Painting Lighting Effects.

I have had a few requests to share my method of how I achieved the lighting effects on The Rescue of Sister Joan.  I will share what I've learned so far and hope it inspires others to develop the technique further.

The idea for Joan came from looking at  paintings by the Dutch masters such as Rembrandt. Some of these paintings feature candle lit figures and started me wondering if the same could be done in 3D. I also work in the theatre and have an appreciation of how much lighting can influence the dramatic impact of a scene.

There are some important points to keep in mind when trying this effect. Light only travels in straight lines so only something that is in the direct path of the light source will reflect it. The closer to the source, the more intense the reflection. The reflection should never be brighter then the light source itself. For example look at this test model of a necron immortal.



-The green on the gun (light source) is the lightest ie. brightest green on the model.

-The planes of the model that are most oblique (facing towards) to the source will appear brightest. Eg. the tips of his chin and nose are brighter than his upper lip.

-The surfaces closest to the source will appear brighter. Eg. The left side of his chest shows a bright reflection while on the right side the reflection fades out.

-Only the planes that can trace a direct line to the source show the reflection. Eg. His chest is in line with the source but the tops of his head, shoulder plates and collar bone are not.

The necron model was painted and highlighted in non metallic grey. Then dark angels green was painted on to all the surfaces reflecting the light. I continued highlighting, adding bilbous green to the dark angels and carefully picking out the surfaces closest to the source.

The rescue of Sister Joan was my first attempt at painting lit models. The scenery and figures were painted separately. I did not seriously attempt to paint reflected torchlight on the figures themselves. I simply shaded and highlighted them as normal while keeping a rough idea of where the light was coming from. I made sure that the surfaces closest to the light source were painted lighter and those in shadow were darker and heavily shaded. I did not add any orange "light" to the figures themselves.

The dramatic lighting in this scene was mostly achieved with the stone scenery. I started by painting it as normal, just dry brushing with progressively lighter greys to create a normal stone effect. I then temporarily placed the witch hunter figure in position and stuck a pin in the stonework directly behind the flame of the torch.

After removing the figure the pin served as a marker for the light source. Working outwards from the pin I dry brushed a large circular area of stone with a dark red, and the same in a large pool around the position of the witch hunter's feet. Orange was gradually added to the red and the process repeated in smaller circles finishing up with the brightest orange (but not as bright as the torch itself) directly behind the torch in the position marked by the pin.

I hope this information is helpful to other painters. Please feel free to contact me with any comments or questions. I will continue to experiment with lighting effects and would love to see other painters apply it and develop the idea further. It has a lot of potential can be quite eye catching if done well, after it was this effect that won me my Slayer Sword.

Victoria Lamb