Half Her Heart's Duet - Part 3

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The Sky



The mechanics of painting the sky are a bit difficult to explain because it was a somewhat random process. There’s no one way to paint anything, and that doubly applies to skies since they can take on just about any color and shape. I kept a few things in mind from the beginning, like where my light sources were and where large areas of color would be— I tried to select colors and values that would push the figure forward without being too desaturated...

...that said, I studied a picture I took of the sky at sunset to get an idea of how the edges of clouds work, then decided on using a very large speckled brush with a hard edge (below) to create the crisp crests and the flat color areas at the same time. Using long twisted strokes I was able to create a cloudlike texture that worked for the piece.

Playing With Light

Lighting is probably the most important tool of all when it comes to setting a mood. It can make or break a piece of art-— even the most gut-wrenching dramatic scene can look very boring without interesting light playing off of it. That said, I borrow a lot of techniques from model photography when planning my light sources... and often I use “off-canvas” light sources as a compliment if something needs to stand out. In Half Her Heart’s Duet, I used roughly 3 sources of light.

1. Light from the Sky (MAJOR SOURCE):
In photography, the role of the sky would probably be played by a diffusion box or soft spotlight. In this case, since the colors in the sky and costuming are so dramatic, I wanted a neutral color for the major light source. That way, it would make all of the objects’ native colors stand out without being blown out by a colored light source.

2. Setting sun reflecting off the clouds (MINOR SOURCE #1).

Often times you see major/minor source lighting on movie posters for heightened drama. Creating a minor light source from behind your main focus gives you the freedom to create a color halo around it, as you see with the orange sort of outline around the hair, arms, dress, and fence. Would it look like this in real life? Probably not, but for the purpose of making the image dynamic it works wonderfully.

3. Ambient light from the ground (MINOR SOURCE #2).
One way of making a figure look enclosed without drawing actual walls is using shadow to imply there’s more outside the canvas. If, for example, the hint of treeline around the edges continued past us, it might cast an amorphous shadow across the ground. Using this thinking I made everything below the fence line slightly darker in value and lower-contrast, and changed the light from directional to an ambient glow from all directions.

As an afterthought, I added an additional tiny light coming from one of the burning strips of sheet music on her right arm, to define the edge. If I didn’t feel the arm needed definition, I probably wouldn’t have put it there, but that’s just it-— as artists we get to make those decisions without consulting a camera! To get a better idea of how light reacts on different types of materials, just be a casual observer when you’re not busy painting.