Light Sources and Shadow Formation
📌 There are typically three types of light sources in most illustrations: direct light, ambient light, and bounce light.
💡 Direct light is the brightest source and is characterized by sharply defining light and shadow areas based on the object's orientation to the source.
🚫 Artists often draw shadows based on habit/convention rather than the actual light direction in the scene, causing lighting to appear disconnected from the background.
➡️ To achieve cohesive lighting, always determine all light sources and their directions first before shading.

The Nature of Shadow Color
⚫ Shadows theoretically have no inherent color because color is perceived via light interaction (light reflecting off an object into the eye).
🔵 Shadows are colored by the light that illuminates them, most commonly ambient light (like the blue light from the sky).
⚪ Ambient light is usually dimmer than direct light, making its influence (color) most visible in shadow areas where direct light doesn't dominate.

Understanding Bounce Light (Reflected Light)
🔴 Bounce light is light reflected off a surface; for example, light reflecting off a red floor onto a ball will make the ball appear reddish in that area.
🟠 Reflected light colors (like bounce light) are typically brighter than ambient light, so they often override the ambient color cast in lit areas facing the reflection source.
➡️ The color of a shadow is determined by the color of the light illuminating that shadow area, not an intrinsic shadow color.

Techniques for Color Matching and Lighting Adjustment
💻 For simple color adjustments (e.g., making everything look like it's under a red lamp), use a new layer set to Multiply mode filled with the desired color.
🎨 For achieving naturalistic lighting (like sunset or daylight), the best approach is to study references by redrawing them to capture subtle nuances lost in purely theoretical application.
⚖️ When coloring, maintain the original value hierarchy established before color adjustments; the brightest part must remain the brightest, and the darkest the darkest.

Color Physics and Intensity Matching
🔴 Object color is determined by the wavelengths it absorbs versus the wavelengths it reflects. If a blue light shines on a red object, the object will appear black because it cannot reflect blue light.
⚪ Objects with lighter/desaturated colors (like white or gray) are more heavily influenced by the light source color; they will adopt the light color, often becoming a darker tint of the light color.
➡️ Understanding that light color composition (RGB/CMY) helps predict the resulting object color when interacting with different light sources, even without relying solely on Multiply layer blending.

Application Example: Refining Shadows and Depth
📐 To integrate lighting better, one revision involved sharpening the transition from light to shadow to match a hard, direct light source (daylight) rather than a soft studio light.
👤 Casting shadows accurately based on light direction (e.g., shadows cast by a hat onto the body) significantly improves scene integration and realism.
✨ Adding Ambient Occlusion (subtle darkness in tight crevices where ambient light struggles to reach) enhances the 3D look of the illustration.

Key Points & Insights
➡️ Prioritize determining the light source direction over habitual shading patterns to ensure character lighting matches the background environment.
➡️ Shadows have no color; they reflect the color of the ambient or reflected light source hitting that specific area.
➡️ For naturalistic lighting, study references to capture nuanced color shifts (e.g., skin shadow color is often pale/muted blue, not intensely blue, even under a blue ambient sky).
➡️ Always preserve the established value relationships (lightest to darkest) when applying color adjustments to maintain form integrity.

📸 Video summarized with SummaryTube.com on Jan 17, 2026, 03:16 UTC