Paint the figure under the environment's lighting

Paint an invented figure that matches its environment’s perspective, lighting, color, scale, and atmosphere.

What it is

This capstone combines constructing a proportionally accurate human figure, posing it in perspective, and matching the environment’s overall light and color.

Apply form lighting, cast shadows, local value, illumination, color temperature, and material rendering to skin, cloth, and props. The figure should respond to the same light as the background.

Use scale and atmosphere, including distance haze, bounce light, fog, fire, screens, or magic. These effects should affect the figure and the rest of the scene consistently.

You can check it when

• ✓Place a figure in an existing background and verify that its light direction, shadow softness, contrast, color, scale, and atmospheric effects match the environment.
• ✓Create a scene from imagination and check that the figure responds consistently to the environment’s lighting, nearby bounce light, and atmospheric effects.

Related skills

• Constructing figures from imagination
• Posing figures from imagination
• Figures — single and multiple at different depths
• An object's own lightness vs. the light falling on it (a white shirt in shadow is still white)
• Cast shadows (direction, softness)
• Temperature (warm/cool relationships; temperature shifts across form)
• Organics (skin, bone, horn, flesh)
• Atmospheric effects (scattering, volumetric light, caustics through water and glass)