Painting Shadows (1957)

[Music] um [Music] the sun source of heat light and power sends its rays in all directions it gives the crescent of the moon it lights directly however only that which faces towards it while the moon is round like a ball we sometimes forget this fact because the dark side is not often illuminated i'm holding a white card to throw second hand light from the sun back onto the ball or onto a sculptured head it is only this reflected light that makes the shadow side visible the shadow moreover will be modified by the color of the reflecting surface my own head or any person or thing in sunlight is illumined on the shadow side by reflected light this house happens to be in florida as i work i'll try to anticipate your questions about lighting here's the finished picture from a little farther away i have already made a pencil drawing to guide me in putting in the colors not just any colors but mixtures carefully compounded from the pigment primaries i'm using chiefly cobalt blue alizarin crimson and cadmium yellow medium and i'm mixing them as you see right on the paper rather than in the palette four elements of lighting apply equally well to pictures of things in sunlight whether you use oils gouache pastel watercolor or any other medium for me watercolor happens to have the strongest appeal before determining the colors for shadows we should point out the four elements of lighting on this geometric shape where they are presented in clear exaggerated form on the top surface is what we'll call a lighting the direct light of the sun this the only face on which the sun shines is nearly always the lightest thing in the picture as it rotates into shadow it passes into b lighting or sky shadow this is illuminated by second hand light coming from above blue in our case on the underside is c the reflected light it also is a secondhand light controlled by the sunlit card that faces it when this area is shaded notice that it doesn't throw back light my white gloved hands show the a b and c lighting here is a fourth the darkness of a hole or crack in my clasped hands the lack of light in any cavity may be called d lighting other holes in pale areas might be for instance in landscape dark recesses in foliage in people they could be nostrils or the pupil of the eye in houses windows and doors have d lighting although some of these do mirror color from the trees or sky the edges of the tile roof are put in with the bright red cadmium light to contrast with the lighter shadow colors since the side of the chimney gets less light from the sky it is less blue and darker than the front and because the shadows under the porch receive additional reflected light from the porch floor they are less blue and darker than those on the end of the house blower here from the sky to our left b lighting yellow hair from the porch floor sea lighting like the house the column has direct sunlight on the right and sky reflected in the middle the warm light comes from the sunlit wall on the left an exaggeration helps to clarify a point let me take you to new hampshire and show you white paint that looks orange and now the reason for this warm sea light if there is any exaggeration to be done i prefer to cheat in favor of sunlight so with the sky i intend to paint it a little darker than it looks this is for two reasons one to bring out the sunlight and two to allow for the fading of colors in the first few minutes of drying after that my watercolor is permanent this is yellow with the slightest touch of green the sunlight on the grass will be more yellow than green we could trust our eyes to tell us what they actually see if it were not that the mind likes to instruct the eye as to what it should see the sky is blue the grass is green the house is white these are traditions not the result of observation since grass is soft and lush i'll put in the shadows while the paint is still wet and get soft edges the shadow color though facing the sky b lighting will not be too blue as there are a lot of dark holes delighting in its deep pile this is not true of the smoother cement the round sunlit spots on grass and cement come from chinks in the foliage notice the varied shapes of these holes cut in a card when i carry it back however away from its shadow the light spots all appear circular and now a close-up of the card and its shadow as i moved away the round sun intruded its shape more and more until when i was at some distance the light spots of odd shapes all became round a circle in perspective changes to an ellipse these elliptical sunspots in shadow describe the surfaces on which they fall after taking so much trouble to demonstrate the light spots in tree shadows we should show the trees that cast them there is no standard color for shadows each must be judged individually while the artist may wish to use his privilege of falsifying or changing shadow colors in the interests of design or harmony his subject will have these four elements of lighting a the direct light of the sun be shadow influenced by sky c shadow with reflected light and d shadow with very dim light the sun illuminates everything in its path even things in shadow are visible only because the sun's light is strong enough to bounce back onto them from neighboring surfaces the color strength and sources of this secondhand lighting should be understood when painting shadows