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I want to talk about some simple things that even professional photomanipulators don't give enough attention sometimes.
It's the reason why our work can be perceived as wrong a bit , especially by traditional artists. People who are not artists usually say “something's wrong”
Our theme for today is colour of light and shadow.
I want to point out – there are many colour schemes and rules for that (it would be better to write an individual tutorial on that),
some are better for realistic works, some for surrealism, some for abstraction etc. It depends on your idea.
However, today we'll talk about the basic rule that must be followed in any professional work, no matter what your idea is.
The first very common mistake is gray shadows, or shadows with the same color like lighting (light and shadows are warm, light and shadow are cold) -
Why is this mistake is so common in the modern world ?- both photomanipulators and some artists use photo references, the problems come from photos.
Unfortunately photography cannot reproduce real colours of life around us – the colours of shadows especially! In the photos all shadows lose natural colours and become grey or turn same color like common lighting (pictures only in warm color scheme or only in cold scheme). Also if the shadows are grey we often tone them the same colour we tone the lighting by mistake.
It doesn't matter how many colours you've added to the picture later, if colors of light and shadow are not opposed, your work will make a weird impression.
about the colour – main mistakes are using black or grey colour for shadows, same color tones for light and shadow, and missing reflected light in the shadow area of the object.
Colour of shadow is formed from the colour of surface + opposite colour to light colour + original object colour. (the last element was discovered by impressionists and used for that technique)
Color of the shadow should be opposite to color of the light
I suppose everyone of you is familiar with the colour wheel. Johannes Itten's colour wheel mostly used by traditional artists, rgb colour wheel suits us better.
Generally, in the case of “light and shadow colour” everything is pretty easy:
Complementary colours harmonize,
So, if the lighting is warm: yellow, orange, red, - the shadows should be cold: blue, purple or cyan.
On the contrary, if the lighting is cold: cyan, blue etc,- the shadow should be yellow, orange etc.
In the picture you may see examples of complementary combinations of light and shadow:
Options here are (so you can find not only correct color for shadow and light, but also additional colors for your scheme):
1 “tetrad harmony” and most convenient (as it also helps to define suitable colors for reflected light and additional colours),
2 “equalaterial triangle harmony”,
3. 4. The other two schemes show alternative and split harmonies, where one colour is used against several contrasting colours. This combination gives a lot of contrast to the image but it's less intense than a complementary scheme or may be achieved by using oppositional colour and (or) closest colours to it, they complement each other. This combination is a bit less intense. There are some other schemes (but these are more convenient to use for light/shadow colour)
The second very common mistake is missing reflected light in the area of shadows in works
In the picture – a sketch of a ball, we are already familiar with, where we can find the positions of shadows and reflections.
Reflected colour (colour reflection) and reflected light without expressed colour characteristics are called reflection.
If the reflection falls onto the dark area of the object, it will become a part of a chiaroscuro. In this case the reflection will look like a not intense light spot in the shadow area,
formed by the rays of light reflected from surrounding objects. Drawing reflection as part of chiaroscuro is most important for traditional art.
An examples of reflected light: cyan, red and purple surfaces may give cyan, reddish and purple reflections to the sphere in the aria of shadow
In the picture a b c you may see the same complementary combinations but taking into account the colour of the surface – as you can see, light reflected from the surface was added to the picture. The colour of reflected light consists of the colour of the surface and color of the surrounding objects. (But keep in mind – black colour devours almost all light, on the contrary white colour reflects)
Reflections on transparent objects have more contrast and a reflection on the surface. The colour of reflected light on transparent objects also consists of original object colour (intensity of native object colour depends on transparency of the object)
In the picture a and b you can see a smoky semi-transparent green gem, lying on the coloured surface.
a) is a wonderful gem, but it's incorrect as reflected light from the surface is missing and no contrast lighting scheme is applied to light-shadow. In the picture b) you can see another one that is more correct.
Example
Bastet and Sekhmet Museum
1. gray image base
2. wrong scheme. cold lighting source and wrong blue-cian shadows
3. Correct scheme: cold source of light and warm yellow shadows. reflected light from walls
4. wrong scheme. warm lighting source and wrong warm (yellow-orange) shadows
5. Correct scheme: warm source of light and cold blue shadows. also reflected light from walls
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Comments: 88
Lilly-AngelofLife [2016-04-12 03:15:16 +0000 UTC]
Wow. I did not know this. Definitely going to try this out next time! Thank you for sharing! !
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Brontonia [2016-04-12 02:21:28 +0000 UTC]
Glad I gave this a read! ^^ Very interesting and useful! Thanks!
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Ryhalla [2016-04-12 01:38:27 +0000 UTC]
So that's why my stuff looks kinda off. I always seem to forget about reflected light. Thanks for making me rethink how I color. :3
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Edowaado [2016-04-12 01:29:24 +0000 UTC]
Very good! I've read a lot about reflective light, but I never considered the reflectedlight spot in the shadow of transparent objects. Thank you.
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Ikeela In reply to ??? [2016-04-12 00:44:48 +0000 UTC]
Thank you for the advice! I will try to keep this in mind as I paint.
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PaashTheSneasel [2016-04-12 00:23:52 +0000 UTC]
I have just one thing I'd like to submit about this entry, which I believe you got wrong: the "warmth" of the light and that of the shadows are not (usually) opposite in real life. The colour of the light affects the shadows, so that they become a similar (if darker) colour to the light's. And in some cases, the light's colour isn't strong enough to tint the shadows at all, and they would remain relatively neutral in colour.
That being said, using opposing colours for light and shadows does make the whole image more vibrant. I'm not saying you definitely should use the same (or similar) colour(s) for the two, but using opposing colours doesn't necessarily make the image more realistic.
👍: 0 ⏩: 2
Incantata In reply to PaashTheSneasel [2016-04-12 05:10:25 +0000 UTC]
Here the point is primarily (exactly) about the physical characteristics of the shadow's color, which consists of the colour of surface + opposite colour to light colour + original object colour
if you try watch colors of shadows in real life on the snow surface - you can see this point better. because white original white color help you see this physical effect better))
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PaashTheSneasel In reply to Incantata [2016-04-13 01:10:17 +0000 UTC]
For snow specifically, while the light is yellow/orange and the shadow is blue, the shadow's colour would actually be due to the sky, which is also blue. Shadows don't actually have a colour all by themselves, but they are susceptible to the colour of things that surround them, in this case the snow around them (white), the light opposite from them (slightly yellow), and the sky above (bright blue), resulting in a slightly blue tint.
Similarly, in a closed room with white or yellow light, where the walls and ceilings are all red, and the floor is white, the shadows on the floor may be red too because of the walls and ceiling.
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hazeldazel In reply to PaashTheSneasel [2016-04-12 01:49:17 +0000 UTC]
I agree :) I think their advice applies to many situations but not all.
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manifiquecreature In reply to ??? [2016-04-11 22:29:09 +0000 UTC]
My bright red ruby and your blue lipstick would contrast , Black is not a color, and clear is not a color. modern art is a joke
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BethsNerdyKnots [2016-04-11 20:17:47 +0000 UTC]
Thank you for sharing this knowledge. I'm just starting learning to paint and this is a MAJOR help.
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BluePhoenixDown [2016-04-11 19:57:11 +0000 UTC]
This is very helpful! I've trouble in the past trying to balance lighting and shade when painting. Thank you for posting this.
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Mahhona [2016-04-11 18:46:52 +0000 UTC]
Thank you very much for sharing this with us! It's very usefull to know this opposition of light and shadow colors!
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marphilhearts [2016-04-11 18:24:07 +0000 UTC]
Great article! Thanks so much for sharing this information!!!
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Gejda [2016-04-11 16:44:53 +0000 UTC]
This is awesome! Very informative and definitely very useful!
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Incantata In reply to Gejda [2016-04-11 17:37:33 +0000 UTC]
Yes, this simple details can add to our works more natural and correct result thank you and glad that you like this article
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Lc-Korim [2016-04-11 16:12:55 +0000 UTC]
Thank u so much! Non ho mai imparato le basi di pittura, grazie davvero tanto. Molto facile da capire💗
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Incantata In reply to Lc-Korim [2016-04-11 16:19:37 +0000 UTC]
Glad you like)) e anche facile da usare in fotomanipulazione
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Deltapotamus In reply to ??? [2016-04-11 15:34:59 +0000 UTC]
Excellent points, and I liked the depiction of the different color schemes! Also, that picture depicting bounce light is great, and I'm totally going to link back to this journal to help me explain it to others in the future.
However, I'd never heard or seen shadows in photography being gray! I feel like that's just a result of painting with black in photo manipulation to create shadows... And painting with black on low opacity causes things to gray out. I've definitely color picked from shadows before to illustrate my point (I've written a journal tutorial called something like "shadows aren't black and light isn't white" or something to that effect a few years ago) and the shadows weren't desaturated in those photographs.
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Incantata In reply to Deltapotamus [2016-04-11 15:48:57 +0000 UTC]
thank you
However exist many examples with photos exactly with 1) gray shadows and especially! 2) shadows, whose color similar with tones global lighting of scene (same color scheme - warm or cold)
especially, if this photos not in raw format or with camera not high quality. for us (photo manipulators), which work with many stock images is problem very common.
even our eyes often cannot see real objective physical characteristics of colors
and this point in this sense is very convenient to understand how things function
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Deltapotamus In reply to Incantata [2016-04-11 16:03:09 +0000 UTC]
Very true, I didn't consider low-quality images. Either way, very helpful!
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Poglazovs [2016-04-11 15:23:18 +0000 UTC]
thank you very much, this is a great and very useful lesson!!!
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Incantata In reply to Poglazovs [2016-04-11 15:49:33 +0000 UTC]
i glad you like this, thanks<3
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