Portrait Classroom: Shadows

[Yokovich]

Hello everyone! I am Celeste! I am pleased to be doing a demonstration/tutorial about shadows in the Portraiture classroom. Let me apologize right off for the "model"---it's me! I had to use myself to illustrate some key things that I want to talk about for the first shadow lesson. I am the only available model I have around here and I took all these photos of myself today with my Sony Mavica. None of them have been adjusted color-wise with image software. I am NOT happy with any of them but OH WELL, it is in the interest of our ongoing pursuit of better portraits that I provide them, so I will forgo my vanity for now.
I plan to make my tutorial/demonstration a three part process. I encourage you to let me know what you think as we proceed. Shadows in Flesh is a huge subject so let's not waste any time!

Portrait artists must always determine FIRST the SOURCE of the light onto our subject. It is crucial! Not only must we consider what is the SOURCE of the light is but we must determine the TEMPERATURE of the source light too. One thing that shadow is NOT--it is NOT just a darker version of the local or base color.

Come along with me into some changing light conditions. Remember, our FIRST order of business is always to identify where our light is coming from. Our 2nd important task is to decide whether the source light is WARM or COOL. Let's start here in my studio. Here is the light source, a 60 watt light bulb.


My hair is actually a mousy dark blonde & gray, but here under this light (in the photo above) my hair looks reddish and WARM. Later we will talk about what a warm light does to shadows, but for right now, in lesson #1, let's just concentrate on determining the temperature of various light sources only.
Now lets go into my s.o.'s photography office.
Here the light source is an overhead flourescent light in a white walled office. Look how different my hair looks than the last place I was photographed (my basement studio).
The source of this light is bluer than our first photograph of the basement studio. We can safely state that this light source is COOL.


Now I've gone into the front yard and I am standing beneath a canopy of green leaves. Check the area right beneath my eye in this profile photo--look at the green from the leaves shining onto my face. Reflected light is another factor when it comes to sizing up source light and temperature.

In this leafy situation the light source is sunshine but I am standing in a predominately shaded place. This is dappled light. The sky overhead is blazing blue and "whitening" my skin and hair--but this is WARM (don't be mislead by all the green shade, the light struck areas are warm).

When I step out into the full sunlight I still have green around me but it is at my back and the sun is my light source. What is the temperature?? WARM. Even though my hair is "accurate" color wise--look at the flesh and how red/yellow/orange it is.


Back inside I am in my basement --this time in the laundry room. This is interesting because I am illuminated by our friend the sun but the light is filtered through a grimy window and my surroundings are whitish concrete--SO--the temperature is COOL

Here is a side by side of a warm and a cool light source so you will be able to readily see the difference. Notice how the warm light is yellow/red/orange and the cool light is bluish.

Well, do you think you understand cool and warm temperature? I will give you two more photos and you can try to determine if they are cool or warm. Once you feel confident about assessing light source and temperature we will go on to talk about what that means for the SHADOWS in those conditions.
...cool or warm??
cool or warm?
I'll give you a clue about what is coming up next-----creating convincing shadows using complementary color! See you tomorrow!

[rca]

Very important information going on this thread!

Thanks for taking the time to show us this!

Rui.

[Anita Murphy]

Hanging on your every word as I have been struggling with shadows on my first portrait. Lovely model - no need to apologise!

[eileenclaire]

WOW!

I can see I am going to learn a LOT from this thread!!! Terrific, can't wait to see the rest!

[imperess]

hi,

great tutorial!!!

this is wonderful information! I am sure it will help many. Thanks for taking the time to share your Knowledge with us. you make a great model. I will be standing by to read more.


~Carol .

[artcrazy]

AWESOME Celestia! Pulling my hair out (which is currently lit by a warm light source ) waiting for tomorrow's installment!

[artbabe21]

AWESOME Celestia!! This is helping me already! I always mistook shadow for a darker version of the local color!! eek! sob....
THANK YOU!!

We are SO FORTUNATE to have such talented artists to do these demos, sharing their time & talent!! Hurrah!!

[terence p]

very good presentation. Things I think I knew but this really clarifies the effect of lighting. thanks.

[elizabeth ours]

Celestia,

Awesome presentation. I can't wait to see what the complement of the local color is as relates to fleshtones.

Thanks,

liz

[Yokovich]

Yesterday we discussed the difference between cool light and warm light. You could see the difference between how I looked standing in the laundry room (cool) and how I looked standing beneath the light bulb (warm). It is not always easy to identify warm and cool light without something to make a comparison against! For that reason you might consider taking some photos of your own to practice evaluating just what the heck IS warm or cool.
One of the most challenging things to understand about sunlight is that it will not always result in a "warm" situation! Remember my laundry room photo?--that was COOL light from the sun. Cool light from the sun happens on overcast days or when there is alot of BLUE around (like the sky or the ocean or a film of dirt on a window!) Warm light from the sun is clearly warm if your subject is standing on tan beach sand, seated on a tan patio or laying in the center of a daisy field. In evaluating warm and cool start by identifying the source and then think about the surroundings. The effect of the surroundings might change your "automatic answer". It is fun to look at established art and think about termperature. Edward Hopper was famous for his cool light. Even when he bathed his subjects in sunlight he favored COOL sunlight. Check how "pasty blue" this caucasian man's skin is, especially when you compare it to the warm painting on the left. In making temperature evaluation look for BLUENESS for cool & orange/red/yellowness for warm.

(By the way I hope to squeeze some information in about OTHER skin colors besides caucasian--bear with me).

As artists we need to state our case clearly--We need shadow shapes to help define the subject.

Do you know all your complements? It is important to know them because you use complements when "neutralizing" shadows. Complements are colors directly across from each other on the color wheel. The complements we are most familar with are: Blue/Orange, Yellow/Violet and Red/Green.

Here are my photos from yesterday. On the left I am illuminated by a YELLOW-ish candle. On the right I am illuminated by the sunlight that is affected by surrounded BLUE-NESS.

First off we'll want to do a three value sketch to solidify where light is the brightest and where shadow is the darkest. Even if you feel confident the 3 value sketch will help you remember and define the most important parts of your painting. I am going to paint both the warm and the cool versions of "me".

I mix up a big batch of "base" or local color. I am caucasian so I use something like cadmium red and lemon yellow and Titanium white with a little pthalo green (all that is my base--like "foundation") TO THE BASE I add the light source color-- Here is a photo of my base color and I am adding Ultramarine blue to it for the cool portrait.
I would have had another photo just like this with the base color and yellow for the warm portrait...but I forgot to take the photo so try to imagine it.
Here is my masonite board that I have toned lightly with sap green. I toned it green because it is the complement of red and red is a major part of flesh color. (Those master guys used alot of green "under" flesh colors--- they knew what they were doing!)
I have sketched in the most major shadow shapes and I used fixative to keep the charcoal fixed!
So here it is a few hours later (whew!) and I have painted "me"--I used the base color I mixed up for my flesh but I added alot of yellow to the same base flesh color for the portrait on the left. I added alot of blue to the base color for the portrait on the right. For the shadows on each I relied on my sketch to show me where the darkest darks where and I followed the values to block in where shadows occur. Here are the results (so far)

I remembered some key RULES of shadows while I painted--the rules are:

Next session we will CHECK the shadows I did today. We need to assess if the shadows are doing their job. In both portraits I used complement colors to gray down and mute the shadows but the shadows are going to be improved upon in our next step! You will be pleased to know that we are going to work on an image from the image gallery too. Here is a sneak preview! See you tomorrow---are you thinking about shadows??

[dcorc]

Great presentation

Very clear, and lots of useful info.

Dave

[Yokovich]

Thanks Gary Oldman, er, I mean dcorc dave for dropping by my shadows tutorial--somehow a big (important!) section of the 2nd leg of my tutorial "disappeared"--lol so I am asking a moderator if I can go back and fix it in proper sequence. stay tuned!
Thanks again for cheering me on--I appreciate it! c

[bjcpaints]

Celestia, This a wonderful tutorial and you have clearly put a ton of work into it! I am so impressed and its making me think maybe this is not a bad place for me to begin learning about painting people! I am going to try to keep checking in (inbetween painting animals LOL).
Barbara

[maria_khurram]

WOW great tutorial. I have learned more from that one.

[rosebard]

Thanks!! Thanks!! Thanks!!
A million of thanks!! .....

Agree with Present. That is just where I have being struggling the most. Someone pointed that out about month ago on my first portrait. And since then I have beeing loosing the all thing all together. All because of this warm cool lightning thing, and how it workes with color. The concept I understood. Just to apply the colors in practice was so much the bad part. Now I know things are going to get in place and once more this portrait classroom is going to be a big help.

So nice to see your face Celestia. I always keep wondering how people look like when I see the avatars, that are not actually photos of oneself. And really nice examples of how lights affect the surface when it hits it. How it feels and change colors appearance. Going to read the lesson and come back for some more food.

So far so great(so good is not enough). Thanks Celestia for the tutorial and Eillen for keeping up this great Class.