Essentials of Cinematic Lighting
Master the Art of Cinematic Lighting
Essentials of Cinematic Lighting teaches you to use light and color cinematically, not just for visual appeal, but to support mood and story. This course is designed for intermediate to advanced painters who already have a solid foundation in the fundamentals. Whether you work digitally or in traditional media, the principles of cinematic lighting are universal, and this course will teach you to apply them with intention and confidence. If you completed Essentials of Painting, this is your natural next step. The two courses are designed as one focused learning path, taking you from strong painting fundamentals to cinematic, story driven lighting.
Learn to Think Like a Cinematographer
Many painters understand light technically but struggle to make it feel cinematic and emotionally resonant. This course solves that by teaching you to think like a cinematographer. You will start by learning to distill complex scenes into simple notan statements and black and white value structures, building the strong foundation every great painting needs. From there you will explore value keys, three point lighting systems, and the psychology of color, all studied through the lens of live action and animated film. By the end you will understand not just how light works, but why specific lighting choices make a scene feel tense, melancholic, warm, or otherworldly, and how to make those decisions deliberately in your own work.
Apply Your Skills to the Real World
The ultimate goal of this course is to prepare you to use cinematic lighting in a professional context. Color key artists in animation are responsible for setting the emotional tone of entire films through light and color, and the skills you build here translate directly to that work. You will study how lighting and color are used in real films for psychological, visual, and narrative purposes, and you will practice relighting and recoloring scenes to develop your own creative instincts. Whether your goal is to work in animation, concept art, or simply to create more powerful paintings, this course gives you the tools to get there.
What's Included
- Over 12 hours of instruction
- Homework briefs with tiered difficulty levels for each lesson module
- Student homework examples and extra resources
- Real film study exercises analyzing lighting and color in animation and live action
- PSD files of demos
- Download of Tiffanie’s brush and tool presets
In this course, you need to know how to use the brush tool to paint, how to use and organize layers, and how to use the lasso tool, gradient tool, and U tool. You should also know how to use clipping masks and layer masks as well as a basic understanding of adjustment layers. Beyond that, this course focuses on painting rather than Photoshop tricks, so the concepts learned can translate to other apps (such as Infinite Painter, Heavy Paint, Procreate, etc).
Yes, while I use Photoshop in this course, you can follow along with other apps such as Infinite Painter and Heavy Paint Classic, which is much cheaper. Check those out, as those are two of my favorite apps for plein air painting.
This course is on-demand, so you will be doing homework on your own time and self critiquing, which is an important skill to build up. However, there is a discord channel where students can post their work at any time. I'll hop in at least once a week to give written feedback to any students who post progress.
If you don’t understand the homework, fear not! Join the Discord server (you will receive access upon purchase of course) and ask any questions you have. I will be on there, as well as other students to answer your questions.
I can’t guarantee you’ll paint exactly like me, as everyone develops their own style at their own pace. However, with consistent practice and repetition of the lessons will be key to strengthening your painting fundamentals. My goal is to help you see and think like a painter, so you can understand my design and color choices and apply them to your own work.
No, I do not use any AI whatsoever. This course is designed for you to be able to paint using YOUR skills, so you can be better then AI!
