Local illumination models try to describe the interaction between light and objects in the scene based on only few parameters representing some geometric and material properties at a given point on a surface. In this paper we present our research in local illumination models for the purpose of approximating light transport and shadow-masking effects in the local neighborhood of the surface point under evaluation. We assume that the amount of curvature at a surface point to some extent represents geometric properties in the surrounding neighborhood of this point. From this we define an empirical illumination model for diffuse reflecting materials which controls the amount of locally scattered light from the neighborhood as well as subsurface light transport based on some curvature metric.