Waking Up (Need help with the Lighting)

[Kent Caldwell]

Ok- this is my first post here everyone, so I hope the image works out right.

I'm an 18 year old senior in high school. This was a watercolor on illustration board that I did last November.

Now, I'm satisfied with some of the painting. The composition is ok, but not great, and I am happy with the bed as well as the floor and shadow. I know the door's not so polished and I know there's too much bare area in the walls.

What I really need help with is the lighting from the window, any watercolor techniques I can use to make it more dramatic/ look like moonlight. Also, I'm not even sure if the light falls "correctly," so any advice would be great. Any other advice in general, feel free to give. Thanks in advance-

http://www.geocities.com/gymnastkc3/In_His_BedroomRESIZE.jpg

[carnalizer]

I believe the room is too well lit for moonlight to show. If the room was dark perhaps it would feel like moonlight. Use google and find reference pics.

[vigostar]

Hey, person...1 I think you have a very good painting here.. I think if you were going for a moonlight sort of lighting you should have
a- darkened the light
b- use some color in your lighting.. Like blue or a darker yellow, maybe tannish color
I believe that you have a great concept of lighting.. on the floor the lighting effect you gave it is to straight... Remember that light spreads across the space its covering... The outermost parts of the room should be significantly darker then that of where the light is shown. Same thing goes for the water and the right side of the painting... These are areas that should be almost black... contrast is very important when creating lighting... well, I hope my crits help.. keep on working!

[cthomp]

The perspective is weird but i think you were going for that. The shadow of the gohst or really white person i would hav point more like the oppisite way of the window.

[thebluepuppy]

nice painting. i would knock the key down a few notches. :teeth:

[jmascho]

If you could find some ref of how moonlight or any light would react to a dark room like that it would help you alot. Right now, you have the entire light area opaque. That could happen with atmosphere/dust, but it needs to be toned down quite a bit. Also, with the room being so bright, it makes the moonlight less important. I know this is watercolor, but think about the shape the light would leave on the floor, it wouldnt be an exact copy of the window shape because of the position of the moon/wall/floor. It would skew and recede towards a vanishing point just like everything else in perspective. I have no clue about watercolors so good luck with pushing it further. Keep pushing it until it looks like hell, then redo it :}

[Victor B]

Nice painting, everyone has already given you some very good crits in general control the values in the painting a bit more also as metioned its a little to high key to be a room light only by moonlight , soo all I did was a really quick paint over, mostly just blues you could lay some washes over yours in watercolor to achieve a similar affect.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v411/flacayflaco/1.jpg

[Lauren Short]

one thing i see is there are way too many soft edges on the light where there should be hard edges, also make the rays of light from the window more contained or in a tighter path, up the contrast too, i couldn't tell that there was that glowing girl there until i looked really hard

keep at it, it has a lot of potential :teeth:

[klinesmoker]

Call me crazy for asking, but I am curious as to why an apparition would cast a shadow, especially from that angle. The only light source comes from the left, not behind it, and I doubt it would cast a shadow to begin with.
The perspective is slightly skewed on the wall that is broken, as the wall does not maintain consistent perspective. But a good take on a piece here, I really like the idea!

~Chris

[USER777]

you have to study light and shadow by drawing still lifes, simple objects first. i think the first version looks much better than the second because it looks more unified. to get a stronger light/shadow effect, push your contrast and push it in the areas you want to get the viewers attention to.