Angel Ganev Glowing Illustrations

The art of Glowing Drawings

When an artist is fascinated with creating faces, they generally create different looks and personalities to work on their skills. As time passes, realism improves.

The issue that comes up for most artists is that it gets boring when doing the same thing constantly. You’ll find painters who start sketching, sketchers who take woodworking, and other creative combinations. It helps you to avoid getting stuck in a rut.

Angel Ganev might be like any other artist in this way, but he also took a different approach to create different looks for his productions. The female characters he shares online and on Instagram create an immediate influence that captures the imagination.

Although Ganev essentially sketches works with a pencil, the outcomes are absolutely gorgeous. Each portrait feels like it is beautifully perfect. You can also find him accessing digital tools to create different plays on shading and light.

Ganev Creates Colorful Outlines of His Sketches

Even with the expert touches, Ganev adds to his sketches, you can see his primary talent involves shading and light. He creates a sense of tone and brilliance that makes each profile feel like it has a life of its own. When the character receives a glowing outline, it feels as if she is coming alive before your eyes.

Ganev purposely chooses a mix of different cultures, styles, and people to produce a diverse artistic mix. Each character is delightful in her own way, no matter what their skin tone happens to be.

For the artist, he says that the work it requires to get each person’s skin tone, color, and variation correct is the ultimate test of his ability. Although Ganev doesn’t use live models all of the time, the resemblance he creates through each illustration is remarkable.

Once the face and body shape are complete, he accentuates the woman’s eyes to make them look a little bigger. This subtle change creates opportunities to develop character sketches that seem to be appropriate for a new comic book series.

The subtle colors, especially around the profile’s outline, attract people to linger over Ganev’s work. Each addition, even when quiet, helps the art produce a mood of its own. The emotional connections that people have with the experience create a relationship that feels right.

Other artists can even see how Ganev produces this unique effect by viewing his instructive online tutorials on YouTube.

How Do Artists Create Realistic Shadows?

Artists like Ganev play on the idea of light and shadow to subtly alter our notions of realism. We know that a model doesn’t walk around with a purple aura each day, but you also need some elements of darkness and shading to draw the viewer into the piece.

If you want to create any form of three-dimensional art, you need to know how to draw shadows.

Although it seems challenging, it isn’t as hard as it looks. A drop shadow appears any time an object sitting on a surface blocks the light. When you see darkness appear outside on a sunny day, it’s because your body is the obstacle to the sun reaching the ground.

Artificial light follows a similar process.

When you’re ready to create perspective within your art, you need to know a few elements. It’s a creative process that starts with the light source, introduces an object, and considers how far the shadow should extend based on the angles that exist in the piece. Drop shadows are always on the same angle plane as the light source.

If you need to add a shadow to your art, you start by creating a point in your piece. Once you have this spot, the angle from it to the light source must get calculated. After you get this line developed, all you need to do is extend it to the ground at the same plane to create a realistic result.

When there isn’t a reference point to use, you can still estimate its angle by creating the necessary perspective within the image.

Why Does the Lighting Change Ganev’s Images?

What Ganev does so well is a mix of contrasting colors for shadows instead of using the classic light vs. dark option. Some of his most outstanding pieces are a combination of purple and orange.

These colors produce emotional reactions that lend credibility to the model’s expression.

Through Ganev, the viewer believes they are forming connections to the artist and the model, creating a personalized art experience. That’s why it is such a special thing that he is doing.