#kinkysketch

[saint-vagrant]

You have a wonderful understanding of light and shadow and how they interact with your environments and characters. Do you have any good reference or starting points in regards to learning those foundations? I find the manipulation of light to be very intimidating. Thank you and your work is lovely!

hi! thank you for thinking so, and for the kind words! this stuff still feels new to me even after doing it for years– there’s always more to learn, which is pretty exciting. 

(colour is light, and, at least in academia, they’re often wrongly separated when it comes to teaching illustration. the easiest way for me to talk about lighting is to refer to it in terms of/how it affects colour relationships, so i hope you don’t mind that approach.)

first up, i always want to recommend my man James Gurney. he is very accessible and down to earth, loves talking and sharing, makes books that aren’t Dinotopia. he uses a variety of media, and one of them is gouache, which is the only paint i use for traditional media (if that’s of any interest to you.) from Gurney Journey, his blog:

what helped me too wasn’t just collecting examples of lighting in fun visual art, but buying books like “The Best in Lobby Design: Hotels & Offices (1991)” to see how a space is created and lit and read how the designers thought about and made it that way. just having a starting off point like that informs a whole space, the drama of it, and how to drop people into it and be affected by that lighting.

the above passages are about “coating with light”, and all this is in reference to putting together a home, but i think it can speak to (my) illustration process as well:

“The resulting light creates an incredible ambiance [re: placing a small piece of turquoise neon in a white-walled room] No matter where it was, the walls looked as if they were painted turquoise.  The colour comes from the glass, not the gas.  When white glass is used, however, the choice of gas does make a difference, because neon casts a warm light whereas argon’s cast is cooler.”

“The colour that coats a room from a neon source may be deceptively different from the colour of the fixture itself. A neon sculpture that includes the colours of the rainbow, for instance, will cast a white light, which is the additive sum of all the colours. On the other hand, a yellow piece will cast a yellow light that complements a room with a sunny disposition.”

from LIGHT, by Susan S. Szenasy

when it comes to doing your own studies, in general i think it’s sort of the same as approaching any other new material. using it. studying how light, as an artistic tool, actually works, the techniques for how it’s manipulated in real life (with film/photography, the use of gels, diffusion techniques, what colours and even textures/materials more absorb/reflect, refract, scatter, matte/gloss, dual lighting, how/where dimmer light is drowned out by brighter light) gave me a more physical understanding of something that is inherently intangible, and helped supply a vocabulary necessary to even begin searching for reference. 

example: terms like “golden hour” and “blue hour” (those pretty times of day where the longer red rays pass through scattered blue light, the light being indirect and more diffused.)

i edit my own photos, looking at film footage before and after colour editing, and simplifying the shapes to get the essentials. a lot of lighting depends on hardness/softness of shapes and edges, and the right contrast of not just dark/light, but differing saturation/vibrance. when referencing from film it’s important to look at before/after shots and your own photos in comparison– film lighting and colour-grading is largely meant to convince you of an experience narratively/thematically rather than hyperrealistically. even neon gets boosted in the editing process, and landscape painters emphasise atmospheric perspective to push the space between foreground/middle/back. 

edits of one of my photos:

i get a lot of use out of the mosaic/crystallize/cut paper filters in PS to find the basic colour relationships and pull out a palette. colour relationships and interplay of vibrancy matters more than true/black white, and there often isn’t any, or something like a dark green feels more natural.

these are from a long Patreon post related to this topic:

(blade runner)

(happy together)

there’s a lot of concepts there to take on, and i think the real struggle is learning to eventually strip it down to the essentials. at least, since my comic work is pretty cartooned, simplifying those big, easily-noodled with concepts was actually harder when it comes/came to imparting all the important information through abstraction, letting go of obsession with detail. distance, light/colour, etc. are as much compositional tools as anything else– too many competing elements of equal detail and no clear indication of where to look can make the viewer dizzy. that doesn’t mean every piece is like, a lighter figure on a black or blurred backdrop, but rather, there’s all kinds of patterns and landmarks that can guide the viewer around. what do you want them to see, what do you want them to feel?

the figure here is very low-contrast, but also has way more detail than the brighter neon. it doesn’t matter what the pink sign behind their shoulder says (there’s all sorts of other imagery here to figure out the vibe) what matters is the pink light is hitting their face and arms and guiding you (i hope) to solid ground.

i don’t know if that’s helpful, but i hope it gives you a starting point if just in how to think about breaking down the concepts. i’m not sure what you might be going for or what artists you like, but i having looked at your work (killer btw) I might recommend Tsukasa Hojo/Izumi Matsumoto/Yukio Kitta’s illustrations paired with Tsai Ming-Liang’s Rebels of the Neon God or the sweet candy palette of The Florida Project?

my inspiration/reference boards are always full of seemingly-disparate things (recently: Book of Kells, clear acrylic nails, bondage, peonies, neon altars from Vietnam...) it’s all about finding and consciously articulating what you love, and finding it in places you never expected, and mashing it together.i’m always collecting references and have a lighting inspiration tag here!)

[kinkysketch]

The New World of Zulu

Illustration Collection from the Zulu Soundtrack

[railroadlion]

347/366 A Jojo's bizarre adventure inspired gift for @kinkysketch Stand proud, my man!

[marmaladejones13]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAZiXgK79sc)

[orangesansett]

My piece for an art trade with KinkySketch for his upcoming card game Zephyr Wars

https://www.zephyrwars.com/

[yatelboa]

Candyland for Jack and Zat in a Ksuit for @kinkysketch

[babirily]

omfg Max lmaoooooo hahahaa

[moonblossom]

If you’re looking for inspiring music that’s still smooth enough to fade into the background while you concentrate on something, check out kinkysketch‘s incredible playlist of extended SU music. I’ve been listening to the whole playlist on loop obsessively whenever I write or need to edit photos, and it’s amazing. My current favourites are Sugilite’s Theme and Dance of Swords. They also keep adding to the collection!

[kinkysketch]

Rozenom Speedball, Summer Fun

Generation Strike, Youtube Titlecard

[kinkysketch]

Golden Devil

[kinkysketch]

Mirror Time

Generation Strike, Youtube Title Card

[kinkysketch]

Affectionate Enemies

Generation Strike, Youtube Titlecard

[kinkysketch]

You Can Stay In This Room, I Guess.

Generation Strike, Mickey March. Youtube Titlecard

[kinkysketch]

Red Hound

Generation Strike, Youtube Title Card

[kinkysketch]

Summer Blue

Generation Strike Article, youtube title card

[kinkysketch]

Zephyr Wars just went live on Kickstarter!

I’m very happy to announce the launch of my Kickstarter.

There is a $1 print and play tier and $20 tier for the whole game!