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My friend the photographer totally changed how I think about lighting
I was showing off my latest digital painting at a local meetup in Portland last weekend and this guy Jeff who shoots portraits for a living looked at it and asked why I always light my characters from the front. He said real emotion comes from shadows and rim lighting like the kind you get at golden hour. I thought about it and realized my stuff does look kinda flat compared to his photos. Anyone else ever get a totally unexpected piece of advice from someone in a different art medium?
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hall.charles3d ago
Man that's a solid life lesson right there. I was doing woodcarving at a craft fair and this metal sculptor wandered by. He told me my pieces looked like they were carved in a vacuum. Then he showed me how to use negative space to guide the eye. Changed everything about how I approach depth. Now I always think about what I'm NOT carving. Funny how different mediums can teach you the same core stuff about light and shadow.
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veramartin3d ago
Yeah @hall.charles, that's exactly how it goes - some stranger shows you one small thing and your whole world opens up.
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the_kevin3d ago
Read a piece once about how jazz musicians learn more from watching painters than other musicians. Same idea, different art forms teaching the same tricks about silence and space. That lack of clutter makes everything else hit harder.
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