How to Draw with Light and Shadow – Online Art Course

Hello Everyone!

I am excited to share a new course with you today. This one is all about how to apply light and shadow to your illustrations. This is a topic that I have wanted to go into more depth about for quite a while.

Light, shadow, and rendering are the elements that propel our artwork off the page. Understanding these concepts and developing our skills in this area allow us to draw with more depth and dimension.

This course is currently at just over 3 hours of content. It is broken up into three primary sections of study.

Section 1 – Rendering Practice Activities

The first section is a basic exercise for you to study fades and rendering techniques. This will allow you to work on hand control and gain an understanding of the fundamental principles of light and shadow.

You will work on a few different textures and ways to create fades with cross hatching. Make sure to grab your practice sheet in the PDF that I supplied with this course!

Section 2 – Drawing a Single and Dual Light Source

In this next section you will learn to draw a single and dual light source and why this can be a powerful way to add depth and dimension to your illustrations.

This also allows us to create all sorts of interesting possibilities with the coloring process. Allowing us to colorize our work in a more cinematic way.

Section 3 – Lighting the Face from 3 Different Angles

For the next section you will learn how to apply light and shadow to a face from 3 various angles. This will allow you to add more drama to your character’s expressions and can be a powerful element in our storytelling.

Here are the key points that we will focus on during these lessons –

Cast shadows
Drop Shadows
Bounced Light
Edge Lighting
Core Shadows
Specular Vs. Diffused
Textures and Imperfections

I will be adding more project files and art sheets over time. I hope you find these lessons to be very informative and reach out if you have any questions or would like to share your artwork!