Yesterday was the first live webinar I’ve given since coming out of hospital, and also the first time I’ve had a brush in my hands since then too. I’m not sure it was a good idea to do my first painting for a while live, but actually the webinar went pretty well.
This one was about the colour of shadows again, but I was going into more detail about the actual the pigments I used to get the colour of the shadows right.
I’ll give you a clue: they are the same ones I used to paint the lights. Why? Because the hue of an object remains (largely) the same from light to shadow.
If you don’t have time to watch the video of the webinar below (it’s quite long) here are the main points I covered:
- I used the same tube pigments for the shadows as I did for the lights on each object. This is because the hue remains constant from light to shadow on an object, only the value and the chroma really change much – which is why painting a shadow the complement of the light area doesn’t work!
- I painted the whole study with only four pigments (apart form black and white). You really don’t need a lot of pigments on your palette with a simple subject like this, because the hue is the same in the light and the shadow
- The cast shadows on the ground are all the same colour. That’s because, in colour terms, the cast shadow belongs to the surface it is cast onto not to the object that’s casting it. The hue of the ground in this study is a yellow-orange. That means the hue of the cast shadows are a yellow-orange too – the same yellow-orange, just a lower value and chroma. Why? Because the hue remains the same across the surface of an object from light to shadow
Now, of course there are things that can affect the hue of the shadows, like reflected light. And in fact, in this study, there is some reflected light from the orange bouncing into the shadow side of the lemon. So there, the hue moves towards orange. The chroma also rises a little.
But the value hardly changes at all, and that’s the part people usually get wrong. And situations like that are pretty rare, easily overstated, and best approached by ignoring them first them making small alterations to get them right once the cast shadow is working well.
Here’s the whole video of the study being painted from start to finish:
Best wishes and thanks for reading (and watching!)
Paul
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Hey Paul, I really like your blog, and appreciate these posts.
I will say though, I think you’re over-simplifying this shadow color stuff too much. Your studies seem to be done with a single strong light source, on a background of grey – and in these situations, your assertion that the hue of the colors will generally match the hue of the mid tones is true – but this isn’t how most real-world subjects outside of these studies are lit and perceived most of the time.
In particular, the color of the light sources in the scene, and the color of the nearby materials that reflect onto the subject from different angles, can sometimes have a dramatic effect on the shadow color.
Here are a couple fairly typical examples:
1. This yellow water tower in strong daylight. The blue sky acts as a light source that’s combined with the local yellow, creating a more cool green shadow contrasted against the warm sunlight on the bright side:
http://imgur.com/L6chePP
2. This billiard ball on a green table. The reflected green has a dramatic effect on the shadow color: http://imgur.com/8tJiDts
You’ll see similar shifts in tone for many objects sitting on grass, and the effect will be more pronounced for more reflective objects, and ones with lighter local colors.
I would say that reflected light, and multiple colored light sources are not rare at all, and certainly not to be ignored. Each scene’s lights and materials should be considered individually.
James Gurney’s book “Painting Color and Light” explores these ideas in more detail.
Thanks!
all totally true, but i think these videos are about how things are working within the controlled environment. when doing exercises to practice and build up your eye for value and colour i think a simplified version of reality, as was used for the study here, is very useful. This is why we use a shadowbox and single light-source, to give us a very controlled environment within which we can understand the outcome of a simple restricted set of variables.
thanks paul, hope you’re well and we see more from you soon.
Paul touches on this very briefly at around 42 mins when he mentions that if the bounce light were blue it would affect the hue of the reflected light on the orange.
Thank you so much for another very informative video. I hope you will recover completely to carry on painting and enjoy your family.
God bless
Thank you so much, Paul, for such an excellent informative video which was so enjoyable to watch. I am only a real beginner, but I think it will help me so much and I will share it with my other art buddies too. Wishing you all the best for your continued recovery.
Hi Paul, sorry to hear about your heart attack, that’s too bad. I’m in my 50’s, had fears of heart attack when I discovered dr Caldwell Essylstein https://ca.video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=A0LEVv1SLrJYQDAAiUMXFwx.;_ylu=X3oDMTBsa3ZzMnBvBHNlYwNzYwRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkAw–?p=how+to+prevent+a+heart+attack+caldwell+esselstyn&hspart=avast&hsimp=yhs-brwsr001#id=1&vid=b8b11047569e193958842726be4b390f&action=view
Glad to see you are okay,
Best wishes,
Naomi
Another excellent , informative and very useful lesson. I am so throughly enjoying these videos. Thank you for sharing.
Paul,
I want to say a really, really big, “thank you.” I think that learning to be a realist artist is definitely a journey with certain parts being easier than others. I trained at an atelier for a year and began the very initial stages of painting after doing a lot of value study. When I moved out of state and tired to carry on, I have to admit that trying to figure out painting by myself has been tough. Mostly because of the immense amount of variables added to working in color paint. In the last few webinars that you’ve posted, though, I felt like I’ve seen a way to isolate some of the variables and be able to process smaller bits at a time. While there is nothing that can take the place of time at the easel, I do think that it helps to spend that time at the easel productively. Thanks for giving me some tools to do that very thing.
You never cease to amaze and to educate ! wonderful Webinars. thank you so much for sharing your gifts with us.
Thanks Paul your videos are a useful source of new tips and tools for me. keep going.
Hi Paul, I enjoyed your videos and the scientific approach to understanding color you have taken. Do you think of matching color this way as a sort of training wheels that you get to take off at some point? It seems quite labor intensive to paint something this way beyond a simple study. Do you find that as you have been doing more and more of these studies you have a better guess at what the value, hue, chroma is when you look at a new subject?
Thank you.
Hi Kaya,
No, I don’t see it as training wheels. It is labour intensive, but if you want to paint realism well, you have to accept that I think. It’s hard work, and demands a lot of different skills, developed to a high level, working together.
Certainly I am better than I used to be at getting in the right ball park more quickly, though. I think that’s because, with practice, I’m gradually developing more detailed knowledge of my tube pigments and what combinations get me in which area of the colour space. Certainly I’ve picked up a lot of knowledge about value which helps keep me from making basic mistakes.
But look at it like this: Athletes don’t stop training when they get to a certain level of skill and fitness. They continue. Professional musicians don’t stop practising when they reach a particular level of skill and performance. If anything, they practice harder – at least, they do if they want to continue improving.
It’s exactly the same for us. I think it’s an unfortunate hang over of modernism and particularly post-modernism that we can do what we do without having to work – continually work – to develop our skills. We paint realism, and that takes skill, and skill means work and constant practice.
Dear Paul, I finAlly got a phone service I can watch your videos on. I wanted You to know , I learned more from this video about painting, than anything I have come across, to date! I wish I had this years ago! I know this lesson will help me paint again! Thank You so much! It is much better than You thought!