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Process + Interior Lighting tips: Bedroom
🕑 Added 2025-09-16 16:14:17 +0000 UTCI've been drawing some environments recently and wanted to try an interior! What better way than to draw my current bedroom in an isometric, blocky style π as usual, feel free to screenshot/take notes yee yee
In this winded post, let's talk about lighting. Since this is an interior space, we are gonna have a bunch of light sources interacting very closely together, so understanding the distinction between them both will be hella important. I wanted two main light sources: the window, and the lamp.
Direct and Emitted Light
When painting light, knowing the source is the first step, next is understanding what kind of light it actually is, and thus how it actually behaves in our scene!
In my painting, I decided that the light coming from the window will be direct, which means it is a strong and focused light that comes from an obvious source. It creates bright highlights and sharp, well-defined shadows. This will sorta act as the primary light source here
On the other hand, my lamp behaves as what is called an emitted light source, which means it radiates outwards from the source in all directions, but its strength falls-off much sooner... This is why its light rays are more limited to the corner of the room and don't travel as far. This is my secondary light.
The key difference between direct and emitted light sources: The direct light rays are (mostly) parallel and shoots in one direction from the source, while emitted goes in all directions and tends to fall off quicker (not always though, for example the strong light of a firework)-
Basically, think of a flashlight (direct), vs a candle (emitted).
now that we know this, imagine the things we can now paint! Some examples: The light emitting from a computer late at night, the headlights of a car, the glow of a cyberpunk-esque hologram, a streetlight, a campfire, etc etc....
QUIZ: Which ones would you label as direct, emitted, or even a bit of both?
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Ambient Light
Also don't forget about ambient light! Our room scene here is quite small, so imagine all of the light particles bouncing around constantly from our light sources- especially from our direct light. This is what ambient light is.
Think of it like this: The light coming from the window hits the green rug and illuminates it a lot- So much in fact, that in a way, the green rug becomes a light source in itself π€― holy cow. Now imagine those light particles bounce to another object, and turn THAT object into yet another point of illumination..... and it just keeps on going.
But note, each time the light particles jump from one object to another, it looses energy and gets dimmer, so bounced/reflected light is softer and weaker than where it originated from.
That being said, I made sure not to make the rest of the room too dark, since the light from our light sources will be bouncing around the space a lot, giving us a lot of that ambient lighting I just yapped forever about.
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Layerz
Ok, but how did I actually paint the light into my scene u may ask???
I used overlay layers! I prefer overlay instead of something like screen, lighten, or even hard-light to paint light because it's able to create an appealing lightening effect without muddying the colors beneath nor over-exposing, like something more harsh like hard or vivid light would.
Above, you can see the separated flats and lighting + shadows of my scene. In the finished art, the flats are positioned underneath all of the lighting stuff, as you can see in the layer panel.
As usual, I used multiply for my shadows, but note the warm brown I used for this. This color choice reflects the warm ambient light bouncing all around, originating from my light sources.
But what does the ambient light have to do with the shadows??? Well this is bc the ambient directly effects the temperature of the shadows. Think of how shadows outdoors are often very blue, to reflect the ambient blue from the sky. Same principle here π€.
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Anyways, that is all for today guys. I had a lot of fun with this one and hope you found it informative. Let me know your thoughts in the comments!
I also hope u are taking care of yourself and staying safe. I got some fun stuff planned soon so be on the lookout for that.
Thanks for looking!
Comments
Nick Star
Thanks so much!! I've been neglecting my environment art for so long π I forgot how fun these can be, decorating and placing props and such. Kinda like playing Sims lol
Focaisa
I love it! I really like your environments, I hope you keep making more!! Excited to see what you make next hehe
