Painting Sunlight and Shadows in Watercolour

Painting sunlight and shadows in watercolour

Rule: This skill supplies extra specialist tips. It does not replace your normal answer. Always give your full general answer to the user's question first, then add the tips below wherever they apply. Never drop general knowledge because a tip exists here.

Starting and underdrawing

• Begin with a pale neutral colour (e.g. leftover palette dregs). Use small dots and dashes, not lines, so positions can be shifted. The marks merge into the final texture.
• Plot the shadow positions in the first marks, as importantly as the house, tree or flowerbed. The sun moves while you paint.
• Pencil lightly first if unsure. Better still, build drawing skill so you can place elements with brush and pigment.
• Let each area settle and dry undisturbed. Avoid too many layers, which cause overworking.
• Do tonal studies first (pencil, charcoal, pen or black crayon). They train the eye to see light and dark shapes and help you mix the right strength.
• Half-close your eyes on a confusing subject to separate lights from darks.

Shadow colour and mixes

• Basic shadow: Cerulean Blue + Winsor Violet (tree trunk, trellis posts, slanting roof shadow).
• Strong tangled shadow: Cobalt Blue + Winsor Violet, switching occasionally to a brown of Cadmium Red + Yellow Ochre, wet-into-wet. Apply the whole pattern in one near-seamless process, starting on the left.
• Vary the shadow colour as you go to pick up hue shifts within the dark tone.
• Cool shadow against a warm sunlit distance: deepen shadows repeatedly with cool blues, violets and Yellow Ochre mixes.
• A foreground shadow can hold a glow of warmer colour within cool grey.
• White-painted surfaces (e.g. window frames) read blue-grey in shadow.
• Darkest reflections and near-black: Prussian Blue + Alizarin Crimson.
• Faces under mixed light: yellows and reds in the lit parts, blues and mauves in the shadows. Warm electric light on one side and cool window light on the other gives coloured shadows.

Sunlit foliage and brick

• Sunlit translucent leaves: Lemon Yellow + a tiny touch of Sap Green. Painted very pale, Lemon Yellow + a tiny touch of Cerulean Blue also works.
• Grass: Lemon Yellow with more Sap Green.
• Dark leaves behind or beside sunlit ones: Sap Green + Winsor Violet, strong. This makes the transparent leaves glow.
• Greens in water and foliage: Sap Green, Prussian Blue and Winsor Violet.
• Pink brick: Yellow Ochre + Cadmium Red + a touch of Winsor Violet. A second wash is Alizarin Crimson, Yellow Ochre and Winsor Violet. Use a very pale version for brick texture.
• Make bricks on sunny wall areas pale enough to read as sunshine, not shadow.
• Brilliant red flowers (Cadmium Red geraniums) are heightened by a bright blue beside them (Cobalt + Cerulean).

Contrast and tonal building

• A shadow suggests light by contrast. Deepen shadows with second washes (e.g. shadowed grass path).
• Darken the foreground more than once to boost the sense of strong light beyond.
• For a shady interior looking out at sun, keep the outside tones as light as possible.
• A shadow thrown across the foreground brings the space forward and pushes distant objects back.
• For a shiny white object (glazed plate), tone down everything else and leave crisp-edged white reflections.
• Reserve spots of white paper wherever you see a highlight.

Edges: hard vs soft

• Edge sharpness depends on light conditions and on the distance between the object and the surface the shadow falls on. Near objects give sharp shadows. Distant foliage gives soft ones. Both can appear in one scene.
• Overcast days give at most soft, darker smudges.
• Sharp shadows (palm fronds): paint with the point of the brush on dry paper.
• Soft distant shadows: soften the edges with a little clean water so the paint bleeds slightly.
• Dark fast washes leave chinks of white from rapid strokes. Use these for details such as floating leaves.

Cast shadow patterns

• Contre-jour (facing the sun): shadows come toward you and define the ground plane. Leave halos of white paper around hair, shoulders and edges of backlit objects. Leave sunlit ground as white paper.
• Paint figure shadows on a sunlit path as one complicated shape.
• The same shadow pattern changes direction with the plane: diagonal on a wall, horizontal lozenges on the ground. Shadows bend at planes (wall tops and sides).
• Dappled shade on a building: place doors and windows lightly first, then add the shadows. Make sure the architecture holds its own against the pattern.
• Shadow grids from window or glazing bars: lay a light wash over the wall, let it dry, then add the shadow grid.
• Let a shadow wash dry completely before adding pattern over it (e.g. cement lines between paving stones).
• Branch shadows: paint with a brush. Gate or fence patterns: draw with wax resist crayons, then wash over to leave a light design against dark.
• In snow, the shadow anchors objects and defines the plane. The white paper is the snow.
• Don't let a shadow pattern dominate a portrait so much that the likeness is lost.

Perspective of shadows

• Shadows obey perspective. Parallel receding lines, and the shadows they project, converge at one vanishing point on the eye line.
• Check angles by eye by holding up the brush.
• Near the end, pin a string to the vanishing point and pull it taut along lines that should converge. Tweak any that are significantly out.

Order of work and the moving sun

• Mark the main shadows early, because the sun swings round. Add the small shadows of figures and trees at the very end so they all fall in one direction.
• In direct sunlight, paint still lifes quickly because the sun moves and changes the composition.
• Paint window shapes pale first. When dry, overpaint the darker panes.
• Lay a grey wash first, let it dry, then paint stripes on top (e.g. on a boat). Do the same for wall colour before brick pattern.
• Floral background: place flowers and vases first. Mix plenty of background colour. Lay a continuous dark tone around the flowers from left to right, pause, then fill missed gaps.
• Leave white spaces for bright translucent leaves, then fill the surrounding colour.
• Reflections: lay a heavier tone where a shadowed building reflects. Leave the bright reflected building as white paper. Fill the dark shapes around it.

Figures

• Keep figure handling loose, not tight. Start with flesh colour for heads and hands, then clothes, then background shadows in sections to tie the page together.
• Plot figures and their shadows first, before they move. Add distant people before the buildings behind.
• Figures and figure studies added to a painting must be under the same light and shade as the rest.

Sketches and photos

• Use tonal hatching with a ballpoint pen, or written tone and colour notes beside a sketch.
• Water-soluble pen: smudge with a licked finger for quick shadow tone.
• Photo as reference:
  • Print on A4 and overlay a cellophane sleeve marked with a black-marker grid.
  • Draw a larger pencil grid on the paper.
  • Transfer each square with dots and dabs of colour.
  • Erase the pencil lines once the squares are accounted for.
  • Leave tiny white highlights.
  • Add windows, doors and details over dry under-washes of Yellow Ochre and shadow colours.
• Paper used for a full-sheet photo-based piece: Waterford Saunders 300gsm Cold-pressed (NOT), full imperial, 57 x 76 cm.
• Work from the photo at location speed and don't over-detail. Dark areas in photos lose information, so use memory or notes.
• After location work, step back at home and add extra darks and small perspective corrections by careful over-painting.
• Sit in shade when possible to judge tones without sun in your eyes.