Light & Shadow in Portrait Painting

• Lighting is important not just for the visual effects, but especially for establishing mood.
• Lighting can dramatically change the mood for a scene, anything from romantic, scary, to happy.
• Candle light can be very beautiful and intimate, as seen in Georges de la Tour‘s paintings.
• Light in a painting is effective if you can figure out which direction the light is coming from.
• The key to painting light is consistency, the highlights and shadows all have to be doing the same thing.
• Usually 1 light source is the most effective as it is concentrated in a specific part of the scene.
• Multiple light sources can be really tough to deal with, often the light sources will “cancel” each other out and can make a portrait look very flat!
• It is possible to have a portrait with 2 light sources, usually there has to be a very strong shadow core, and it helps if the 2 highlights are very different from each other.
• Ask whether you want the light source (a lamp, a window) to be in your painting, often it can play a role in the narrative!

• Caravaggio‘s Calling of St. Matthew is a great example where the light is part of the narrative.
• Lighting your portrait from above can often result in “raccoon eyes” which can provide a very dramatic result.
• Fluorescent light usually has a very sterile, cool quality and often makes forms appear very flat.
• Daylight is usually very bright with high contrast highlights and shadows.
• Cast shadows are often very graphic, crisp, and flat.
• Cast shadows follow the forms that they fall on.
• Reflected light can be hard to see, you really have to search for it!
• Edward Hopper‘s paintings show very simple, clear cast shadows that are great to observe.
• Natural light usually has cool highlights and warm shadows.
• Artificial light is the opposite: it has warm highlights with cool shadows.
• Take the initiative to set up your own lighting situations!
• You can control the type of light, the position of the light, the ratio of highlights to shadows, and more.

Films mentioned

• Jane Eyre
• The Counselor
• The Light between Oceans
• Shame
• Assassin’s Creed
• Steve Jobs
• Hunger
• Fish Tank
• Alien Covenant
• The Snowman
• X-Men: Dark Phoenix
• X-Men: First Class
• X-Men: Days of Future Past
• X-Men: Apocalypse
• Slow West
• Haywire

Artists mentioned

• Caravaggio
• Jean-Honoré Fragonard
• Georges de la Tour
• John Singer Sargent
• Johannes Vermeer
• Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
• Edward Hopper
• Diego Velázquez
• Anders Zorn

Artworks mentioned

• The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, Caravaggio
• The Calling of Saint Matthew, Caravaggio
• El Jaleo, John Singer Sargent
• Officer and Laughing Girl, Johannes Vermeer