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Color Lurking in the
Shadows
By Christopher Willard
During the early part of the
Renaissance, if artists wanted to paint the shadows in the
folds of a cloth, they simply added white for the
highlights, or back for the shadows, to the base color used
for the material. In later years, painters began using a
deeper version of the same color for shadows. for example,
shadows for a light-blue robe would be of the same
light-blue tone but more saturated with pigment. Andrea del
Sarto (1486-1530) broke with these traditions and used an
entirely different color for the shadows, such as a purple
or green shadow for a pink robe. The Italian painters called
this cangiantismo, and del Sarto used the color shifts to
increase the sculptural quality of his painted folds.
Michelangelo relied extensively upon cangiantismo for the
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; the stunning colors in the
vestments of the saints were unveiled by the recent
restoration. Today, artists can benefit from using color in
the shadows of much more than just the folds of a
cloth.
VIBRANCY IN
SHADOWS
Caroline Jasper, of Bel Air, Maryland, started thinking
about colors in shadows when she saw Renoir's portrait of
Sisley at a show in Baltimore. "The stunning light and
vibrant shadows in this painting grabbed me from across the
room," she recalls. "I approached, and about four feet away
I realized the shadows were created with dabs of deep blue
and orange paint rather than a single color. They were
complementary colors that if mixed would be dull, but
applied as separate, pure colors they were very
effective."
Back in the studio, Jasper revised her
thinking about light and shadow. "I realized that shadows
contain a lot of light," she remarks. "Shadows closer to the
source of the shadow are darker. Sadows farther away are
lighter, have softer edges, and contain more of the surface
color the shadow is cast upon. When I looked at shadows
painted with black I found they lost light and appeared
dull." Now, Jasper creates a richer representation using a
variety of colors that are dark in value, such as
ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson, indigo, and viridian. "I
add colors into shadows, not just for the sake of it," she
explains, "but because they give me a more realistic
representation of what is out there."
Although Jasper believes shadows usually
contain cooler colors, she notes it is more important to use
a dark color for a shadow rather than worry about whether
it's warm or cool. "I can use dark red as a shadow, or a
shadow can even be yellow," she says. "On a white surface a
shadow can be almost any color. If I'm convinced that all
shadows are blue, for example, then I'm limiting myself to a
formula. That formula can make the painting become a
cartoon of what I'm looking at rather than an honest
depiction of what I see."
Billie Samuelson, of Waldwick, New Jersey,
echoes this advice: "One fo the hardest things I have to do
is get my students to understand that shadows are not
necessarily gray or blue."
BROKEN COLOR
Broken color is the term often used for spots of colors
applied next to one another of, in the case of watercolor,
wet-in-wet. For both of these artists, broken color helps
them go beyond the flat look of shadow painted with only one
color.
Samuelson finds that mingling color in shadows
creates a stunning iridescence. She gives the example of
creating a violet tone in the darkest part of a shadow next
to a building. first wetting the area and applying a bit of
dark blue, the artist then touches it with alizarin crimson,
which has a little blue in it, and lets the colors flow
togheter to create the violet. Toward the back of the shadow,
where there is more light, she floats in some raw sienna,
which joins with the edge of the alizarin crimson, "I find
this method gives me more light tan if I use a solid violet
and paint it directly," she states. "My goal is to gibe the
shadow colors a moving, soft appearance." If Samuelson needs
to rework the shadow to deepen it further, she lets the
original colors dry and then simply paints over it.
"However," she says, "I am always striving to get the values
right the first time so the painting remains cleaner and
more beautiful."
For a thin line of shadow, Samuelson
applies a darker-value shadow color and then pulls a dark
line of its complement alongside. For example, next to a
line of ultramarine blue, she will paint a line of darker
orange. This method allows her to use brighter colors in
the shadows because the complement neutralizes the first
color and gibes a slightly grayer cast to the area.
She also developed a technical trick for painting
shadows on lighter areas. "If I'm painting something with
larger white areas such as the side of a building or a
snow bank, I'll pearlize my paper," Samuelson says, "First I
wet the whole paper, and while it is damp, I randomly and
thinly bleed in the three primary colors I usually start
with yellow, then alizarin crimson, and finally, cobalt or
ultramarine blue. When it's dry I want it to be so subtle
that I can barely see it. This gives me a glow that I like
better than the flat white of the paper." If Samuelson wants
a snowbank with more subtle shadows, she floats the blue
and red and then lifts off some of the color with a wet
brush, so the colors diminish to a soft transparency. "In
paintings of snow I avoid hard edges of shadows except along
clear contrast points such as where a rock or tree sits
against the snow." she comments.
REFLECTED LIGHT
Part of painting convincing colored shadows is knowing that
objects reflect and cast colors upon the surrounding
objects. "Shadows contain all sorts of reflected light, and
they often contain a mingling of primary colors," Samuelson
says. "Of I'm painting he shadow of a peach on a white
cloth, I know the peach will reflect some of its color onto
that cloth. So I pull out some of the reds and oranges of
the fruit and apply them to the shadowed areas, mingling the
colors and softening their edges."
For Jasper, recognizing the reflected shadow is
particularly important in a still life. "Anything in a still
life that has a reflective surface reflects whatever is
around it, your own clothing, the lights, the objects next to
it," she remarks. "Knowing this helps me to look for those
hints of color. Once I look for these colors, I usually find
them. If I just assume that the shadow consists of the
object's local color and black, it excludes what is really
happening. The shiny objects such as metal or glass are easy
because they exaggerate the reflected colors. Duller
surfaces reflect the same colors but more subtly."
To capture reflected shadows, Jasper uses
touches of pure color directly from the tube. "I get the gull
potential of the colors by using unmixed pigments." she
declares. "These are bright touches of complementary colors
that I use mostly in the foreground shadows to create
vibrancy. For distant shadows, I tend to mix the
complements. I also find that shadows are not always exactly
the complement of the object. A red object does not always
cast the green shadow I might expect. The exact color of the
shadow depends on lighting conditions. Generally, I find
that natural sunlight gibes more colorful shadows than
interior lighting."
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