Practical Lights, Part 3

This is the third installment on practical lights, which are lights that appear inside a picture.



With imaginary subjects, we have considerable latitude in how we adjust the color balance and intensity of a practical light. For example in this scene of the sleeping barns in Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time, I let the lamp influence a small area of Will’s sleeping basket, and then introduced cool moonlight across the forms of the sleeping dinosaurs.

This would not have been possible in an photographed scene, but it served the mood of the painting.