Mood, in my opinion is really important for a painting, especially if it meant to convey a story point. Light is a very important tool to use when creating compositions for your paintings. How you light your scene influences the mood of the image.
Low amount of light (low key),
usually is more sad, creepy or mysterious.
While high amount of light (high key),
tends to have more happy, calm mood.
We can use the shadows to add or omit information.
Here the shadow adds information we know there's a teddy bear in the room
Here the shadow hides the figure.
To me it makes it seems creepy or mysterious because we can't see who it is
Just to play with this idea, I painted in the figure and brighten the shadows.
Much less mysterious.
Soft diffused lights are better to show beauty and well... softness.
while hard lights tend to be more dramatic
There are other ways to use light to create mood, such as its direction - different angles create different effect and its sources - for instance candle light vs sun light
Yeah it's fairly obvious and simple, but it useful and it isn't that much discussed.
That's all for now. I hope you found this helpful or a least entertaining :)
Next time Using "Camera Position" For Mood
