we spend a lot of time painting and detailing our graveyard creations then flood them with blue, green, red and other bright color lights washing all that hard work painting and weathering away......why do we do it?
How many of you use simple white or cool white lights to accent your creations?
I'm not very artistic so I can't go into the detail many on here can. I'm better with the electrical/electronics. So with that said, my stones are only seen when the lightning lights them from the simulator so it's a way for me to hide how ok they look.
As DH and I started putting stuff out for Halloween, we started pretty simply. Originally, we wanted to have our graveyard glow with blacklights, so I highlighted some of our tombstones with neon paint. But, we have a streetlight nearby and the blacklights never worked well for us based on where we like to put our graveyard. So, we still had oranges & greens on a lot of tombstones but I liked the look. Anyway, we found the soda-can lighting tutorial via Pinterest a few years ago, and we do that with white lights on our tombstones still.
This year I bought a blue LED spotlight and we *might* direct it towards our graveyard, but if we don't, I'm still satisfied with white lights, but I do think it looks best when you've got some color on your tombstones for contrast.
I read somewhere here on the forum that you should mix colored and white lights together. The white enhances the colors more. I do this and I think it's true.
Yes I figured this out in my Oleander Hills cemetery theme, I washed the skellies climbing the roof in green LED, and you couldn't tell what they were from far away - but when you add some white light right next to it, you get the both of worlds. Color and clarity. But the funny thing is, with no white light pics with colored LED's come out clear and gorgeous. But in person, washes out a lot of detail.
I've gotten into the habit of just using more contrast in my finishes than color or realism - I use a low grade orange wash for my entire set, and highlight certain points with colored spotlights, so more often than not, any details that depend on color tend to get washed out.
Black and white contrast, on the other hand, works pretty well despite what color the spotlight is.
Sorry from my point of view, the white just washes everything out that is why I use red, blue, green and yellow. It also gives the cemetery depth which I think is important for effect.
- I want the look of the yard and house to work as much as possible in the daytime, as well as the night time. So, detail on the props is
important in the daylight. However, the color helps provide and 'other-worldly' appearance at night that I simply can't get from white light.
- To the point, though, I do use a mix of color and white to prevent exactly this issue. While not completely detailed yet, the image below
from this year's yard shows a 'backdrop' of color that (hopefully) helps set the stage, but the foreground (in this instance, the JOLs) is lit
with a low-voltage white light to bring out the detail, and provide shadow and depth.
I guess to more directly answer the question, why not both?
I like my stones to look good in any light conditions, from day to night and everything between, so I try to use reality-based colors. That said, I think shading and texture are far more important than color, especially "weathering" using dry-brushing, tea-staining and other techniques.
When using two different colors (including white and a color), don't forget the benefit of throwing your washes from two different angles. That way some surfaces are lit with one color and other surfaces are lit with the contrasting color. This enhances the way architectural and textural details stand out.
From an emotional perspective, white light seems kind of, well, ordinary to me. Colored lights add drama.
I have a white light in each front corner of our yard just to give overall visibility to the graveyard. Some stones are well lit, others are completely in shadow. I use colors as accents. Pale yellow to highlight props I want featured and other colors to create effects and backlighting.
Here are some of my favs of various years, and you can see how colors impact my haunt, as we use flood lights.
Last night, we went threw all our lighting lights and options. We try to associate colors to our themes, as green for the witch hunt, yellow for scarecrows and pumpkins, red for cemetaries and blue for the spider room..
Last year I threw a red/orange fire & ice spotlight on my tombstones and called it a day. It was ok, but after seeing everyone else's lighting setups here, I got inspired. So I changed direction this year and put lanterns in front of the tombstones with orange flickering bulbs that just barely light the stones. Then, I used a blue CFL in a ground spike to throw some subtle blue/purple light from another direction, as SkeleTom mentioned, so the tombstones and in particular the edges of the jack o' lanterns have a soft blue/purple glow, without washing out the light coming from the JOLs. It doesn't look quite as good as my description makes it sound, but it turned out pretty nice.
I only wish the light weren't quite so subtle - I could only either find super bright LEDs or flood bulbs, or these CFLs that are a little on the weak side. Nothing in between.
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