{"id":44,"date":"2018-09-28T03:29:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-28T03:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbbd.sg\/blog\/uncategorized\/landscape-renderings-should-the-light-come-from-the-left-or-right\/"},"modified":"2021-05-15T13:54:52","modified_gmt":"2021-05-15T13:54:52","slug":"landscape-renderings-should-the-light-come-from-the-left-or-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbbd.sg\/blog\/2018\/09\/landscape-renderings-should-the-light-come-from-the-left-or-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Landscape Renderings: Should the light come from the left or right?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In a landscape painting, where should the light come from? should it come from the left or the right? To make a generalisation, it seems that people prefer to have it lit from the top-left, and maybe it seems more natural to come from the left because of the dominance of right-handness. As a right-handed person, my tendency is also to look to the left first rather than the right; I lean on my right hand when writing and look to the top left of my screen first. Likewise I find that as a right handed person my distance estimation in a mirror is better when the mirror is to the left rather than to the right. Most digital canvases start from the top left.<\/p>\n

The convention for most maps is also for features or relief to be shading with lighting coming from the top-left or left. In this example of Erwin Raisz’s topographical symbols, you will see the mountains shaded with light coming from the left.<\/p>\n

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Even the teeny tiny trees have their shadows cast as if they were lit from the left.<\/p>\n

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In my first render, I set the sun on the left of the scene, copying the lighting from the illustration on the back of the $10 note. This was the only way to achieve the diagonal shadows on the building features as depicted on the $10 note.<\/p>\n

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\nHowever, when I positioned the light this way from the left (as adhering to conventions), I didn’t feel the lighting on the overall landscape was working even though it allowed me to achieve the same lighting on the illustration on the $10 note. Then I thought that perhaps the only reason the illustration was drawn with the light coming from the left was because of CONVENTIONS DICTATING THAT LIGHT SHOULD COME FROM THE LEFT. I also didn’t like doing a ‘ghostly’ red to match the illustration on the note. That was weird and incongruous. No, I wanted the building hewn out of the same material. (Also the camera field-of-vision was another thing which distorted my building although I had followed its design closely in the render).<\/p>\n

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And thus the final lighting looks like this… the light comes from the right because I don’t need my landscape to feel natural or conventional and to be honest I just like it when it comes from the right.<\/p>\n

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Another thing worth noting when you are printing large backdrops is that most backdrop stands that you can find on the market will do 10ft. There’s a reason for this – most printers can only print on 10ft material. Furthermore, even if you get a 12ft pole, the long poles will sag in the middle due to the sheer weight of the item. So if I printed my work all over again, I would not do 12ft again because it is TOO HUGE.<\/p>\n

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Come see the work I produced for the President’s Young Talents 2018<\/a> show!<\/p>\n

8Q @ Singapore Art Museum
\n8 Queen St, Singapore 188535
\nGallery 3.12 (Level 3)
\n4 Oct 2018 – 27 Jan 2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a landscape painting, where should the light come from? should it come from the left or the right? To make a generalisation, it seems that people prefer to have it lit from the top-left, and maybe it seems more natural to come from the left because of the dominance of right-handness. As a right-handed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[103,102,96,94],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/dbbd.sg\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/ScreenShot2018-09-24at3.10.11PM.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbbd.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbbd.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbbd.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbbd.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbbd.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dbbd.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2480,"href":"https:\/\/dbbd.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/2480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbbd.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbbd.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbbd.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbbd.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}