Painting Shadows: Edges and Value

There’s so much to share about painting shadows, so I’m going to break it into a two-part series.

When we look at shadows, we are looking at the negative space, which is the area around the subject. This space is filled with shapes that are cast by the subject from either direct light or diffused light. A cast shadow occurs when an object blocks the light and casts a shadow on a surface. It is usually a darker shadow than the shadows on the object.

Changing the level of light will change the length of the cast shadows. The lower the light on the object, the longer the cast shadow. In this case, care should be taken that the shadow doesn’t become the focus of the picture, rather than the object itself.

Direct sunlight or a strong indoor light gives us a hard light source that creates clearly visible shadows and produces a hard crisp edge to the cast shadows, usually.
A cloudy sky gives us a soft light source which gives much subtler shadows with soft blurry edges.

When you’re painting a sunlit scene, the hardness of the shadows cast depends on the distance between the subject and the surface where the shadow falls. If the distance is only a few inches, it will tend to be a hard-edged shadow. If the distance is a few feet, as from a tree, the edges tend to be soft.

Value

Besides the edges of the shadow, it’s important to note the value of the shadows. Remember, value is the lightness or darkness of a subject. You can use a ten-point value scale to help you figure out the value of a shadow. also notice how they become lighter in value towards the edges.

You also need to take into account reflected light. Outdoors, shadows are often lighter than you think due to the sunlight bouncing back into them. Because of the amount of bounced light outside, a white object will reflect more light into its shadows.