Saturday, May 21, 2011

Effect of Colored Lights

The color of the light source directly affects the hue on the light side of form. Within the cast shadow, it causes the illusion of the light-source complement. As Reilly illustrates in his notes below, a red light on a white object would give the white a red cast in the light, and the cast shadow would look like blue-green. 


Paint the object in the light with it's local color plus the color of the light source. 


The cast shadow is the local plus the complement. It's chroma should only be half as strong as the surrounding light area.


The chroma in the cast shadow gets slightly weaker as it comes towards the viewer, and stronger as it recedes from view. 


© John Ennis 2011

 Next Topic: Lighting Basics

10 comments:

Douglas K said...

John, I have been enjoying your blog. Reilly's notes address so many important painting issues. His visual presentation, with your commentary, presents his concepts in an unusually straightforward and clear manner - it's terrific that you are sharing them with us. Thank you.

John Ennis said...

I appreciate your comments Douglas, thank you!

Sukh said...

Thank you, John, for these wonderful posts.

I can't seem to read the what the shadow colour is in example 2?

John Ennis said...

It reads "neutral". Adding red's complement (blue-green) to the red local makes the cast shadow neutral.

Debra Bryant said...

So happy to see you passing along such fantastic information. I look forward to more...

Phil Morin said...

Great Blog ! Thanks for the valuable info !

paulthea said...

Dearest John,
Your blog is a fountain of valuable information and i thank you SO much for your effort in shaping and training us young artists.
I am anxiously awaiting the next post - I do hope there is much more to come.
Gratefully Yours
Thea

John Ennis said...

Thank you Thea. I apologize for the recent gap in postings. The indoor figure painting segment is nearly done, and I am currently digging thru Reilly's landscape program at Woodstock. Hope to be posting again soon.

Sukh said...

Thanks for the reply, John!

ruzzel01 said...

I admire how you showed it.Very formal.

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