Understanding Good Lighting with Sarah Sedwick
Lighting can make a huge difference in your reference and therefore, your final painting.
And how you set up your lighting will vary based on your artistic goals.
For Ep.47 guest Sarah Sedwick, good lighting all comes down to having a strong light source for her references.
The reason Sedwick does this is to take advantage of the shapes that happen when you have dramatic light. Think about all the possibilities of those long shadows that can connect shapes.
Because of those amazing design opportunities, Sedwick will spend time trying her light in different places. She wants to see what shapes she can give herself to play with later in the painting process.
Put it to Practice:
If you work from your own still life and set up, you’re already halfway there. But double check to make sure WHERE you have your still life set up is helping you get interesting shadows.
You’ll want to be able to set up your still life and have one dominant light shining on your subject. The goal is one set, not two or three, of shadows from different light sources. (There can be more than one shadow in your set up, you just don’t want one object having multiple shadows from different light sources.)
If your studio has a bunch of wonderful natural light, this may take putting your still life inside something like a large cardboard box so that you have more control.
Find a light you can direct like a clamp lamp and aim it at your subject. Play around with where you place it. Notice how your shadows change, connect and separate. See how much the mood of the subject changes when the light is on the side versus above versus behind.
Try a few different lighting setups to see what you like best.