Regular visitors to my blog will know that I’m a big fan of the dark fantasy genre of art. This typically involves working in black and white to create a tense and brooding atmosphere.

There are many recurring tropes to this style of drawing and I want to explore how light and shadow specifically can be used to great effect.

Create an atmosphere of tension

Recently, I finished the piece below involving a group of explorers under attack from a giant snake.

Monsters instantly introduce a sense of menace, but that menace can be amplified further with light and shadow.

Characteristics of light

Light appears in the form of a torch in the image above, held aloft by one of the explorers.

The following points are worth considering to make the most of light in this style:

• The light comes from a torch. It’s imperfect and faltering, creating plenty of shadows. This is exactly what you want to create atmosphere.
• Consider where you place the light source in the overall composition. You want to create enough visibility to see the monster and the shadow that the monster casts. The latter will also add to the tension.
• Think about which shadows you want to accentuate in order to draw the viewers’ eye. For example, in this image the explorer being constricted by the giant snake is the focal point of the horror. This is the shadow that takes centre stage. The shadows of the other two explorers are still there, but are not really noticeable.
• The light source determines the types of shading you employ, radiating outwards from the light source. For this image I’ve used circular hatching that gets denser the further it gets from the torch. This creates the illusion of light and darkness in the image.