Quick Tip 283 - Cast Shadow Colors

one of our viewers asked this would it be possible to do a quick tip on the color and value of cast shadows now she goes on to say i've encountered contradictory approaches stated as fact on which colors to use i will shed some light on some cast [Music] shadows [Music] all right cast shadows are caused because something blocks the light and causes a shadow so a lot of people will think that the cast shadow will be the color of the thing casting the shadow and that's where they get thrown off the cast shadow itself is going to pick up are going to be caused the color of the cash out is going to be caused by the local color on the surface onto which the shadow is cast so if you can imagine here the sun rays are coming right like this on this cowl relatively low down in the sky the cow blocks the rays the rays hit on either side onto the grass but where the rays are being blocked they can't hit anymore and so that warmth of those rays is blocked out causing us to see this not only darker but cooler and actually slightly more neutral so a good way to approach cast shadows is to think just in those terms and i'll go back to my color wheel which i always do the color wheel is kind of like the measuring cup for our cook so if if the raised then you can see it right here you can look for this the local color is in the yellow green ring range here but if you look at that cast shadow that's not yellow green if i rotate this around we'll see that's falling closer to blue green you see it right there but it's not just blue green it's a lower intensity blue green which means this blue green is going to have to have a little bit of red orange added into it to lower that intensity if you think about that that just makes sense because there's not the light there to cause the brilliance that we see here so it's not a formula it's something to look for there might be times also let me add this although we won't see it here there might be times when colors from other areas perhaps even sometimes color on the subject itself might the the light rays might pick up something of that color and bounce back into the cast shadow look for it go by your observation but you can follow a principle of knowing what to look for and that makes it easier then to come up with the color that you need for your cast shadows now i'm going to go through three different kinds of cast shadows different colors of cash shadows here and just show you how we can think that thing through what i'm going to do here is i'm going to just put a little piece of canvas right above so that you can see how it works right here we'll just focus on the color of that cast shadow now first of all what i'll do is to come up with the color the local color we see that local color is yellow green so and it's a light so i'll go to a light value of yellow green and it's it's not very intense it does have a little bit of a neutrality to it so i'll just go as a yellow green and say that the neutral will pull a little bit of red into that maybe too much but let's see and then i will just compare that you could use uh test strips which i teach you how to do in a later quick tip a little teaser there but for the moment let's just see that see there we're very close so i'll just add this i'll just put this right this is just i'm not trying to paint it as grass just to show you the color now that color is on both sides so and it is same color same value right here too so let's just put that right here same value same color now that is the local color onto which that cast shadow is cast now i'll rinse the brush out and i'll pull all that solvent out of the brush now how do we come up with that color we have yellow green first key it's dark so we don't start with the light yellow green we start with the darker version of yellow green so i'll go right in here to a darker version of yellow green and just bring it right over here okay now think that through that darker version is a higher intensity and a warmer yellow green than our observation higher intensity and warmer so we if we see that it needs to be cooler we need to add some cool to it we need to neutralize it very slightly so i'm going to go into a dark version of red that's alizarin crimson it could be any red dark version of red same value as this and a little bit a darker version of the blue now how much of that do we need to add into here in order to get the shallow color we're seeing so i'll just start i'll get it cooler first and see now when i get it cooler it's very close but still feels a little bit intense so add just a little bit of the red to it i might have added too much you really need to go slow and careful no i didn't you see there we're right on the button there we have our shadow color we put that shadow color right here thing about cast shadows you want them to feel like cast shadows you don't uh if you just make them dark like some people just add black well that doesn't guarantee it actually feeling like a cast shadow when you do that i'm going to do my little trick here just push your brush up to get that kind of grassy feeling there and push the brush up into this and there you go we have that cast shadow that we observed here by making the cast shadow taking the local color yellow green adding cool getting a little cooler add just a tiny bit of this complement to it get it slightly more neutral and we will have the color of the cash out so there's the cast shadow of green now let's go and try another one now we can just set this right over here just as a reminder of where we've been and let's go for a cast shadow of a red barn castle that we would find on a red barn we need to kind of nail that down a little bit right here and here all right we'll do it the same way so this is the red light's hitting that red barn causing it to feel a little bit of a warm kind of red and now this cast shadow is caused by a tree a tree apparently this looks like foliage that tells us that a tree is blocking the light rays light rays can't get in here but they are shining very strongly on this part right here so what we need to do is to begin with the local color i'm gonna i'm gonna do this again same way where we anchor a little piece of canvas you can do this kind of thing uh you can find some photos actually it works better if you do it if you go out in plein air and observe these things but you can't always do that but you can go on pixel bay and just look for things with cast shadows you can do this kind of exercise helps you hone your skills on how to go about doing this now let me wash the grain out of the brush and get all that solvent out of the brush all right so first thing to do is to find that red all right so um we get the value and the colors i've got lutheran crimson here mixed with white that's a little bit cool for the color of the of the local color the red but i'll go ahead and find a place on the palette i'll go ahead and oop that picked up some blue and that that won't work i have to be careful about that kind of thing i'll just do it this way let's go up here with the red with the alizarin crimson i'm going to add a little bit of white you could do this anyway you could use almost any red and take it in that direction and just a little bit more of the elizabethan crimson here show you how to think about this thing again that you can feel value's right not quite it's a little bit warmer that red is tiny bit warmer warm yellow or orange i could add either one into that to get that just a tiny bit warmer here we go and that is very close get that just a little probably going a little heavy on that let's try it again that's very very close very very close to we see variations of that local color here all right now i'm going to do the same thing let's just put some local color down on this canvas now i'm going to do this a similar way as i did the grass because we need to see it on both sides so i'll just place some of this local color and you can see this is all this is a a flatter color we've got variations in here but all still reads as a similar local color and i'll put it right here for some right here so it's in you can see how we how the cast shadow works in there all right now remember the formula not formula i hate that word i don't know why i said it remember the the test the the the sequence that you go through asking yourself the question take local collar cool it it needs to be a little bit cooler now let's just test let's find out put a little bit of this on the back see right here and put it on top now one thing that happens here is that the camera way overexposed that cast shadow so we got to be careful we don't get it as dark as you see about right in here is a good place you can see it it's cooler see turns a little bit more towards purple doesn't it cooler and darker and slightly more neutral all right so i'll go for the darker version of alizarin crimson let's put it right here let's see that darker version of losing cream look at that that's in the that's about the same value range let's get that maybe just not quite so dark the same value range now let's cool it just a tiny bit just and go back in i'll go into the ultramarine blue it's good cooler always a good cool color to use for when you're doing cast shadows um a cobalt blue works very well as well too let's see that did cool it somewhat probably could use just a little bit more of the ultramarine in there all right that does it now it feels that needs to be a little more neutral all right let's get the color wheel now and look at what we would do with to get it a little bit more neutral so we're in the red zone you see it right here kind of in the red zone leans a little bit more towards red orange but we're pretty much in the red zone so we can go right over here in the in the green zone find our component we need to do it with the same value so i'll just go right in here pick up a little bit of that green doesn't take much we don't want it to totally neutralize we just need to get it slightly neutral so i'll pick up a little bit of that green put in there and that begins to feel right now let's test it let's see if it does all right so here we are load that into the brush put it right here and does that feel like cast shadow i think i probably could stand to have that a little bit more neutral you build a sensitivity to these things after a while a little bit more neutral that probably works better and let's get some paper towel and kind of wrap that out of the brush all right here we go loading it with that let's push that right here that feels more natural to me that feels more like the natural feeling of the cast shadow that we see right here especially when you see it right in here okay so that same principle you see it works with every color same principle now let's try something else let's go to a more neutral color and see how the principle works so let's put this one here so we can see where we've been not that it matters a whole lot but it doesn't hurt lift this one off and here we got something we got something a little bit different we have neutral neutral always confuses people what do you do with the neutral how does neutral behave well almost every neutral you're going to see is going to lean towards some color because it's going to be picking up some color it's going to lean towards some hue i should say because it's going to be picking up some hue so go back to the color quail and let's begin here now here this is where i'm looking this is this is my driveway in the fall obviously um we're seeing this is sort of a neutral color this is cat this is blocking the sunlight as we can see you tell by the way the sun hits it over there sunlight is over there this tree is blocking the sunlight and we're getting this now you see the same sort of thing happening so first of all we're seeing this as neutral but warmer we could rotate the color wheel around here and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to us because it's so neutral but we go up in here we begin to feel a little bit more of a relationship to these warmer colors so we can read it as a warmer neutral so what would you do well come up with a neutral first so what we know about neutrals we know that neutrals can be made with complementary colors again going to the color wheel so if i'm finding that as yellow orange or orange i can use blue and orange to create that neutral so let's just go here for the blue and i'll just start with about a middle value blue so i can see what i'm doing right here then clean the palette knife get my sheet of paper towel here then i go up here now this is an this is a this is the rim transparent oxide red which is sort of it's in the orange range so i'm going to kind of lighten that up i have it down here already lightened just kind of lighten that up just a little bit let's have them pretty much the same value so we can see what we're doing and just a little bit more of that dark in there i want to keep them in the same value range okay here we go now one because it's because i detected it was warmer this neutral right here i'm gonna pull ultramarine blue into this and i'm gonna begin to mix and you can see it watch it fall pop into a neutral right here right in front of our eyes you see those two going neutral i can't tell a whole lot about that neutral because it's so dark because feel right right up here okay so we could work that backwards because it does seem so right for that right up there well let's let's let's do it scientifically so now we see variations in value right here oops i touch that with some paint but that won't matter so i'm going to just light you with white first let's see what we get here when we lighten that neutral with white just think of neutrals um as very low saturated color low saturated set means the hues have been hues of both those colors have neutralized each other we're very close right here you see that the back of my felt now we're very close to that area so once again let's put a little piece of canvas up here so that you can see it working i'll just work it two parts this time all righty put that there and put that over there so let's go with a very clean and dry brush and pick up some of this neutral light for the light shining you see the light as the light hits the neutrals the color is warmer as well so uh you can observe this for yourself just look for the temperature change in where the light hits it and when the light can't hit it where it's been blocked and so we see there i didn't have enough of that mixed maybe i can put enough down just kind of scrubbed in a little bit enough down so that you can see the effect of it i think maybe we could get that just a little bit lighter okay there we go tiny bit lighter and let's just get a little bit of variation of light in there like we see it here a little bit more of that light into it okay now here we go that's that's probably good enough it's not too not trying to paint the driveway and just trying to get the color so that you can get the point of how shadows work color and value all right so that neutral then when the light blocks it blocks out the light blocks out a little more it's got to be cooler so we've got that we've got this right here we've got the mixture here so what we can do is go back to that mixture and this time mix with a little bit mix it a little bit and let it lean a little bit cooler and darker and that looks like it right there now with the neutrals you don't have to add the neutral back in because the neutral is already there so when you're working with neutrals you're looking for how it leans towards hue so it's warmer here that neutral leans a little bit more towards cool therefore a little bit bluer or at least that's how it looks here and you see when i compare the color my palette knife that's the way it works a little bit cool there it is right there so let's put let's put that there beside let's get that color the cooler and darker right here no it didn't mix enough let's put this this way so that you can watch it work cooler and darker there we go right there i may have gotten a little bit too dark i think i did so we'll do is to lighten it there again we have to be careful about photographs because photographs are going to show it going to show the cast shadow darker than when we see it then we see the cast shadow if we are there looking at in in the real in in plein air so you see as i get that lighter against as i get that neutral lighter against the uh against the lighter part there it begins to feel more right so there you go if you remember that when you're working with neutrals as neutrals fall in the shadow you observe it for yourself you can look for them to go cooler you can also look for other colors to be reflected back into them but look for them to go cooler first and then look for them look for the value change to what degree are they changing values but when you're working with colors that are more saturated than neutrals those colors you can look for you can see it they will take on the local color they will get a bit cooler they're certainly going to get darker so the value changes to darker the saturation or intensity changes to slightly more neutral and the temperature of the thing will change to cooler so just look for those things you will know then how to create your cast shadows so that they look like cast shadows and they don't look like just dark paint be sure and view all of our quick tips while you're doing so subscribe to the channel click on the bell so you'll always get a notice when we produce a new quick tip which is every week if you have a question leave it in the comments section and we'll make a quick tip for you also take a trip over to dynamized.com where i have full length lessons downloads dvds lots of other stuff there some free stuff for you and while you're there you can subscribe to the newsletter and that way you'll always be informed every time we do something new [Music] [Music] you

Channel: In the Studio Art Instruction

Views: 21,094

Rating: 4.9794869 out of 5

Keywords: in, the, studio, art, instruction, in the studio, art instruction, Dianne Mize, SauteeLive, online art lessons, online art classes, online art instruction, how to paint, how to draw, fine art, easel, palette, canvas, brush, painting, oil painting, watercolor, gouache, quick tip, pastels, pastel, 283, Cast Shadow Colors, cast shadow

Id: U5kIm_r0FeI

Length: 23min 10sec (1390 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 19 2020