 Hi there, it's Sandy Alnok and today I'm going to talk about picking a lighting direction, choosing where the light's coming from. And what I'm going to do in the cards I'm going to show you, I'm going to paint one and then I'll just show you two others that are finished. I have chosen the quote unquote wrong direction for the light to come from. Because on a figure like this, any kind of figure that's a character or something whether it's an animal or a person, you generally would want the lighting to hit the face. So you want the lighting in this particular case, you would want it to be on the right or above or something so the rabbit's face would be in the light. But there are times when you find yourself having made an accident by eliminating a decision like you just didn't think about it. If you were deciding you wanted to create this whole background and the lighting was from one direction and then you put a figure in it later on in the drawing, your figure requires somehow different lighting. You need to have them be the same, they need to match. In this particular case, since I knew that I wanted to consciously make the choice to use lighting coming from the left so only the back of the rabbit is going to be lit up, then I could make some choices about what the scene would be. So I drew a straight line so I have a house in the back, some bushes behind a sky and then some snow that's going to have some light cast from the house out onto the snow that the rabbit is walking through. That tells a story so there's a reason why when I end up having to paint the face really dark, there's a reason for that as opposed to what we sometimes do is just get to that part of the drawing and we're like, I don't know what to do here and you just throw something in there. So the things that I'm trying here are to create enough darkness in the scene outside so that it's definitely night, that he's coming out from an area that's lit, but everything else has to be good and dark. So I'm trying to create a transition a little bit in the bushes. I don't really have a transition going elsewhere, but if I can just achieve that in the bushes where the right hand side is darker and that left hand side stays a little bit on the paler side, then when I try to create that whole look that there's light coming from the house that the rabbit is exiting, then it starts to feel correct. Now, one of the reasons why this whole thought even came to me is that right now I am working on putting together another class and it's going to launch on Black Friday. I'm very excited about it and in that class we're going to talk about shading. And it's going to be taught in pencil, but you can think about it in terms of any medium because I'm just talking about the lighting. We're taking out the factor of color. We're not going to use paints. We're not going to use markers or color pencils. Just going to use a graphite pencil so we can start to see lights and darks because that's one of the areas that I find most people really struggle with and it's an area where I feel like I've got a lot to say. So I'm creating a 10 lesson class that's going to be level two. It may look difficult, but it's not as difficult as you think. So in a week that will be coming up. So on Black Friday you'll see a video about that and a preview of it, etc. So get yourself excited about that. And I wanted to put this video, by the way, in one of the lessons in which I'm talking about what to do when you end up with inconsistent lighting. So in this particular case, just changing the storyline is one of the things that can help you to figure out how to change the lighting. So if I were to just have this little guy walking through the forest and needed to have some backlighting somehow, it would have to be the moon. But in this particular case, since I created a structure just by putting a line there, then I was able to create a reason. There's a reason. There's an actual light source coming out. And there's also, in addition to the rabbit being dark, the whole face of the rabbit and the back of the ears being in the light, the back of the feet being light, there's a streak going across underneath of the feet of the rabbit. So there's one line that is the shadow of the rabbit itself. And it's just a thin line. I used Duochrome Cabo Blue with some Pains Blue Gray for all of that snow. And I made it a little darker in that line coming out from the toes of the rabbit so that that's the shadow. And then there's a white streak on either side of it. Because when you're doing lighting like this, it's really important to really emphasize that light when you're creating something that's all about the light. And this particular painting is all about the light. Everything in it depends on knowing that that is a house on the left that is shining a light that the rabbit is walking out of. Now, I am not going to say anything about why this rabbit is leaving the house with a full sack of presents. Maybe he's coming out of his own house? I don't really know. I would think Santa and Rabbit would have to have left all the gifts under the tree. But, you know, that's the part of the story I haven't worked out yet. So you can tell yourself whatever you would like to explain that. So here I've put some shadows a little bit onto some of the fur and on the bag of packages. And I'll add the first layer into the jacket and just make that an anthraconoid scarlet type of red. And then I'm going to keep adding to it. I'm going to keep darkening colors because I need to emphasize that white. I need the white edges to be nice and crisp and white. And I need the other parts to start to really fade out. It's scary to get to that. I understand that for a lot of people. Like trying to go from a very light to a very dark is something lots of folks struggle with. But that's what's going to give you realism. It's why I did that class because a lot of people just look at my work and they're like, how do you do that? How do you do the lighting? And I'm hoping that these lessons that I'm in the middle of right now, I'm hoping that all of this is going to get the point across and that it's going to help people in more than one sector too. I was debating whether to do one class for Copic and one class for watercolor and one class for pencil and everything. And then that was like a whole bunch of classes. And I figured I'm just going to take out color and we'll focus on pencil. But can you see how the lighting is already showing up? It's highlighting the back of the rabbit and that area around the building, which is just a line. I didn't even bother drawing in a whole lot of a building. Just give it a structure. So there's something that is casting that light that the rabbit is walking out of and adding darker and darker color. Now, watercolor always lightens about 30% or so. So give it more, but you can also add more layers. And I'm just drawing it in between all these layers so I don't get bleeding across all of them and adding more darks because those darks are going to be what makes the lights in the highlight areas look like highlights. You may have also noticed that I painted some yellow ochre over top of that package bag of packages. Why can't I say that today? The bag because I decided I didn't want it to just be a gray bag. And which would make it a white bag with gray shadows. I wanted it to look more like a cloth, kind of a brown bag. So I just went over top of it. Easy enough to do. So the last thing to do then is to add snow because all my cards in the winter time seem to have snow. Everything for Christmas is ready to go. And I kept it really light so you could really see the image. I mean light in terms of lots of empty space in between. If you're trying to cover something up, if your painting didn't come out great, if your coloring didn't come out quite the way you want, then add more snow. And then nobody will notice any of those parts. But this is going to give the whole thing a nice airy kind of a feel. And that's what I was hoping to go for. And then I used a different one of the new stamp sets. A little mini set that has a very tiny mouse hanging up a stocking and a bird with a stocking. And used that on the inside of the card. Now I told you there were other cards. This one I painted Cabo Blue, that duo Cabo Blue in the background. And then I mixed kind of a grayish brown color to do the negative painting in those trees. And I left all that white along the highlights on the rabbit and the tree. On this one I did Moon Glow and Pains Blue Gray to do the same kind of a thing, but I had to keep darkening the trees. It wasn't working well. And then I used just some neutral tint for the rabbit and everything else. Leaving those whites white. And you can see the kind of effect that it gives you. One last thing before I go, I wanted to say thank you to all of you who left me feedback on my video the other day when I was talking about why I blog. And I also have some more feedback I would like from you. There's a survey link in the doobly-doo. It only takes a few minutes to fill out, but I'd like to gather some information about the community. And I'm planning on making some changes, doing some exciting things in 2022. So I would love your input. So check out the link down there and I will see you again soon. Bye.