Step-by-step: Give an orc realistic lighting

Every good painting starts with a good foundation. In this case it’s a quick line drawing that looks very simple, but has all the information in it I need to finish the painting. It shows the placing of all the facial features, but also where the cast shadows will fall and how the back lighting will push the silhouette forward. Built upon the previous sketch is the occlusion layer. You’ll notice that it’s a very bright layer with light greyish tones in it, and the reason for that is that we don’t want to overdo the shadows in the image. By keeping this layer light the Multiply layer won’t ‘burn’ my friendlylooking orc character below. With the occlusion layer in Multiply I paint over the line drawing with larger strokes to erase the big lines while keeping the major volumes. The lines aren’t really needed since the layout of the elements is present in the occlusion layer, too. The heavy lifting is now mostly done and all that remains is adding colour and effects.