"Under the Roots" - A Lighting Study

"Under the Roots" - It's a warm summers eve and fireflies are everywhere. The air looks as if it were filled with golden particles. And the residents of this little house just arrived back home after a long day of travelling.

Reflection

I worked with many layers and their settings to achieve different lighting effects in "Under the Roots". The sun shining through the leaves of the woods (especially in the day version) and the shadows they cast were one of the key challenges. I wanted to keep a welcoming atmosphere despite the dense and massive trees. Therefore I avoided sharp corners and used a curvy and elegant design for the tress as well as the house. This contrasted the first concept of the house.  

For the night version I also integrated technique researched a few days ago to let the lights glow more. As described in the post "The Importance of Value" I dimmed down the image and added an extra layer to let the lights of the house and the glowing particles stand out more. Glowing through value and saturation. Despite the yellow not being very bright it seems as though it were. There is also some colour contrast that enhances it further though, as the yellow/orange lights are complementary colours to the purple/blue background. 

Painting Process

My first step was a pencil sketch of the environment. 

Now I scanned in the image and imported it to Photoshop. It was time to block in the values to achieve a general feel and atmosphere.

These values were improved before adding colour. I also added in some darker areas now to add some contrast.

While colouring the environment I started to add layers and set them to "Soft Light" (in Photoshop) for example to achieve more detailed and brighter lighting. 

From the final version I adjusted the colours and produced a night version as well. Here I would now add light sources and create some more contrast in certain areas.