Painting 33

Ref 915.- Watercolor Painting more colorful shadows


         "Each moment, has its own colors"

The way a shadow is painted can make or ruin a painting. Shadows shouldn't be done at the last minute as an after-thought, as something totally separate from the main subject of the painting, but need to be considered as seriously as the other elements.
My last painting ref 914 practically I used black for most of the shadows.- Pure, straight-from-the-tube black is invariably too dark in tone and too consistent or flat in color, that´s why I tried mixing chromatic blacks  which is already an improvement, but using a complementary color will produce a more subtle, natural effect

The True Colors of Shadows
Working from the then-relatively new theory of complementary colors the logical color to use was violet, being the complementary of yellow, the color of sunlight. “Color owes its brightness to force of contrast rather than to its inherent qualities …primary colors look brightest when they are brought into contrast with their complementaries.” The Impressionists created violet by glazing cobalt blue or ultramarine with red, or by using new cobalt and manganese violet pigments that had become available to artists

Some Shadow Painting Tips:

• Squinting at a subject helps make the areas of light and dark clearer.
• Shadows are not simply ‘black’. Use darker tones of the colors in the objects, or dark complementary colors.