Chapter 6

Form

Now that your perspective drawing is complete, it’s time to give form to your castle. As a matte artist, you want to give your paintings as much form as possible to achieve a lifelike appearance. This chapter will teach you how to use light and dark to reveal the full dimensionality of your composition.

To do this, you need to determine the direction of light and then brighten the illuminated surfaces. Next you’ll add cores, which are the dark areas that occur between the light and dark sides. Finally, you’ll paint cast shadows and darken surfaces that receive less reflected light. When you have completed this process, you’ll have a fully formed castle, ready for texture and color correction.