The Spotlight Effect

 

Another of my master studies from 2014. This is I believe the third one where I noticed the spotlight effect, where the artist uses creative lighting to accent certain parts of the picture. Here it's the warrior's arms and chest, the strain as he pulls back that bow. It also falls on his raised knee and on the backside of the girl. It's on his face too, but the face is tilted back to minimise it, so the real attention is on his strength and straining, and on what he's protecting. As I mentioned before I think of the head and face as the personality and thinking in a painting, and the chest as visceral strength or carnality. And because the figure grouping of the lizard and the two people is triangular, it gives an effect similar to a sunset on the top of a mountian. There are a couple of dimmer areas of light—the lizard's mouth mainly, as secondary focal areas, and below that a scattering of even dimmer ones to emphasize the triangular shape, which is the strongest shape structurally. A strong classical composition.

This was the first time I encountered it, in my first composition study. A Tiepolo. Oh, how little I realized what I was walking into! His paintings are deceptively complex, with almost every form (even fingers!) using the bounce light/core shadow approach. Not only that, but for my first attempt I chose one with three figures! Foolishness! I did a really rough job (hence why this one isn't at the top of the page), but I definitely noticed the strange unrealistic lighting. The chest of each figure is strongly emphasized, plus the face of the mother and her child. Her chest and shoulder most strongly I think. These areas of dappled light give a shimmering effect across the canvas, complex and pleasing to the eye. 

My second Tiepolo, my second encounter with the spotlight effect. This time it's clearly the saint's chest, arm and upper thigh that are emphasized—his face is pulled back and falls off into semi-darkness. It isn't his personality or his appearance or thought the artist wanted to bring attention to, but I believe his passion and spiritual love of Christ, and maybe the vulnerability of his bare flesh also. The beating heart underneath that flesh, with the dark knife poised so close. 

I'm posting this as a followup to my past one, which deals with the same basic idea. Simplify your lighting and use it to direct the viewer's attention to where you want it. Decide what you want to say with the piece, and think about how you can use lighting to say it. 

Another Frazetta study I did that features creative control over lighting. Again the face is lit, but again it's tilted back so you only see a sliver of it and the emphasis goes to the chest and raised arm. The legs drop off into darkness. Following are a few more poaintings where I used this lighting strategy.

Now I want to look at how Richard Corben specifically uses the spotlight effect in his work. 

Here's the poor dumb character from Mutant World trying to think. The posture and facial expression emphasize the struggle too. But notice he brings something else to it—color saturation. Not only are the head and upper shoulders brighter than everything else, but the colors there are far more intense too. Down below everything is dimmed into cool greens and dull purples. So he's also using color temprature. A triple-pronged attack. There's also a very strong color contrast between the head and that bright green background.

Spotlight on her head, upper back, down-hanging boob, and that other hand clutching the tree in front of her face. It looks like he put a gray filter over everything else to bring the color and light level down. This one is a bit unusual in that the background is brighter than the spotlight effect, but then it's the sun that's creating that effect, so it would make sense. Usually the background is darker, to make the spotlighted area stand out more. But Corben is a genius, he can make things like this work. He did the same in the one above it. I don't know if trees were really blue in prehistoric days, but it looks really cool. Hah! Literally—blue is the coolest of colors.