Back to Lighting Magic: The Dolphin
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On to Lighting magic - part eight

7. Dolphin aka Lightshow

After pretty much finishing the rest of the image, I finally got around to painting the dolphin. The reason for this is that I wanted the dolphin to be semi translucent, and it is positioned right above the hands and background, so I wanted those parts finished. The sparks it throws are positioned over just about everything else, so that means the whole thing had to be left for the final stages (making me all twitchy and impatient). The shading of the dolphin itself involved something similar to the shading of the globes in the child’s hair – I left some of the pale blob I had marked on another layer in place, because I liked the color, only making it more transparent. Then, I proceeded to define the shape by focusing on the edges. I shaded the dolphin as if there was a ray of light passing through it, going from the snout to the tail, with the brightest area on the snout. What this does is a) tell pretty clearly that the dolphin is, indeed, translucent, b) draw an imaginary line from the dolphin’s tail to its snout to the child’s face as that is the direction it is facing, therefore strengthening the perceived level of interaction between the two. Asides from highlighting the outlines, I also drew a few subtle strokes of blue along the dolphin’s body for extra reflectivity. Note that the highlights consist of several colors – the basis is the same light salmon that I used elsewhere, and on top are light yellows, just like the ones on the frame surrounding the kid’s third eye. After painting the dolphin itself I also added these very yellows to the hands, as they are the closest to the dolphin, and drew some streams of light trickling down the forearms. Then I drew the sparks flying from the dolphin and adjusted the highlights on the child’s body in their proximity as necessary. The glow around the dolphin’s body comes from the blob I had used to mark its location previously, only slightly enhanced and prettied up.



Back to Lighting Magic: The Dolphin
Back to Lighting magic - part six
On to Lighting magic - part eight