Give your Stock some intensity.
By intensity i mean, playing with lighting and shadow to create a more intense stock portrait.
Using lighting is perfectly fine. Lighting of model stock adds a great reference for drawing/painting from.Also lighting adds atmosphere to an image and can really help to enhance the final result.
I took some mini portrait shots using a few (not all) types of lighting you could consider!
Having a few stock images/sets like this can really be useful and make your stock gallery more diverse.
Here the image contains natural light, nothing special. The advantage with natural light is that you get an image with true colours. Which can be great for skintone practice! The disadvantage is added noise and loss of quality, but with the right equipment you can get great results. I had my camera on the wrong settings for most of these so i apologise! but they are only to give you an idea.
Here the face is light from the side, see how much more dimensional the portrait looks and more intense? This lighting is great to help with how light falls on the face. Painters would find this type of stock incredibly useful.
This Lighting is lit from slightly underneath onto a profile view of the face. Always give a versatile range of angles. As you can see it highlights features that are more prominent like the brow bone, cheekbone under your bottom lip etc.
This image is lit from behind. It highlights the back of the model/object and really creates definition to add more drama and reference at highlighting!
and finally...
The image here is under-lit, quite extreme but definitely adds more harsher shadows and intensity for the artist to work with!
I hope you found that mini guide useful!
Below are some more examples!
As you can see, you can extending using lighting in model stock in architectural and landscapes also. It creates atmosphere and can change the look and feel of any location. Think about timing of the day/weather.There are lots of aspects when taking stock to consider!
Thanks for reading!
