Afraid of the Darks

We paint the light by painting the darkness around it. Do not be afraid of the darks. They form the backbone of your painting and provide the context for your lights.

Precept #1
Paint the darks first. Add the lights to the darks. (Watercolor painters, because of the transparency of their medium, usually paint the lights first and the darks last. If you work in watercolor, you nevertheless should plan your darks before you start painting, either in your head or, preferably, in a quick value study.)

Value studies using designer markers

Precept #2
Keep all the darks in your painting, even white in shadow, darker than all your lights.
 
Precept # 3
In complex shadowed areas, you can introduce a variety of darks so long as they are the same value and chroma. This will prevent such areas from becoming dull or muddy.

Who knew sand was purple? It actually is in the right light, but probably not so purple
as shown here. But because the value of the shadow is correct, the effect is entirely
believable. Way Through the Dunes, Oil on canvas.

 
Precept #4
Mud occurs when a dark is the wrong value, temperature, or both. Mud is not intrinsic to any particular color or mix of colors.
 
Precept #5
Do not overemphasize reflected lights in shadow. They fracture your darks and cause them to look unshadowlike. If you must introduce a reflected light into a shadow, make sure it is close in value to the predominant shadow color.
 
Useful Combinations

• Viridian and Cadmium Red Light = dark, neutral; i.e., near black. Viridian is blue with a touch of yellow; cad red light is red with a touch of yellow-the resulting combination therefore contains red, yellow, and blue. Tinted with white, the mixture yields a range of lovely warm or cool grays. You can adjust the temperature of the mixture by letting either the green or the red predominate.
• Viridian and Alizarin Crimson = deep, rich violets. Can be tinted to make a variety of lovely, neutralized lavenders.
• Ultramarine Blue and Yellow Ochre = deep, neutralized green. Excellent for shaded foliage and for conifers. Ultramarine blue has a touch of red; ochre is yellow with a touch of red and blue. Again, the result is a mix of three primaries.
• Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna = deep, rich browns. Can be tilted toward warm or cool tones. In equal amounts it yields a near-black.

Mixing Technique

Put a generous blob of each pigment side by side and gradually mix them together
until you get the dark you want. Don't just plop one color onto the other until you
have enough experience with the mix to be able to quickly judge how much is
appropriate for the color you want.

Mixing Shade and Shadows

In painting terms "shade" and "shadow" are loosely used to describe the side of an object away from the light as well as the shadow cast by the object. The darkest area on an object occurs along the boundary separating shadow from light. This dark is called the core shadow. The lightest part on the shaded side of an object occurs as a reflected light along the edge farthest from the light source. This reflected light is the color bouncing off a nearby object or surface.

The shaded side of an object is normally a darker, neutralized version of the local color of the object. A cast shadow is normally a darker neutralized version of the local color of the surface on which the shadow is cast. Artists, however, often take liberties with these colors, but this should be attempted only when you are able consistently to get the values right using the normal colors.

A quick and dirty recipe for mixing shade and shadow colors. To the local color add a
touch of its complement. For example, to make a shaded red, add a little dark green;
dark to indicate shadow, green to slightly neutralize the mix. The resulting mix
should still read as red, but a darker, grayer red.

White and yellow present special problems. Because white objects are so reflective,
they are almost never actually white, but, rather, pale tints of other colors.
Accordingly, white in shadow is not neutral gray, but a darker version of whatever
tint or tints make up the white in the light.

Yellow in shadow tilts either toward green or toward orange. The direction you
choose should depend on the local color (i.e., whether the yellow in light is warm or
cool) and on the colors around it. Most importantly perhaps, chose the color that best harmonizes with the rest of your painting.

Blue and violet also present additional problems because if you add their
complements you make them lighter. The trick is to make sure you don't paint your
blues and violets in the light too dark.

Shadows gradually lighten as they extend out from the objects that cast them. The
far edge of a shadow is paler and softer than near the object. The darkest part of a
shadow is a thin line marking where the object touches the surface on which it rests.
Cast shadows should have soft edges, even when cast on a hard surface. By "soft," I
don't mean completely blurred, just not knife-edge hard. And that edge increasingly
softens (blurs) with distance from its source.

In this plein-air painting, the cast shadows on the left grow lighter
and softer with distance from the object and also with distance
from the viewer. High Summer Garden, oil on canvas.