Hi. I am Roel. This is my first post in this blog and this will be all about my art style.
Let me introduce to you Chiaroscuro or the light and shadows (light-dark in Italian).
Chiaroscuro uses high contrast between light and dark in its composition giving volume to the art. It is like lighting an object with a flashlight or a candle in a very dark room.
In my artworks like one in the left, I used a very contrasting light(sun) illuminating the right side and creating a very dark shadow on the left. I am also fond of a somehow monochromatic color for my artworks which is very evident in this artwork.
In my other sample art(right), I illuminated the top part of the art giving a light effect as if the girl is in a room and the light (from the sun) entered a small high window.
The use of light, shadow, and strong contrast or Chiaroscuro remains one of the best traditional art techniques ever used. Famous artists such as Rembrandt and Da Vinci used light and shadows as well as our very own (Filipino) Juan Luna who notably used the light-dark style in his “The Blood Compact” and “Spoliarium” painting. But the style was made famous in Baroque paintings wherein sensuality, politics and grandeur were immortalized in to the canvass. There were lots of Rennaisance painters and artists who used this but I think only the likes of Baglione and Caravaggio perfected this.
In the digital world, there are freelance artists I have seen like apterus (http://apterus.deviantart.com) and especially James Zapata (http://www.jameszapata.com) who mastered the style of light and shadows .