Getting your shadows right contributes immensely to being able to create a feeling of form, light and depth in your work.
Shadows do seem to be particularly vexing for a lot of realist artists. But they really don’t have to be. If you put into practice what I’m going to show you in this blog post, you will never struggle with shadows again. I mean it.
Myths you need to avoid
You need to get rid of the erroneous ideas you find on forums and, unfortunately, in the teaching of some realist artists. Get rid of them. They’re holding you back.
The most common ones I hear are:
- Paint light areas cool and shadows warm. Sure, that’s true a lot of the time, but not all the time. Following a recipe might get you through making a nice dinner a lot of the time. But if you understand what the ingredients contribute, how they interact, you can create. Learn how colour and light behave, and you won’t need to follow any recipes. It’s not even hard to do. Everything you need is in this blog post.
- Paint shadows the same colour as the background. No, that’s just wrong. Don’t do it. Shadows are not the same colour as the background. Paint them the colour they are.
- Shadows should be painted translucent. Sure that will work fine. But only if you get the colour right. If you don’t, it won’t matter whether you paint them translucent or opaque, they won’t look right and your work will suffer. Paint them the right colour, and it won’t matter if they’re opaque or translucent, they will look right.
How to get shadows right
If you remember this simple rule you’ll manage to avoid all the misinformation there is out there about the colour of shadows. In fact, you’ll avoid all the misinformation about colour and form in general:
Given a single local colour, the hue of an object will stay the same from light to shadow.
That’s it. The value and the chroma will change across the surface, but the hue will hardly change at all. Yes, there can be some minor change in hue, but you need to get the broad picture right before you start fussing with the details, and hue change is a detail you don’t need to fuss with until you can get colour broadly right.
Here’s how this looks in practice: All the colours of the sphere below are of the same hue, they’re all the same orange. In Munsell terms, they’re all 5YR – a middle Yellow Red. Only the value and the chroma change.
You can actually plot these colours on a page of the Munsell book, and they always describe a curve. Here’s another, similar study, with a different local colour. The hue of this one is 5PB – a middle purple-blue, in Munsell.
Here is the curve that shows the colours of each broad area of that sphere:
Every colour I need to paint that sphere is somewhere on that curve. Some of the colours will be between the chips, sure. But they will all be on that curve.
Here are the shadow areas of that sphere with the colours from the curve that they relate to:
It really is that simple. Get those colours right and your form will live. Here’s the sphere again with all the modelling factors filled in with the right colours, before blending:
The point I want you to get here is that the shadow colours are the same hue as the rest of the sphere. Only the value and the chroma change.
If you get those broad areas right – they’re called the modelling factors, because they help you to model form – then you can paint convincing form. You won’t struggle with the colour of shadows. You won’t struggle with the colour of lights. In fact, you won’t struggle with colour at all.
I used exactly this method to get the colours of the shadows right in the following two paintings. In shape and in hue, the subjects are not so very different from the orange sphere above.
So if you’re wondering how this rather abstract exercise – painting a sphere of a single hue – relates to the real word of making paintings, here it is.
This process is exactly the same whatever you’re painting. This rule applies whatever your subject. Of course there are situations in which the subject is much more complex.
By doing an exercise like this, you simplify the problem, which helps you learn more quickly. What you learn from this type of practice applies to everything you do, and makes an immediate difference to how well you paint.
If you don’t believe me, I challenge you to try it.
Watch this webinar and find out how to do it for yourself
In January I gave a live webinar in which I went through all this in a lot more detail. It’s about an hour long, and I paint a couple of demos live to demonstrate exactly what I’m talking about here.
It’s not particularly complicated to do the stuff I’m demonstrating in that webinar. And If you do it, you’ll make more progress towards painting more realistic shadows than you will by spending endless hours thrashing around in the dark, following erroneous advice and incorrect rules of thumb.
Please, pick up these tools and use them
This stuff isn’t hard. It really isn’t. What makes it hard is the sheer weight of bad advice out there, perpetrated by well meaning people with unfortunately mistaken ideas, mostly ideas that they’ve picked up from other well meaning but mistaken people, and so it goes on.
You don’t have to take anybody else’s word for it, you can figure it out for yourself. I’m not asking you to take my word for it.
What I am doing, in the webinar above, is giving you the tools to find out the truth for yourself, and I’m asking you to take those tools and use them.
Because if you do that, you’ll save yourself untold amounts of wasted time, you’ll make immediate progress in your understanding of colour, light and form, and you’ll be able to paint shadows that look real.
Best wishes and thanks for reading,
Paul
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Great Information Paul, thank you! You are the best!
Shadows are one of the things that still eludes me, but thanks to you is becoming clearer.
Helga
Hi Helga, great to hear from you! I hope this helps you. Please do feel free to email me if you have any questions about it when you cone to try it.
I am an artist and retired art lecturer. I really enjoy reading your advice and it makes a lot of sense. I think it is great that you are prepared to share your knowledge with so many other people. Art is a wonderful outlet for people and you are sharing the tools of making art, freely with others. Thank you for doing so!
Wishing you well
Fransie
Thanks Fransie!
Hey Paul~
I’m so glad you posted the most important points from your very helpful video. I had taken notes & snapped some pics of my laptop screen while watching, but now I don’t have have to try to make sense of all that now.
Much appreciated!
Stephanie in Portland, Oregon
You’re very welcome Stephanie 🙂
I wonder if shade is shelter from the light source and shadow is the shape cast by the object in light.
Hi Hank, good to hear from you. Clearer terms to use for those things are “edge shadow” and “cast shadow”. I explain them near the beginning of the video of the webinar.
Basically an edge shadow is the part of a form that’s turned away fro the direct light, and a cast shadow is a shadow cast by that object on another surface.
Paul, I’m working on a cast painting in natural north light right now, and find your advice immensely helpful. With a cast that has a matte finish, I’m noticing a difference in temperature in both the light and the shadows. How would you go about thinking about difference in temperature on a cast with a single local color? Thanks so much!
Hi B.J. That’s a great question. Instead of temperature, think about hue. What you’re seeing is the hue of the north light (usually slightly blue-ish on clear days, reflected from the sky) being slightly different than the hue of the shadows (usually affected by the ambient bounced light in your room). If you get hold of a colour checker like the one I’m using in the webinar video above, you’ll be able to isolate the colours of the lights and the shadows. You’ll find that it’s much easier to see the differences that way.
On very low chroma objects like casts, though, the hue change is so minor that it’s incredibly difficult to get right. The main thing to watch out for is overstating it. It’s very easy to do that, particularly adding too much chroma to the shadows. The hue change will be so minor and the chroma so low that you’re better off painting it a single hue and making very, very minor adjustments as you go.
I would try this as an exercise to develop your ability to see those tiny differences in hue: Mix a few piles of ivory black and titanium white to different values from light to dark. Those colours will be quite blue since ivory black is really a low chroma blue. Then mix a corresponding value for each one using either burnt umber or burnt sienna and titanium white. These colours will have a slightly orange hue.
Then take each value pair and mix between them. Somewhere between the two will be a true neutral. This is basically the process we use to mix a Munsell value scale, matching each neutral value exactly to a Munsell value chip.
What you could also try is, if you’re struggling with a particular area of your cast, isolate the area with a colour checker and then mix two colours of the same value as above. Paint them onto a little bit of card and hold them up against the area you’re isolating. That will help you to see if the hue is more towards the ivory black mix or towards the umber/sienna mix.
I hope that makes sense! This video on matching a Munsell neutral value might help you:
https://vimeo.com/177690256
Paul,
I’ve just now gotten around to reading your reply. It is so delightfully helpful. I’m also extremely grateful that you have taken the time to offer such detailed help. Thanks a bunch!
– B. J.
Very informative Paul to see the link with Munsell chips.
What about the cast shadow? Is it the hue of the subject also?
Hi Lynn, no, the hue of the cast shadow will be the same as the hue of the surface that it’s cast onto. So if a lemon casts a shadow onto a blue table top, say, the hue of the cast shadow will be blue.
I’m thinking of doing a demo or a blog post about this since a couple people have asked me this question. But if you watch the video of the webinar, I talk about this in some detail – I think it’s towards the end.
I am having difficulty painting the hue of cast shadows. Any advice
Hi Michael, the advice is exactly the same: Hold the hue. Cast shadows belong to the surface they are cast onto, not to the object that casts them. So a cast shadow on a blue surface will have a blue hue, and a lower value.
More on the cast shadows topic….
I’m well into a still life on a neutral offwhite cloth with lots of folds in it. I painted the shadows in beigey tones, and they look very dull and detract from the painting. What do you suggest?
Can you give me the info on the Munsell Diagram?
Hi Dar, I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re asking for – could you clarify please, with a little more detail?
Another great lesson and it WORKS! Thanks Paul!
Thanks Bernie 🙂 I know you know what you’re talking about, too, you’ve been producing some great studies on the course 🙂
As always, I have found your latest webinar extremely valuable in providing a reappraisal of a particular painting difficulty, in this case getting shadows right. Many thanks for carefully considered advice and helpful demonstration.
Two questions:
– how do we access the Munsell Collour chips? Can these only be obtained by purchasing the costly Munsell Book on Colour?
– what advice can you offer for applying your method to match colour against a live model, rather than a still life?
Hi Chris, the cheapest way to get hold of some Munsell chips is to get a copy of the New Munsell Student Colour Set. You get a much smaller number of chips, and they’re just card so not very durable, but practising some mixes with them will teach you a lot about how to hold the hue through the lights and shadows. I’d strongly recommend it.
This method is no different when you’re working from a life model. You will notice some hue changes in different areas of the model – hands more reddish perhaps, and ears, etc – but the principle is the same – that hue will hold from the lights to the shadows. What you might find useful is to get hold of some polystyrene spheres and paint them various hues of average flesh, and then do studies of them. Learning to mix the colours of the lights and shadows will show you exactly what pigments you need to achieve the same results on a live model.
Again, the Munsell Student book will help you here. Paint some spheres to match some of the chips on the 5YR page. I’d recommend 5YR 6/4, 5YR 5/4 and 5YR 4/6. That will give you a fair range of average skin colours white and black people.
https://www.amazon.com/New-Munsell-Student-Color-Set/dp/1501312227/
Love your mails. Thank you so much.
You’re very welcome Alva 🙂
Paul,
What a great way to explain a troubled area in painting. Thank you so much for taking the time to explain and show examples. It is by far the best blog on how to paint shadows. I am now experimenting on mixing the colors to get it right, then it will be ready to apply each color gradually. One thing I have to be extra careful, I noticed, is blending. So, thank you again for demonstrating how to do it.
Wow, that’s praise indeed, Crisalida, I’m really glad to hear you found it so helpful.
Spending time experimenting with the mixes is a good idea. If you can do it, getting hold of the Munsell Student Colour Set will really help you make sure you can hold the same hue through the lights and shadows.
Get back to bed!!
Lol! I am today, I promise 🙂
Valuable info, thanks Paul
You’re welcome, Ann 🙂
Great post Paul; this is the best and most straigh-forward explanation I’ve heard about this subject. Best of all I understand it!
Thanks Adolf, that’s great to hear! Exactly what I aim for 🙂
The problem I have with this method is the although you may know that the shadow of an object is the same hue as the lights you can’t (I don’t think, hopefully someone will tell me I am wrong) mix a the shadow of a clementine – say 5YR 4/4 starting from the light of a clementine say 5YR 7/12 – or, indeed, vice versa. In other words you have to mix a new colour, probably using different tube colours, and therefore unless you have the chips to guide you you are reliant on your judgement as to whether or not it is actually the same hue. Is this any easier than what I would have done which is look at the object and just make a judgement as to what I am seeing and mix that. The yellows in particular are surprising in Munsell the low chromas are not what I would have guessed (ie they look green), so how can one get skilled at working out what low value low chroma versions of a given hue will look like? Even as I type this Paul I think I can guess your answer but I would love to hear of your experiments of doing this sort of work without Munsell chips as guide.
Paul . . . thanks for the shadow info. But you were discussing how an object’s “dark side” slips into shadow. Can/will you speak soon about its cast shadow. I’m assuming that can be complicated in real life, but how about in painting life where we often simplify. Like your work and the effort you put into these info bits.
Hi Paul, I’ve been studying light and shadow a lot recently and I primarily work digitally. Because of this I can colour pick and get accurate measurements of tone, colour and saturation.
This has bought up an issue though. The way I have learned is that the shadow colour is influenced by the ambient light, so a cast shadow on a bright sunny day would have a lot of blue present in it because the shadow area is not lit by the sun, but by the reflected light from the blue sky. This is especially evident in Golden hour photography, where there is a huge hue shift from sunlit areas to shadow areas. The sunlit areas are gold, and the shadow areas are a very cool blue colour. Would you say there is a different rule to cast shadows/form shadows? I’ve colour picked the tones on a face and it does seem to follow the munsell scale very closely, but cast shadows seem to be very different.
I have also experimented with different light colours and how they affect the cast shadows, in that a strong red light would present its complementary colour in the shadow (green). I would love to know your thoughts. I’d be happy to forward you a photoshop exercise I did where I took an overcast image (so the colours stay as local as possible) and painted in convincing shadows by adding brightness and warmth to a duplicate layer… effectively lighting the scene.
I
For tone, colour and saturation I think I”d use value, hue and chroma respectively. Does that make sense?
The main difference between cast shadows and form shadows that you’re seeing, I would guess, is due to the local colour. Yes, outside on a sunny day you have an interesting phenomena that you don’t get indoors: two different coloured light sources, really, the sub (yellow) and the sky (blue). so the blue of the sky will affect the hue of every shadow, form and cast. But the effect will be a pulling of the local hue towards blue, so what hue you end up with will very much depend on the local hue.
I have very little experience painting outside on sunny days though, and would want to test that out empirically to be sure. The above is what I would assume would happen.
That’s very interesting about a strongly coloured light showing its complement in the shadow. I’d be really interested to know if that’s something which you would perceive yourself or if it would be accented by the camera. I don’t know the answer to that.
And I would LOVE to see that test! I’ll drop you a line. Thank you!
Dear Paul, thank you for everything you do for us, for lessons, videos and your generosity, thanks also for your clarity !!!
When you talk about the shadows of an object or highlights, you say that the tone is always the same, but changes the chroma value, making an example, an orange, is orange, to get the shadows on the orange, I change the orange color lowering the value and the chroma, but how? Adding black? raw umber? raw siena? And for the highlights? Adding white? cadmium yellow? So, not to create mud, with which colors to darken? and with which colors to lighten?
Forgive the use of the automatic Google translator, I write from Italy.
Thank you
Yes, the hue is always the same. Or very nearly so, in neutral light at least. What tube paints you use to keep the hue constant whilst you move down the value scale into shadow depends on the local colour.
If it’s yellow, often I’ll use mixes of burnt umber, sap green (W&N) and cad yellow, adjusting as the value decreases.
If the local is green, often the same tube paints but with different mixes.
For oranges, burnt umber or sienna and permanent orange, sometimes with cadmium yellow.
For blues, the only way to get a good level f chroma (if you need to) across the range of values is to bracket – mix between more yellow-blue, higher value paints and ultramarine. Mix them to the same value then swing the hue towards yellow-blue or red-blue as you need.
All this becomes much easier with the Munsell chips. Mixing a range of colours of a single hue with different values and chromas is hugely instructive, and shows you, pretty much, how colour changes from light to shadow.
the same goes for the lights, but obviously you’ll be adding more white as you go up the value scale. It is a challenge to keep the chroma in the lights. Sometimes it just can’t be done. For high chroma local colours, the range of chroma in the lights in the real world can be beyond the limits of paint.
Hope that helps!
Paul, I have since looked at your videos (we spoke about golden hour shadows) and I’m finding your work extremely convincing and very helpful. I’m a college art teacher and I’m putting together a presentation on light and shadow in digital painting. Could I please take a screenshot of your Munsell tests and put it into the presentation? I’ll credit you and give you a copy of the PDF when it is done? By the way, did you get my email with the videos on ambient occlusion?
Thanks
Chris
Please feel free to use anything you like Chris, I’m happy that you think they’ll help.
Yes, I did get your email! I haven’t had chance to watch it yet sorry – there always seems to be so much to do. I will get to it though.
Actually I just did watch it, and it was excellent! Henceforth I shall be calling the occlusion shadow “ambient occlusion” 🙂
The situation is slightly different that that I describe in my sphere painting videos though because I paint indoors. The direct light is much more directional and there is less ambient light (no sky). What happens there is that the lightest part of the shadow is towards the bottom of the object, with bounced light from the surface the spheres are sitting on. The core shadow is higher and has less light, and of course the ambient occlusion has next to none.
Here’s the vid for anyone who wants to see it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fLV5ezO64w&t=5s
Hey Paul, I didn’t get a notification of this, but I’m glad you found the PDF useful. Your Munsell work is of great help to both my students and myself. Thanks!
This makes perfect sense. I love it. I am a beginner, this will help me immensely. I am doing wood burning of trees, rocks, ect. on wood, then painting the water, and sky. I have a wooden board that has turned out Great. Now I have to put reflection of an eagle on the water. I haven’t touched it in days afraid I will mess it up. Thank you.
That’s wonderful to hear Kimila, thank you!
Hi Paul,
I’m not an artist, but I do paint miniature models. More precisely I’ve been trying to paint 1/16 scale (120mm) Figures and 1/9, 1/10 scale Busts. I’ve been using oil paints for these (on top of a acrylic primer and a base coat of enamel paint, so the oil can adhere properly).
I’m now working on a 1/9 bust, and decided to paint the shirt of my character in a kind of dark green (a mix of Payne’s Grey and Hooker’s Green, with just a tiny pint of Naples Yellow).
Now, next step is the shadows and highlights on the character’s shirt.
Which colors would you suggest I use for both?
According to the color wheel, the opposite of green is red. I’ve seen some people recommending the use of the opposite color on the color wheel (usually mixed with the base color, which in this case would mean mixing some red on my green), as the right color for shadows.
But I wonder what I’ll get by mixing red (and then which red, Cadmium Red, Pyrrole Red? Alzarin Crimson?…) and my dark green base color…
And then for the highlights, what color/mix of colors, would you recommend?
Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge, and helping people like me get interested in art and painting, and trying to understand this new world (for me at least) of colors.
Thank you!
Keep safe!
Hi Dolf,
Personally I think using the complement for mixing a shadow colour is very bad advice. It won’t look convincing on your model I don’t think. In the real works, shadows are actually lower value, lower chroma versions of the local colour. So for your shadow, I’d use a blue-black like ivroy black, and a greenish-yellow like hansa yellow. You can add a little phthalo green if you need to bring up the chroma, but just a very little.
The highlights will similarly be a lighter and higher chroma version of your local colour. Without seeing the local colour it’s hard to say for sure. But you will likely need a green with good chroma. You can usually mix a high chroma green with a small amount of phthalo green, a greenish yellow and possibly a little white if you need to drop the chroma a little.
Hi Paul,
Thank you very much!
I must admit I’m not absolutely sure what “chroma” means.
I did some search on the web, and the definition would seem to be “a color with no white at all”.
As for phthalo green, it’s one of those colors I don’t have in stock, but I guess I’ll be able to find it (well, after this lockdown ends and we can go out again…) .
Apparently “hansa yellow” is not an easy one to find in oils.
But there’s the Phthalo Yellow Green Shade, for instance, or Phthalo Green Yellow.
Again many thanks!
Keep safe!
Chroma is just the intensity of colour, from near grey at one end of the scale, to very intense at the other.
Phthalo green yellow shade from Winsor and Newton is good, yes – get that one 🙂
For Hansa yellow, the pigment is PY74 so other tube paints – like Miachael Harding’s Yellow Lake – are the same pigment.
Hi Paul!
Thank you very much for the extra info and clarifications 😉
Funny enough, I was under the impression that the other day I was able to find from my local Arts dealer, a W & N a Phthalo green yellow shade, but now, can’t find it no longer! Even if when searching on their site engine, for Phthalo green yellow shade, the W & N oil paints show up on the results. But then, looking at all the colors list… it doesn’t show up! Weird!
Now, they do have another brand which has this Phthalo green yellow shade listed on their list of colors, but this brand is a student grade one, not an artist grade oil paint… Rive Gauche. I do have a few from them, from when I started using oils, but it obviously is not the same quality as W & N…
As for Yellow Lake, the same local dealer has it from Sennelier Extra-Fine Oil Colours (I think these are good quality oil paints), they don’t sell Michael Harding paints here…
In the meantime I found a site listing all the pigments list! Very interesting for a newbie like me 🙂
Again many thanks!
Hi Paul
Thanks so much for this excellent page of essential information – I’ll refer everybody I meet who insists on ‘complementary’ shadows!
One question – please could you expand a little on post #40 above: it is frequently the case that I see light bounced off a neighbouring coloured surface into a shadow (for example a green shirt bouncing green light into the shadow under a chin, or a reddish glow on a leaf in shade beside a red rose petal). This makes me think that in your examples above – say an orange on a very pale grey surface – the cast shadow on the surface may have a weak orange glow on it – giving it a slightly orange hue – near the orange due to light coming from the shadow area of the orange – and if the surface had some colour it might affect the hue of the shade area of the orange similarly.
I know that this does not contradict what you say in the article – but maybe there are situations where shadow hue changes? Thanks.