New Series, New Challenges: Learning to Work with Light
“I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.” — Vincent van Gogh
Starting a new series always feels a bit like starting over in a way that's a bit different than starting a new book in a series that already has characters or styles that are working.
Even when I’m using the same tools and the same general process, shifting into darker scenes changed how everything behaves on the page. I’m self-taught and while I can sketch on paper, that all needs to be layered into Krita, so a lot of this comes down to testing things, using tons of tutorials and reference images and, at the end of the day seeing what actually works on the page. When it comes to this scene you can see clearly, light becomes the focus at least that's what I see.
What I've learned about creating a picture book
When Everything Starts to Blend
In brighter scenes, there’s a lot doing the work for you colour, texture, and contrast help separate objects naturally. Even simple compositions feel clearer to see exactly where to put the lines.
In darker scenes, that disappears as the background, the table, and the objects all start to sit in the same range. Without enough contrast, everything blends together and the scene feels flat.
The Challenge of Light Objects
This became obvious as soon as I started working with candles. This scene is set in the past when they were used for light so they needed to be simple, beeswax was my aim here.
That meant I was left with light wax, soft highlights, pale surfaces. I tried to show that even though the scene is darker overall, the main elements are still very light.
It’s easy for them to lose definition if the lighting isn’t doing enough and thankfully it seems to have turned out the way I had hoped when I first sketched it out.
At the same time, this is for a picture book, and that meant that I still need to place text in the scene. That adds another layer to balance overall. Too dark of shadows and backgrounds and the text struggles. Too light and the candles and their glow disappear.
Letting the Light Define the Scene
This spread only started to work once I stopped trying to control everything evenly the way I had done previous images in other books. Instead of darkening the whole scene as I had originally planned on, I focused on where the light should sit.
Now when I look at it, the candle flames create just enough glow to separate the objects, give the scene some depth, guide the eye to a clear focal point of the hand lighting that last candle in a row.
Once that was in place, the rest of the scene didn’t need as much adjustment and I'm happy with how it looks and it has a place in my new story.
Finding the Balance
There’s a point where adding more detail actually makes things worse, that is where I really struggle with most images. What worked here was holding back (deleting lots of extras) and letting the light carry the scene instead of trying to fix everything around it.
This is a different way of thinking compared to brighter illustrations, and it takes a bit of trial and error to get right. There's no perfect art, but for me, this one's finished.
Still Figuring It Out
This is one of those spreads that finally started to work and I wanted to share as I continue working through this book as for the rest, let's just say I'm still figuring out.
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