highlight and shadow question

[samson]

I am currently reading a how to book but don't quite understand this shadow and highlight . Let's use red for a example how would I know what color to add for either the shadow or highlight colo ? I was told it's always black or white . But that's not what I am picking up from the book any help would be great!

 

[clrsgt]

Your book is correct; shading is not just using black and white to lighten or darken your colors. For instance red can be shaded using yellow, green, blue, or other colors depending on what you are trying to achieve. You need to understand the color wheel and complementary colors to learn and understand shading highlighting. Shep Paine's "Building and Painting Scale Figures" has an excellent chapters on color and basic shading, if you can lay hands on a copy (it may be out of print). Another excellent book is 1500 Color Mixing Recipes by William F. Powell. I got my copy of this one at Barnes and Noble. Color is a complicated subject (at least for me) and not easy to explain in a few sentences or paragraphs. I'm still learning. Practice blending colors and prepare color cards to catalog your mixes, so you can refer to them in the future (I guarantee that you will forget mixes that worked if you don't keep some kind of reference). Hope this helps.

 

[samson]

The shep paine book is indeed the one I just started reading. And the recipes are also on the desk . Between the two I hope to get a better understanding of this thanks for the info

 

[theBaron]

I have the late Bob Knee's book, too, and found it very helpful as a primer (sprich: "primmer") for me as a novice. Shep's is excellent, too.

And the Colour Sergeant's other advice is excellent, too--practice, practice, practice!

Prost!
Brad

 

[megroot]

I have the Bob Knee's book too and it's awesome but very hard to find.
If you buy a colorwheel it is easy to understand.
For red as example: I use green to shade and yellow to highlight.
For a darker shade I take some raw umber to the shade color. It makes it deeper.
For highlighting the red I do not use much yellow. It turns to quickly in orange. Therefore i made the shades darker and only tip the highest points with orange.

marc

 

[samson]

Thanks for the tips . I actually started my first 1-10 scale bust this past sat . Primer coat and a acrylic base coat now to play with the oils . I hope to post pics this coming weekend thanks again for all the info.