How lighting effects surfaces
Lighting & Illustration
While you can probably recognise that a surface is soft, or shiny, or in between, reproducing that in an illustration can often become confusing, so I thought it would be a good resource to provide an outline on how to create visually realistic surfaces when drawing. There are 3 general points to consider when illustrating various objects under lighting conditions:
- Smooth highly reflective surfaces Like metal – cause specular reflection which bounces light at the same angle as it hits the surface. See jewellery illustrtions of ring and pendent below.
- Uneven material/rough surfaces (like fabric or the bark of a tree) – tend to gradually diffuse light in a more even manner, causing diffuse reflection. See images below of the closeup illustrations drapery.
- In-between surfaces (like skin or a smooth object) – tend to have some attributes of both reflective and rough surfaces. See eye reflections vs shadow gradation in the portrait sketch below.
Surface lighting examples
Generally, the smoother the surface the more reflective. However, to help bring a visual guide to these rules, let’s give some examples of these in illustrations with our light source coming from the top left:
Ring: A shiny ring will cause specular reflection, causing the surface to reflect light as a mirror would reflect it. When this is applied to a curved surface for instance, there is in an increase in contrast in highly reflecting regions, as seen on the flat surface in the bezel ring illustration.
Cloth: Tends to gradually diffuse light and transitions from dark to light are often smooth and even in tone.
Skin: Consider the reflection seen on the face, in areas that generally contain more oil (t- region of the face) there is a higher degree of reflection, however in areas which are less oily, there tends to be smoother, diffuse reflection which causes a smooth transition from dark to light.
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