Shadow and Highlight colors

[Doc]

Hi All,

I am starting out painting figures and I am wondering how to determine what color to add to my base color to make the shadows and highlights? Is there a quick guide or a thread you can point me to on this topic. When I was younger I used to use just white or black but I am reading this is not good. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[housecarl]

Don, I use a component / complimentary colour. Green is made from blue and yellow. So to darken more blue, lighten more yellow. This is an over simplified version, but hoppefuly you get my drift.
Carl.

 

[Einion]

When I was younger I used to use just white or black but I am reading this is not good. Any help would be appreciated.

It's not good to use them unthinkingly, but both can work in certain cases. Have a look at my comments in these two recent threads:
Rules in colour mixing, are there any?
Napoleonic Green

I am starting out painting figures and I am wondering how to determine what color to add to my base color to make the shadows and highlights?

There is no single method or colours that will work for every case so you have to learn to do this on a colour-by-colour basis.

One of the most important rules I picked up is to always mix by eye - always - not by using a formula. It doesn't matter how well something worked for someone else, paint mixes are extremely variable and two different versions of any colour might not lighten or darken the same way.

Einion

 

[Jamie Stokes]

Don,
carl is giving good advice.

Remember, sometimes it's ok to use black or white to shade or highlight, sometimes it's ok to use complemntary colours.....

sometimes I use the nearest match simply because I dont have the ideal colour in the paint rack.

Reds can be shaded with pruples, brownsd, yellows, oranges and various flesh tones....

Blues, can be shaded with purples, greens, white, lighter shades of blue

Google search for a colour wheel, and see what colours usually lie either side of your desired colour; that may be a guide to what colours may be used.

Please note; many colour wheels out there are of limited value, at this point, most should be fine just for you to get a handle on the idwea.

Remeber, have fun, experiment, practice, learn from your efforts, share some pics, we love to help!

cheers

 

[housecarl]

Thank you Jamie!!

 

[Einion]

Don, I would suggest for lighter mixtures to always try just white first. It works well for many mixed colours, particularly if you are not lightening excessively.

If it doesn't work - and you can be sure it won't in all cases - then try using white and something else.

For shadows, try using either grey mixed into the base colour or a mixing complement to make the initial colour (what painters would call the halftone) and then try adding a little black to that; just a small amount, you only need a little too much for something to go too dark too quickly.

It's worth mentioning that personal taste drives a lot of colour use in the hobby and realistic colour that's very similar to how things might look in the real world is simply not to everyone's taste - some people prefer brighter, more vivid colour, some people prefer much duller results (e.g. Bob Knee and Kostas Kariotelis at each end of the spectrum). Somewhere in the middle is where natural colour lies and it's where the bulk of the work of accomplished painters lies (e.g. Bill Horan, Greg DiFranco, Mike Good).

Don, I use a component / complimentary colour. Green is made from blue and yellow.

Green could be said to be largely green (see here). Only dull greens actually have a significant blue and yellow component, as in Chromium Oxide Green for example.

With complements it's important to understand that visual complements, as shown by the facing colours on a proper colour wheel (one including cyan and magenta), do not tell us what will work in mixing. It suggests what might work, but practical experience shows time and again that in reality complementary pairs are very often not opposite in hue.

So to darken more blue, lighten more yellow. This is an over simplified version, but hoppefuly you get my drift.

Lightening greens with more yellow and darkening them with more blue makes bluer shadows and yellower highlights, which is fine if it's what you want but it's not the way green will tend to look IRL. Highlights and shadows are, generally speaking, the same hue as what we'd think of as the base colour (the local colour in painting parlance).

The visual complement of green is magenta or thereabouts but the mixing complement of something is whatever works... in actual fact many green paints are actually neutralised best by violets, strange as it sounds.

Einion

 

[Anders Heintz]

Though far from very knowledgable in the subject of mixing paints etc, I would toss out the suggestion to "add white" as a first lighter color to add to the mix. White will only really work well when painting white, grays, and perhaps yellows. Your best bet for a general highlight color that will work with nearly anything is a skintone color, it will do a decent job of highligting red, blue (light or dark), green, black, Orange, Field Gray etc etc. No, it is not the one size fits all sort of paint, but it is more so then pure white is.

As for shadows, try adding black or a dark brown to the mix, usually this will do the trick, you can shade red, blue, green, yellow, white, gray etc with either of these two colors or a combination of both.

Just have fun, mix in smaller quantities and experiment. Take notes on what colors work with eachother and go from there. It will not be long before you will be able to mix just about any color you want by just looking at the color you want to do.

 

[Doc]

I want to thank everyone and this weekend I am going to start to paint my first figure in over 26 years....yikes....will post pictures of the face once iyt is completed so that I can get some feedbak. Am painting with oils for the first time. Wish me luck!!!

 

[Einion]

Good luck Don!

Anders, you might be unaware of how many paints there are that do lighten okay with just white. White will often work well with:
Cad Red Light, Medium or Dark
Cad Orange
Naples Yellow Hue (PBr24)
Cerulean Blue
Cobalt Blue
French Ultramarine
Chromium Oxide Green

Why these and not certain others? There's a pattern here that those familiar with pigments might spot.

Also these earths (although results vary as earths vary a lot):
Yellow Ochre
Mars Yellow
Gold Ochre
Venetian Red
Indian Red
Mars Violet
Burnt Umber
Raw Umber

There's another pattern here. Anyone see it?

Relying on a specific colour like a light beige, parchment, Unbleached Titanium or a fleshtone for highlighting lots of stuff has two problems. First your highlights across the figure can tend to become a little same-ey - which can look fine, if that's the effect you want - but second, like with all formulas, it will tend to hold back the development of a better eye for small colour differences that will allow you to more easily spot what works or doesn't work and why.

A skintone mixture, as mentioned in the thread on Napoleonic Green above, is generally a mixture of white and something else (as already recommended above). Problem is it's a fixed mixture of white and the others somethings. If you instead use a mixture you produce yourself not only does it make it easier to adjust the blend as necessary (more red or more yellow to work better with specific blues for example) it also has additional advantages beyond the obvious, by helping to keep you more tuned up to spot subtle changes in colour.

On a medium blue for example, a simple flesh mixture might work nicely for a basic highlight mix. But then you want to go lighter, so what do you do, add in more flesh? What happens is the mixture gets closer to the lighter colour... and flesh-coloured highlights on blue are rarely desired. Now the solution may simply be to add white at the second stage rather than more of the fleshtone, but it illustrates how easily the idea of a single go-to colour for highlights can cause a problem of its own.

Einion

 

[housecarl]

Hope you enjoy your self Don.
Carl.

 

[Bluesking]

Don,

It's a hobby, it can be as simple or as complicated as you want - just don't loose sight of the fact it is supposed to be something you do for FUN