VILE TRICKERY #014 : Using Screen Layers to add lighting (Patreon)

Welcome to Vile Trickery! 

This will be a monthly series of tips, techniques, and best practices that I have picked up over the years and will be sharing with you here. I have a notepad of several hundred of these that I plan to share... so let's get started! 

For the first month I bring you: 

3 Screen tricks I use to add lighting in my Photoshop paintings.

Method #1: Soft Build-up

This is the most simple! Make a screen layer and get a soft brush and choose a color that matches that of the lighting your subject is receiving. Set the brush to 50 opacity and 25 flow. This will allow you to very gradually build up the lighting on the form. You can use this to slowly work over an area to add dimensional-looking depth. 

Method #2: Carve and Erase

This method is more complicated but it can add wonderful sharp details to your forms! 

Make a screen layer and get a hard brush. Set the brush to high opacity and high flow. (100 and 75 are good) and choose a very bright tone with a little color to it. (My lighting here is warm so I have chosen a bright naples yellow) Now paint in the areas to be lit very rough. (You can see in frame 2 how rough I actually paint things in)  

Now get an equally sharp eraser and chop out the areas that don't belong. This may take some work but can achieve some nice sharp highlights as seen in frame 3. It helps to use brushes with some texture on their edges.

Lastly, take the opacity on this layer down slightly until it looks right.  

Method #3: The Slow Glow

This method is very simple and can achieve very nice results. Make a screen layer and select a soft brush with 50 opacity and 50 flow. Set the color to some mid-tone environmental color (I have chosen a pthalo color in the example above). Now set your brush mode to screen as well. Now when you paint, it will build up very softly, but will also have the ability to get very saturated and bright. As you can see in frame 3 it has given a glowing haze over the reflective areas along the sword and skeleton.