The Importance of Light and a Setup

How to take great pictures suitable for colored pencil drawing

REFERENCE PHOTOGRAPHY

Because colored pencil drawing is such a slow medium to work in, almost all artists rely on their references to create art as opposed to drawing from life. Sometimes it takes weeks to complete one colored pencil drawing, and we have to rely on our photo reference to capture story, composition, design, color, and details. Unless you draw from life in colored pencils, great photography becomes key to artistic success, which leaves you with no excuse not to master it.

Advantages of Mastering Photography:

• It develops your originality and vision.

• It forces you to extrapolate and focus on what's important or to find the center of interest in busy environments.

• It teaches you to see how light shapes the form that you copy on paper in 3-D.

• It makes you the sole creator of your art. You don't have to worry about a copyright or entering a juried art contest.

• It's a forgiving medium, giving you many chances to practice at all times. You become attuned to cropping and balancing techniques that artists traditionally use in their paintings.

Disadvantages of Using Photography:

• It often flattens out the form to such a degree that you have a hard time re-creating the volume. That's why it is best to start taking pictures with one directional light source that gives you definite lights and shadows.

• Camera makes its choice. Even the best cameras don't capture what you see as an artist, which involves emotion. By working from a picture, artists analyze the subject rather than respond to it freely.

• There is a lot of distortion in the images depending on the lens and camera you use that is obvious in cityscape photography or in pictures of geometric objects. The same distortion is present in pictures of people or fruit, or whatever subject you have, but our eye doesn't catch those distortions as quickly as we notice those in linear and geometric forms. Those "unseen" distortions will travel to a student's drawing when the artist transfers the outlines rather than learns to sketch freehand from his reference.

• You may also have problems with exposure, depending on the lighting conditions. Use the HDR (high dynamic range) function on your phone to level out the exposure. HDR combines two or three pictures into one automatically, giving you a single balanced shot. HDR function is very handy when the sky looks too bright or the background is so light that it makes your subject appear too dark.

• You can take good pictures with your phone, although the quality won't be the same as shooting with a DSLR (digital single lens reflex) camera. If you shoot with your phone, zoom in on your object as closely as you can. That will blur the background, giving your subject a boost in color and texture.

If you decide that photography is not right for you, you always have three options:

• Browse the stock photo websites that have vast collections of images such as iStockphoto and Shutterstock.

• Look at websites that offer creative common (copyright free) images as well, like Pixabay or Flickr.

• You can also contact the photographer directly, explaining the reason for using their image and asking for permission to use it in your art. Websites such as Flickr have images with free and copyright-restricted pictures. Just know that contests don't allow artists to enter drawings done from someone else's reference. The artist is the sole designer and creator of artwork beginning from the very first step of photography.

SUBJECTS

If you feel stuck and don't know what to draw, just look at images in art magazines or on Pinterest, Pixabay, or Facebook drawing groups for ideas. Below you'll find several groups of subjects to consider for drawing:

Close-ups of textured subjects — these can be the most fun, unpredictable subjects for your photography and art. They can be reflective surfaces and reflections, fabric patterns and lace, rusted door locks, wood grain, colorful feathers, candy, sliced fruit, marbles, flowers, kitchen utensils or tools, and even mechanical parts of clocks.

Other popular subjects are glass; portraiture; animals, birds, and pets; food; florals; seashells and sea life; trees and landscapes.

Action Step: What makes a great picture is often taking a common subject and placing it in an unusual environment, or finding a totally unexpected angle or point of view. Browse for ideas and inspiration online, and then go out with your camera and have fun with it! The possibilities become infinite because it's the artist who makes the picture and not the other way around.

USING LIGHT AND SETUPS TO TAKE GOOD PICTURES

Finding the right light or understanding what it actually means is a daunting task for most beginners in art. Let's figure out why you need to pay attention to light, and look at several parameters that determine good lighting conditions for your photography.

Properties of light

Your goal of shooting in the "right lighting conditions" is to beautify your subject and to bring the best out in it. Ask yourself what attracts you to this object. It could be a specific texture, transparency, color, or an abstract pattern of light and shade that you see. You need to figure out what you love about your subject and how you can highlight its most attractive qualities in a specific light. If your subject looks boring in a picture, chances are that the lighting conditions were boring at the time it was shot.

Light temperature: The light can be either warm or cool. In the beginning it may be difficult to spot the difference, but if you ask yourself if it is yellowish or bluish, it makes more sense. Fluorescent lights tend to be cooler, while the tungsten lights are warmer. In nature, you see a beautiful golden light twenty minutes before the sunset. The light temperature affects how you see the colors and how they unify everything in the image. You also use the light temperature to understand the color on your subject: if the light is cool, it gives cool lights and warm shadows. If the light is warm, it gives you warm lights and cooler shadows.

Quality of light: Natural light is the most beautiful light we have as artists. While the soft, diffused light may give the artist beautiful, soft skin tones in portrait photography or a dream-like mist in a landscape, this light is difficult to master for a beginner who is shooting pictures of glass, fruit, or flowers. The glass loses its sparkle and reflections, the fruit doesn't have...