Shadow Color
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| Alley in the New World |
Your work in the arboretum revealed a solid understanding of relative values of sunlit and shaded surfaces. Now let’s explore the effects of color for shadows.
We’ve observed that, as a rule, shadows are darker, cooler, and more neutral than the surface they fall on. This is usually true in nature, but in a painting, of course, you can do whatever you want. Depending on the feeling you are creating in the picture, you may want to make all the shadows ultramarine, for example, or let all the component colors of a neutral show in the shadow, leaving it for the viewer to mix them together.
Experiment with a simple scene, trying out different colors to see how the changes affect the overall feeling. Be subtle. Be outrageous.
Please share your discoveries here on the blog by posting a comment.
Have fun.
Tom
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