than that under the woman’s collar. These differences are almost as if we were looking at the subjects through a graded filter which, for the couple, would look something like this . . .

MAKING LIGHT MOVMENT IMPERCEPTIBLE

In order to make my subjects come alive, I made this light movement nearly imperceptible. First I determined the degree of light movement and its direction (light rule 1). Then for the couple drawing, I literally pictured the filter shown above in my mind’s eye. As I drew, I paused often to look at the couple with an eye toward this imaginary filter. And when I paused I always looked at the couple with fresh eyes.

“Fresh eyes” means to see your drawing anew. The traditional method of seeing with fresh eyes is to walk away from a drawing and look again after an hour or more. Then when you see the drawing again, anew, the problems stick out and are easier to fix. In my case the problems were places where the light movement appeared to look too abrupt. But I didn’t use the traditional fresh-eyes method to see the light-movement problems. Instead, I used three quick techniques.

1) Squinting! Squinting blocked the detail and let me see the bigger areas.

2) Drawing upside-down. Since each drawing and its reference photo was taped to a board, sometimes I spun the board around. While upside-down, I saw the values more and the details less.

3) Holding my drawings to a mirror. Holding each drawing to a mirror when I was almost done, made each look completely different so the most subtle problems jumped out.

These fast fresh-eye techniques made it easy to make the light movement in my kitty and my couple almost imperceptible (they also helped me finish each drawing in around an hour!) and, as a result, each drawing came to life. Apply my light movement techniques in your own drawing and watch your drawing come to life!

Check out the rest of our drawing lessons, including more drawing lessons by Mike Theuer, here.