A Practical Guide to Color

[Natalie Hunsaker]

Clayton,

I have read this post very carefully and tried to absorb what I deem to be years of wisdom talking. I must say, I still have a questions, though.

I know that art can't be "mathematized" into one single set of rules or explanations that are right and all others are wrong, but I was still intrigued by your statement that a plane is either in shadow or in light and nothing in between. Even if others may have reasons for saying otherwise, I am certain you must have a very good reason for saying what you said.

I chose the following photo to illustrate my question because the boy's face is very smooth and the gradation between light and shadow is certainly a slow one.

I was curious how you would treat this face when interpreting through your eye what is light and what is shadow. I've drawn to hypothetical "boundary lines" where I think the light ends and the shadow begins, focusing mainly on the shadow side of the face and changing the cheek width.

But I'm unclear where you might draw these lines. (If neither is what you'd do and you'd like to be able to tweak my file instead of starting over, I'd be happy to email the original Adobe Illustrator file).

Anyway, if your eye interprets something very specific when you make your actual dividing line between shadow and light, please explain a little more why this makes you feel like you paint better than when you think in terms of light, midtone, and shadow.

Thanks for sharing your wisdom.

[Clayton J. Beck III]

Natalie,
Thank you for considering my post. At the risk of sounding evasive, I would not set this up for a painting. For photography it works much better. The reason I say this is that the color, as far as temperature, is muttled. If you look at the background, my conclusion is more readily understood.

The cast shadow to the right of the boy's head is a relatively warm one. This means that the light source is to the left and a predominantly cool one (most likely the blue sky). If you look closely to the left of the boy's head, you will see a weaker cool shadow. This indicates a less intense, more distant light which is distinctly warm in temperature (likely a lamp light). I also get the impression that the light to the left is also more diffused and the one from the right is more sharp.

Both light sources, opposing in temperature, altering in intensity and edge being allowed to shine on the same area (the cheek on the right) is a nightmare for painting. It of course can be done, but why bother.

Some of the ways one can solve this may be to ignore one of the light sources and just paint the effect of the other (a lot of guesswork). One could also reduce the effect of the color temperature of one of the light sources and thereby make a cleaner color statement. (still the problem of the value change from light to shadow is unaddressed and the shadow-side temperature is weak). Another (more popular) solution is to ignore all decision making and just copy the photo with no regard to color and repeat all the problems from the reference into the painting.

As I started out with, it makes a better photograph than a reference for a painting. This was the long explanation (and correct one for me). All that said, I think your decisions in the first version were better. The exception is that the center of the forehead is in light. I would make the shadow from about the right of center of the eyebrow on the right and moving up and to the right until it meets the hairline. The other areas were well thought out and your work to find them is to be commended.

The clean decision of light and shadow in a painting is a valuable key to the reading of the design and therefore strengthens the composition. It also give one a great deal of freedom when painting for effect when one is faced with the inevitable problems, working from life, namely colors which are simply outside of our range of pigments. It is similar to the idea that music can be transposed into different keys and ranges but usually with sacrifice of one sort or another. Paintings must be transposed into different keys and ranges in order to obtain certain effects but usually with some sacrifice. If one understands the role of a strong grasp of light and shadow being opposing forces, then their relationship can be moved around the value and color scales and still maintain a near perfect representation of your subject. A muttled intermediate zone is a fly-in-the-ointment and often destroys an effect.

This zone is usually the darkest part of the light and can be more easily grasped if one casts a shadow onto the subject and moves it around. If movement is seen, then the area is in light. If not, it is shadow. After all a shadow cannot be cast into a shadow.

I hope this is helpful and not more confusing. I know it makes perfect sense to me as I write this but may not to others. If I have created confusion, my apologies and please post again.

Clayton