Artists can create shadows in two ways.
You can use two basic methods for creating shadows in paintings. Using value allows you to add black, white or gray to affect the darkness of your artwork. Using complementary colors involves mixing a color with its opposite to dull its overall appearance. A color wheel will help you determine color opposites. Hues positioned across from each other, like yellow and violet, are complements or opposites. Both methods work best if you keep your paint wet while working. You may apply these techniques to any opaque paint including acrylic, tempera and oil.
Instructions
Value Technique
1. Choose a position for your light source. You do not have to paint the light source in your artwork, but you do need to know where the light originates. The parts of an object that stick out the most and are closest to the light source will be the lightest. The parts that recede and are farthest from the source will be darkest. Everything else will be midtones.
2. Squeeze some of your color along with black, white and gray onto your palette. Load your paintbrush with your color and a little gray. Start painting in the midtones or areas with medium light exposure. Keep the paint wet while you work, adding water as necessary for acrylics or temperas. Oil paint dries slowly, so you will need to dilute it with linseed oil only for the purpose of spreading easily, not to keep the paint moist.
3. Mix some of your color with black to create a shade. Work the shade into the darker areas of the object. Blend it into the midtones while they are still wet. You may need to go back and forth between using shades and midtomes in order to keep a wet blend for water-based paints.
4. Clean your brush thoroughly. Mix a very small amount of your color into white. Work this tint into the lightest areas of your painting, blending wet paint into wet paint where the tint meets the midtones. As with shades, you may need to go back and forth between reapplying midtones and adding the tints in order to blend successfully when using water-based paint. For extreme highlights, use white alone and do not blend. Use these highlights sparingly to avoid overpowering other areas of the painting.
Complements Technique
5. Begin by choosing a light source as in with the value technique. Prepare your palette with your two complementary colors. Determine which color will be the dominant hue of the object. For beginners, it helps to use the lighter of the two.
6. Load your paintbrush with the dominant color. Start painting in areas of brightness and midtones with pure color.
7. While your bright and midtone areas are still wet, add a small amount of the complement to your color. Mix these on your palette until you notice a dulling effect on the dominant color. Blend this into the areas of your painting that begin to grow darker. Remember to blend wet paint into wet paint and reapply pure color when necessary.
8. Repeat step 3, adding progressively more of the complementary color. This will give you gradations of bright to dull in your painting. You may continue until you create a color that is solid brown or gray. After this point, if you continue to add more complement, you will begin moving toward the other end of the spectrum, making the complementary color into the dominant color. Advanced artists may go back and forth between the two. Beginners will find it less confusing to stick to one dominant color.
