Shadows are an important element of the picture. It is they who convey the shape of the subject, the season in the landscape, the peculiarities of lighting in the still life. You can learn how to draw shadows by carefully observing them under different types of lighting and looking at classic paintings. You need to draw them in the same technique in which all the work was done. A combination of different materials is also possible, but provided that it corresponds to the artistic intent.
It is necessary
- - unfinished landscape or still life;
- - pencil sketch of a classic vase;
- - solid simple pencil;
- - simple pencils of different hardness;
- - paints, coal and other materials with which the beginning of work was carried out;
- - reproductions of paintings and drawings with images of different types of chiaroscuro.
Instructions
Step 1
Consider a landscape that depicts a summer day in the forest. Note that the shadows are directed to one side. In their shape, they repeat trees and houses, but not quite accurately. The higher the sun is, the shorter the shadows. Try to depict them in your landscape. It is best if you depict a meadow on which several trees grow in a shape that you understand.
Step 2
Suppose you are drawing a meadow at noon. At this time, the shortest shadows. Think of where the sun is in the world you have drawn. Shadows will fall in the opposite direction from him. Show their direction with a few straight lines. Mark the length of the shadows. It can be anything, but it must be proportional to the height of the trees. Outlining the extreme points, sketch out the outlines. They should slightly resemble the outline of a tree.
Step 3
Try painting a few more landscapes that depict a garden or forest at a different time of the day. You can make several of the same sketches and try to convey the time of day solely with the length of the shadows. In any case, shadows in natural light fall in the same direction, and their center lines should be parallel to each other. They are approximately the same in color. If you are painting with pencils or watercolors, make the shadows slightly darker than the main tone of the surface on which they fall.
Step 4
Draw the shadows from the house on a winter night by the light of a lantern. They fall in different directions, some of them darker and others lighter. This is because a house can be illuminated not by one lantern, but by several. Light falls on him from the windows of neighboring houses, from the moon and stars. In this case, it is more important to convey not the exact outlines of each shadow, but their fantastic interweaving. Try it with different shades of bluish or gray.
Step 5
Draw the shadow of a tree falling on the wall of the house on a winter night. Notice that the bottom of the shadow is on the ground and the top is on the wall of the building. They form a right or slightly pointed angle with each other. At the same time, the outlines of the tree almost exactly repeat not only its silhouette, but each branch is clearly visible.
Step 6
Having learned how to convey shadows from objects in landscapes, move on to classic still lifes. Try painting a white vase against a white drapery. The shape of objects in this case is conveyed exclusively by shadows. They can be portrayed in different ways. Points of the subject that are farther from the viewer appear darker. That is, the outline of the vase will be darker than its middle, which is directly in front of you.
Step 7
Try different types of shading. To convey the shape, the stroke direction corresponding to the contour is most often used. Apply heavy strokes around the edges of the image. The distances between them increase as you get closer to the center of the object. Of course, you don't need to measure anything with a ruler. Other directions of strokes are also possible - vertical, horizontal or oblique. The drapery is drawn in the same way. In this case, the strokes follow the shape of the folds.
Step 8
When you have the shape, paint in the shadow of the subject on the table and drapery. First, determine where your light source is. This can be seen from the figure. If the lightest spot is right in the middle, then the light source is right behind you. In this case, the shadow will be almost invisible. The viewer's eye captures only a tiny piece of it, and then on condition that the lower part of the object is very narrow. In any case, the shadow will fall in the direction opposite to the one where the light source is.
