Lighting for Figure Drawing

Whether you're working from a live model or photo reference, the quality of light on your subject can make or break the experience.

Whether you're working from a live model or photo reference, the quality of light on your subject can make or break the experience. Strong, simple lighting is a pleasure to work with, while overly complex lighting can make the process beyond frustrating.

I’ve found that many life drawing groups operate under poor lighting conditions. Most commonly, it’s a case of too many lights on the model. You’ll often see this issue in photo reference packs as well. Maybe I’m just particular, but I think it ruins the appeal!

Natural lighting is ideal in most cases. But when that's not possible or practical, we can at least approximate it with artificial lights.

Just keep it simple.

Simple lighting is easy to read—and therefore easy to translate into a drawing.

One key light should dominate. Turn off or shade any other lights in the scene that might compete with it.

If you’re not careful, adding even one extra light to the equation can vastly increase complexity, flatten the forms, and create all sorts of broken edges and confusing shadow shapes.

In the future I'll cover ways to take creative control of lighting. It's a powerful tool which we can use to reveal our subjects in the most captivating ways!

Photo Reference

Over the past few years, there’s been an explosion of figure reference packs created by various artists and studios. There’s no shortage of fantastic images to work from. However, it’s frustrating that so many suffer from the kind of overly complex lighting I covered in the video. It's really a mixed bag—some great hits, but lots of misses. I'm planning to make a separate post where I'll go in-depth regarding photo reference packs and my recommendations.

Until then, you'll find them all on the Artstation Marketplace and a nice sample on Proko.com. Bryce Cameron Liston (a fantastic figure artist) also shares excellent reference on his Patreon.

Boom Light

Some years ago, I happily volunteered to manage the lighting for one of my favorite life drawing groups. I bought an adjustable tripod with a boom arm. (Amazon Link) It was perfect! This light could be easily adjusted to any position around or even directly above the model. Sadly I don't have any photos of the light itself, but here's a sketch and snapshot featuring one of our most chivalrous models:

This studio was in a century-old, renovated factory building. It had a high ceiling, but no climate control. During winter months, we surround the models with space heaters. In summer, we'd have all fans on full blast to keep the models from fainting. It was a great time!