How to Approach Color and Light: Exercises to Build Fundamentals
Even though Trung Le is a graphics programmer at Deviation Games, he wanted to jump into the art perspective. This was not only to inform his own work, but to explore his interest and passion! Check out this breakdown, in which Trung explains his process for various color and light exercises, including:
- Deconstructing Values: Movie Stills
- Original Composition: Shadow Monster
- Portrait Values: Tricky Lighting
- Landscape Values: Simplification vs. Distinction
- Sphere Exercises: Bounce Lights
- Cool vs Warm Light: Ice Castle
- Concept Art: Storytelling
- Final Project
Hello there! My name is Trung Le and I was born and raised in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. I am currently a graphics programmer at Deviation Games. I have been in the game industry for about five years, and most recently worked on Red Dead Redemption 2 at Rockstar Games as an AI programmer. It’s probably odd that I am taking art classes at CGMA as an engineer, but being surrounded by incredible artists at work motivated me to better learn the craft. Studying art has strengthened my capability to communicate across both the arts and tech disciplines and has made game development feel a whole lot more joyful and rewarding!
1. Deconstructing Values: Movie Stills
For the first assignment, I deconstructed the values of a still to understand the design and hierarchy of the shapes that made up this composition. So to best study value structures from stills, I chose a painting from the game Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales. The reason I picked this painting is that it's very clear to read. There is a major Z-curve to guide the viewer’s eyes from front to back toward the smoke they spotted. This greatly simplifies what the subject is. It’s also a good storytelling device. The artist only used a single color, so from its values, you can immediately identify the lights and shadows families.
What I particularly like about this composition is that the shapes of the shadows are grouped into a hierarchy from large shadows to small dappled shadows. They don’t simply act as just realistic shadows, but a conscious design choice to create interesting shapes. It would have been monotonous if these shadow shapes were uniform and repetitive.
Don’t miss out on CGMA’s The Art of Color and Light course, taught by DreamWorks Animation Art Director Chris Brock, Freelance Concept Artist Axel Sauerwald, and Illustrator/Lead Color Artist Marco Bucci.
2. Original Composition: Shadow Monster
For the original composition assignment, I designed a shadow monster. I mostly focused on the shape language here. I experimented with mostly C-curves and S-curves because I think it makes for an unsettling feeling of instability and constantly shifting about this monster. Since it’s a fairly simple concept, to make the composition more interesting, I played around with different shapes for the negative space in between the shadows to create some variations.
Marco gave me some helpful feedback about what makes some of these compositions work due to their simplicity and contrasts and the ones that are too complex to read.
3. Portrait Values: Tricky Lighting
For Maroc’s value study, I chose a self-portrait by Alexis Franklin. I started by identifying the 5 values of the painting. The lighting situation and facial anatomy were a bit challenging, so I had some trouble identifying the shadows under the chin. At first, I made them too blocky, but Marco did a paint over to point out some of these details for me.
Explore Head Drawing and Construction taught by Concept Artist and Sculptor Christian Nacorda.
4. Landscape Values: Simplification vs. Distinction
I studied landscape painting by Min Ma because the artist uses a lot of vibrant colors, so it would help push my practice to pick colors by eyeing the reference. I started by sampling several key colors and blocked in the large shapes of the sky, the grasslands, and the trees. One useful tip is to keep this process zoomed out so I could stay focused on the major shapes without bogging myself down with details.
The landscape painting has hard sunlight and skylight, so most of the values are in the light family. The shadow family is heavily influenced by the skylight, so I added a few cool colors when I painted them.
Marco gave me very helpful feedback about when to group values and shapes together. In my study, I tend to simplify colors and shapes, but this makes the painting harder to read. For the clouds, simplification was a good idea. But with the trees, it might have been better to create some separations to make each tree distinct.
5. Sphere Exercises: Bounce Lights
For the sphere exercises, you first identify the light sources of the scene and match the color of that light onto the sphere. Is it warm? Is it cold?
Then based on the light direction, you paint the shadows while paying attention to any potential bounce lights from the ground, any potential light casters in the scene, and ambient lighting from the environment.
Marco gave me some guidance about light colors. In the David Mensing study, I didn’t take into account exaggerated bounce lights. The artist stylized the lighting situation so the bounce lights weren’t as realistic as I thought they’d be. Also, the application of dappled lights from the tree shades would also have significantly improved the study.
6. Cool vs Warm Light: Ice Castle
To study warm and cool lit scenes, I chose a painting by Hongyu He. This scene was mostly painted with cool light to create an atmosphere of cold and icy environment, something that might be ominous. I picked the icy blue to prep the canvas first since it is dominant in this painting. Once again, I kept the image at thumbnail scale so I could quickly block in the major shapes for the castle and the mountains. I tend to work from dark to light, so I painted the darkest first so I could make a mental note to myself of the extreme ranges of the values. Then I worked out areas of the painting where shadows and lights are, before going into details. In this study, I painted directly with colors to train myself to be more comfortable with this process. Part of it is that doing so allowed me to feel the painting better and freer to explore.
When switching to the warm lit scene, I picked the opposite lighting setup: sunset with bright warm orange and yellow colors. I prepped my canvas with a warmer base and repeated the same process as the cool lit scene. However, I wanted to change the environment so it fit the atmosphere of a warm lit scene, so I took some more references of clouds and sunset lighting to study and reapplied them here. It certainly gives a very different feeling now of hope and peace!
7. Concept Art: Storytelling
For the final concept art, I wanted to explore a whimsical scene of animals going on adventures together. I picked a llama and a toad because of their cuteness :3 In this scene, I wanted to capture the moment of respite after a long day of trekking and fighting monsters. In the typical fashion of most fantasy games, it would be at a campfire. Since the llama is a larger creature, I cast her the role of a protector, so she will be on lookout duty while the smaller toad sleeps. This is to create a small bit of storytelling and characters!
When exploring colors, I tried to brainstorm widely different light colors, from warm to cool, and with different moods. For composition, I wanted the two creatures as the focal point, so I made a distinctive L-shape for the llama to emphasize her long neck. The other point of focus is the fire so I positioned it immediately next to them. I made sure everything else was dimmed and less detailed to not distract the viewers from the characters. Here, I sketched out some different color choices and compositions that I like, making sure I got the recognizable shapes of the llama and toad as the central focus of the piece.
Check out Composition For Concept Art And Illustration taught by Freelance Concept Artist Axel Sauerwald and Art Director/Concept Artist Mauricio Abril.
After I have received the critiques from Marco, I decided to go with option B, as I quite like the warmth coming out for the fire, and it seems the most inviting composition with the lighting too! I wanted the viewers to feel that they are part of it, coming in to rest with them. I polished first with a larger drawing of line art, then a flat color test version to feel it out.
8. Final Project
For the final painting, I experimented with different brush strokes to create interesting shapes, some I think are more successful than others. I also opened up the composition a bit more to give it a sense of an open world for the adventurers to explore!
I am very satisfied with my final product. As a beginning artist, this is one of the first completed paintings that I have done with an original composition and full colors. I felt that I hit a milestone after finishing this piece.
Final Thoughts
- I have always had a limited understanding of colors and lights, so I took this course in order to push myself beyond my comfort zone as an artist and a graphics programmer who works with lighting and materials quite often. Also, I have followed Marco’s Youtube channel for a long time now, so when I saw the opportunity, I signed up right away!
- Marco’s feedback was 100% helpful to me. He was an excellent teacher, always clear with his explanations and why he approached painting in certain ways. Not once did I feel lost. I also love his passion for paintings and colors – it just made the class even much more fun to take! I would do it again.
- The most important thing I learned is to have solid values as your foundations, even if you are painting with colors. Think about colors as in conversation with each other, from the most saturated to the muted tones. They are keys to conveying the mood of the painting.
- I absolutely recommend this course. Understanding lights and shadows and colors are the very fundamentals every artist needs to know to succeed and go beyond their current limits.
LEARN MORE
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RELATED LINKS
Don’t miss out on CGMA’s The Art of Color and Light course, taught by DreamWorks Animation Art Director Chris Brock, Freelance Concept Artist Axel Sauerwald, and Illustrator/Lead Color Artist Marco Bucci.
Explore Head Drawing and Construction taught by Concept Artist and Sculptor Christian Nacorda.
Check out Composition For Concept Art And Illustration taught by Freelance Concept Artist Axel Sauerwald and Art Director/Concept Artist Mauricio Abril.
