Highly skilled artists don't just think in 2D — they really do imagine the 3D scene that they're painting. It's hard to relate to but people with a lot of drawing/painting experience can "feel the form", as they say, when they draw. But it's true that figuring out the lighting is still difficult even then.
I do want to point out that if you look at talented painters from later in history than the early renaissance, they don't make nearly as many mistakes as the ones in the article, although of course the lighting of imaginary scenes is still always approximated and simplified.
To your point about painters from later in history, I think once linear perspective was codified and became more widespread it made the process of projecting shadows much easier for artists. In a lot of renaissance artwork you can actually map out the perspective lines to find that the artist was working with multiple incompatible vanishing points, hence the wonky spatiality of many of the paintings from that era.
No form to it. You just have to draw lights and shadows as you “see” them. At end you have a well drawn curtain.
After awhile your entire perspective even outside of class changes. You naturally see lights and darks. Not just objects.
It's a common technique when learning how to recognize lines, shapes, and shadows. The simple act of flipping an image upside down is enough for your brain to turn off it's automatic recognition magic that keeps you from seeing primary forms.
Do it enough times, and like other visual artists, you start admiring a lot of things people take for granted about vision.
It was a great trick that took me out of the painting that I had been doing from my "mind's eye". I saw it for the light and dark areas that is was. It allowed me to see how I could rebalance it (regarding the lights and shadows). Very cool.
If you have ever seen a professional digital artist draw, you'll notice them flip the canvas repeatedly. You might think they're crazy how much they flip it, but this really does help turn off that part of the brain that got too used to the drawing. Too used to the auto correction magic our brains love performing.
This technique forces them to see that the curve they just drew feels off, even when their brain with the image right side up refused to see it.
I work in VFX and have found that after watching a shot on loop a few hundred times (over weeks) it can be quite helpful to watch it 'flopped' (horizontal mirror), which seems to be able to give nearly a whole-new perspective (on the effects-content) in many cases.
https://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side-Brain-Definitive/d...
An art teacher told me what is kind of obvious: things aren't outlined in the real world. Painting a still life — the apple is in fact simply defined by where the apple color ends and the bowl color begins.
To be sure, when we start sketching we would probably find it convenient to make a little arc on the page that delineates the boundary of the apple but by the time you move to finishing the piece (if realism is what your going for) a line of any thickness delineating the apple should be gone.
I always found this very objectionable but noone ever seems to implement warp-sharpen when they can do unsharp mask.
That said, it is still amazing how big the actual gap is between this and ray tracing when carefully analysing a complex scene.
Why the hate?