Tip of the month – November 2005

When painting shadows, I use the colors that are contained within the painting. Using different colors would only attract too much attention to the shadows. They would not be in harmony with the remainder of the work. Shadows are intended to show the volume of a form or to enhance the light within a painting.

In this illustration of a birch tree, I made the light warm and the shadow cool. The light consists of a warm yellow and a warm red. The shade is a mix of a cool blue and a blue-violet. The negative space is cool, also. This light condition occurs in the early morning or at sunset.

This image shows a birch tree in a different environment. The negative space is a warm green that contains red and some blue. I painted the light on the trunk a light cobalt blue and the shadow a warm mix of wet-in-wet green and red. The light at mid-day is cool;the light on a gray day is cool, also.

The following two images illustrate the two types of shadows – shadow to create form and shadow that is cast unto another surface. I have used two different color temperatures, but the thinking remains the same.

In the first visual which is a cool color,
I have used a warmer red-violet for the form shadow.

In the second visual which is a warm color,
I have used a cold red for the form shadow.

Both of these forms are sitting on a white surface. Neither one of them has a cast shadow which is gray. In each image, I have used the local color of the form in the cast shadow. To that color, I added a complement to the color to help to mute or gray the color of the cast shadow. I do not want to lose the original color of the form, only to mute it. In shadows on white, you can see the colors from the forms that are casting the shadows mingle within the actual cast shadow.

In the following example, I have placed a gray form on a gray ground. I have chosen to use aureolin, permanent rose, and cobalt blue to make the gray.

I decided to make the light source warm in temperature. Into the basic gray mix, I added a mix of aureolin with a small amount of permanent rose. The resulting warm color was applied as a tint to the top of the cube. It was also applied to the negative space over the flat gray wash.

I continued creating the structure of the form by painting cooler mixes on the side and the negative space that were out of the light. All of the mixes had the same basic gray as a starting point. The same three primaries were used to create the various hues that were applied to the basic gray.

Shadows can be simple or complex, but they are essential to the painted expression.

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