Will Eisner on Lighting

EISNER: ...Lighting is very revealing. Lighting, for an artist, generally depends on how he sees something, his sense of perspective. Those artists - if you look at comic books, you'll see them - those artists who come from the far west, or outside of major cities, think in terms of horizons. Their lighting generally is flat--maybe not flat so much as solid. They see lots of sky. I grew up in the city. Most of the light I saw came from a lamplight, vertically, or light coming through tall buildings. I either saw things sharply up or sharply down, coming down the stairwell in my apartment house, or walking up a stairwell in my apartment house, I saw light, I still do, even to this day, sharply and directly, and people coming from the West or from farms and places like that see light as diffused. This is an example of what I mean by cultural input.