Hello Nathan, thanks for that cristal clear video ! Can we post the assignment on Insta ? Because I don't have (use) twitter, too many medias :p Cheers
Hi Nathan! I love your videos and courses, they help me to improve a lot, however i have a question, that maybe would be useful. Traditionally, is thought that the primary colors are yellow, red and blue, so the complementaries, would be, red-green, blue-orange, and yellow-violet. However when we paint at the computer, the colors are mixed from green, red and blue, so the complementary for red may be a sort of cyan. Maybe I'm quite confused, but would be great to have your opinion in this matter.
Thanks you very much for this vidéo about the Color Impacts. It's interesting because i remember the letters of Van Gogh to his brother Théo and the color theories of Johannes ITTEN . Have a best Mr !!!
I just did a piece on Muddy Colors about this very subject. It's one I preach about A LOT. I think much of the complication comes from the very concept of "shadows". We talk about a light "casting shadows" for example. Light can only cast light. Really there is no shadow (except maybe that's a good term for nearly black occluded areas). If you can see something, it is being lit. Rather than thinking in terms of shadows, thinking of a shadow as a darker version of the "local color" which is then influenced by some secondary light, I encourage students to think only in terms of light, light, light, shining, bouncing, refracting.
so in terms of existentiality, what actually is a shadow because we always say darkness travels faster than light its funny because light is also confused. people used to say it isnt a form of matter or that its not real when its both a particle and wave
@@avengeallheroes-nocommenta9878 a shadow is just an absence of (direct) light from a given source (usually because it's being blocked). Darkness can "travel" faster than light because it doesn't really travel - it's just an absence: what is travelling is the light. The region light is not reaching may change over time, but that still happens through light travelling at it's own speed. So, as Chris put, anything which isn't pitch black is being seen through some light (or really a combination of lights). About the nature of light, the current best understanding comes from something like quantum electrodynamics / quantum field theories. Even in plain old quantum mechanics, saying light "*is* a particle and a wave" is sort of a simplification. This makes sense because light acts in ways you expect each to act: it has energy which changes in discrete steps, can exert pressure, interferes, polarizes, refracts and etc.
I never understood why the warm cool and cool warm thing is taught as a fact and rule when shadows just take the colour of the ambient light, reflected/bounced light, and/or colour of a contacting surface/the surroundings. Only exception are contact shadows and sometimes ambient occlusion which just get darker as no external light affects them
Exactly, it's basically an oversimplified version of saying that ambient sky light makes the shadows blue. Only after I watched this video, and read color and light by James Gurney, did it all make sense.
It is a maxim of traditional school of painting, where for hundreds of years most common available light source for painters are daylight for main light and sky light for ambient light, causing warm light and cool shadows.
I pressed like because I think exactly like you but I guess that it is more a rule of harmony than a rule of reality, like musical rules are almost always harmonic rules while there is othere rules that are a question of reality like the fact that a vibration of 440 Hz will also create vibration of 220, 110, 55 etc, and the rule of using notes that are the same but an octave higher or lower is more a rule of harmony because it gies well together. Like the "rules" of colors composition like adjacent, complementary, triadic, split conplementary, etc... Not rules of exact reality, just a "rule" of harmony, that we should take more as a tool than a rule. Btw I think that it should be the way to teach it, rules of harmony being tools, not exact rules that we cannot deviate from. But it's my opinion, I never took any real course so may e there is teachers and maybe more about it, like saying that like it was like this and no way to question it. I would not be surprise, at all. "People" are so full of certainties that they follow "rules" without questioning anything.. In french we speak about the things that horses have on the eyes to be able to see ONLY what is afront and cannot see at all what is on the side (oeillères) an expression says that a person has these when this person see only what we told him and never question it, never think by himself (il/elle a des oeillères) because these things is to keep the horse attention afront, not allowing him to look around. To keep the horse see what we want him (it, I know but for me animals aren't objects) to see. Just ask yourself, when you learn a rule, what kind of rule it is, for this just try to understand it, the reality of it and the reasons of it existence. If it has no reality but serves a purpose that makes sense you can considere it to not being an unquestionnable rule like a rule of physic (we cannot fly on actual earth without external help because of gravity) so what kind of rule it is, in this case, I considere it to be a rule of harmony, but even in harmony it is a bit questionnable because yellowish green and redish purple, which one is cold, which one is warm.. ? I'll replace it by "complementary shadow" which from where you can arrive at what really happens, just taking this rule as a simplifaction rule, of harmony.
True but in reality you won't likely ever find a setting where ambient light is warmer than a warm source of direct light, or cooler than a cool source oh light. Even just darkening a color will desaturate it, which in context will make it cool-er. The same thing happens in an over cast setting, the gray/white sky light will desaturate colors making them cooler in relationship to their local color, any warm direct light hitting in this context will be warmer. So I still think the rule makes sense when you are painting a big landscape and need to set the overal mood tone before going deeper into these concepts of "local color that aren't hit by sky light and bounce lights are warm accents", etc. What makes it confusing when someone it's starting to learn is grasping the concept of color relationships where even a warm gray can be a "cool" color if sorrounded by warmer colors. Changing the words cool and warm to cooler and warmer would amke more sense.
yesss, definitely agree with a lot nathan said, when i'm painting my own stuff, i usually don't think of whether i should have cool shadows or things like that, i usually just think about what color is being reflected by what
I did my IB ART class research, particularly the notes/analysis for my final, on advanced color theory. It REALLY changed my approach to art, and observing life in general, when I started seeing *every* material as essentially reflective. Scientifically, it is, all we're ever seeing is constantly-bouncing light.
Much of what Nathan Fowkes is describing is what Johannes Itten called simultaneous contrast. Neutral colors tend to take on the appearance of whichever color is complementary to the saturated color put next to it. The example with a grey square on an orange field next to grey square on a green field is straight out of Johannes Itten's The Elements of Color.
There's noting to be against in this video! Stellar explanation. I would put emphasis on "Relative" as you say. Richard Schmid in his videos always says that warm light produces cool shadows and vice versa but he's always meant it relatively and as a general guideline and not as a rule that is not to be broken...
I also suspect we're talking about Schmid. In Alla Prima p.123 under "color and light": "The great (and almost perfect) color law". "Cool light produces warm shadows, [and vice versa]". I didn't remember it as very equivocal. Love the guy, but this and things like, (p. 115) a color can't be "neutralized" by its complement because there's no such thing as a neutral color, made me question him. But then I'm a lousy student. I think she took a questionable idea and overdid it.
8:37 "what is next to a color can have a major influence" this is exactly what I was thinking of a started working on since around one and half week. Trying to make people see blue blueberries in a canvas where I don't use any blue at all, so no colors containing blue, no green, no purple, not even browns or bluish geys.. using only yellow orange red magenta black and white. I started thinking about the complementaries that we teach us (orange being blue complementary) and I quickly realise that just by starting by exagerating orange athmosphere by painting an orange layer everywhere there will be no blue before starting puting orangish mix of the colors. That my idea that should've be correct (grey to make blue, grey and yellow to make green and grey and magenta to make purple), was not exactly, the magenta helped a lot making a false purple, the yellow and grey is ok to make false green because when we see an olive-camo color, we associate it woth green even if it has no or very little blue in it (guys ! And girls of course, try to mix black with yellow, eventually a bit of white with it, olive greens, camo greens are for me fake greens, there no blue, or sometimes a very little of it but try to play with yellow, black and white, you ll be surprise ! 😉, for me it's a base that we don't speak enough to beginners, never heard it in any youtube video, I discovered it by myself more than 20 years ago.) So, back to the subject. I searched for pictures of color illusion where we would see blue but in fact the color is grey and I've find one with a rubicube, a little girl with a rubicube and the center color or the rubicube face was grey, 100% (the same image beside with a kind of magenta purple filter I think and the same pure grey was making is see yellow). The picture was like if it had a color filter that would make us adapt our vision to the filter and make us "read" (cerbral, visual lecture) the grey as blue, BUT, the "filter" wasn't orange, it wasn't a grey in an orangish environement that mske us see (read) the grey as blue, it was yellow, a kind of yellow filter impression or simply apply to all exept the middle square, a yellow filter and then replace the square with a pure grey, I giess it's the technic. So now the question is: why do a yellow filter makes us read grey as yellow but a king a purple magenta or someting like this but NOT BLUE, makes us read the grey as yellow.. ?? And this is where I think complementary colors is a very complexe thing.. in a video of a guy that made a color wheel and placed the classic colors paints on the market, they was a kind of test to see complementary apparing by fixing a black dot (I'm sure a lot of tou did see it, don't hesitate to put the link in the comments, if nobody does I will search for it and do it myself). And the idea was to say that the complemenaries that we "teached" (someone correct me please, I'm learning english, I know it's wrong, more like "tought" but I really struggle with these words with ght or things like this, as terminaison) us are wrong and that for example yellow complementary would be blue (not cyan, more the blue of a rubicube) and others difference and I put many comments because I've seen this video many times and everytime I had the same result that wasnt the one he had, my result was more of a between, the yellow gived me a bluish purple not blue (as complementary) and same for the others, like if my perception was between what we taught us (I finaly searched, is it correct ?) and what the guy in the video says. All this because now, take a again the picture that I was speaking, one have a yellow filter and you see or read grey as blue (a blue that isn't green at all, more the blue that we would make with magenta and cyan, you know this blue that is very deep, like the blue of the Bic pen). And the other picture has or magenta or purplish magenta (so not blue, not even this "Bic" blue) makes our eyes, brain, read (or see) the grey as yellow. So I guess sometimes, in certain situation, sometimes even in the same color system (additive, substractive, etc), we can have diiferent complementary system.. Would be cool, great, huge, exraordinary !! To study all this, seriously, to do a scientific study amd publish it, to publish a big scientific study on color theory about complementary, in which case complementary are this and which other it is that, and when, how, why, sometimes in the same systeme (filter in this example) complentaries can be different ! Do anyone can answer why this difference ? And know if someone alrrady studied all this and can say for exemple how to make a pure grey be seen as a greenish turquoise for example, or a redish orange, which color of filter ? Or simply for basic colors like a basic green ? If to see blue we need a yellow filter, do we need an orange filter to see grey as green, and with a red filter would grey be read as yellow.. ? Oh no, neds a more purple or magenta fliter.. so with a redish filter a pure grey would be read as a yellowish green ? I would love to find content on all this ! Édit, sorry I did a mistake, the grey square appear yellow with a blue (this same « bic blue ») filter. So now the question is for the other colors, magenta with green? Cyan with orange ? Do we need to correct the color wheel and complemtaries ? Maybe this filter technic is the best, the more precise way, to find the exact complementary of every color, take a picture with a lot of colors, apply to it a filter of the color that you want to know the complementary and then select the color that, considering what we’ve seen, is the most chance of being the complementary, cyan filter, take the orange that you think has the most probability of being the complementary of your cyan and replace it by a pure grey (choose the orange before applying the filter, apply the filter, check the color just by curiosity and if it’s not the no color 50/50 white and black grey, replace it by this « pure grey » the color that you’ll see ( but cannot mesure because it will just be grey) will be the complementary of the color of the filter, I guess.. but you’ll need, in my opinion, a picture where you will associate colors like skin, the relation between rubicube squares, etc, you’ll need references.
4:20 this reminds me of renaissance painting mode called "Cangiante" - in theory the shadow on the object was painted with different hue of colour (i.e. Red shadow on yellow object - yellow is not dark enough to convey the Illusion of the shadow, but red is close in hue and still vibrant enough)
I think a good learning tool would be to remind them it's a spectrum again and you should consider where you're at on the spectrum and if you want it a little warmer, to just go warmER. If you're knee deep in the cold stuff move on to the warmer-cold stuff to warm it up a little. Consider the giant leap across the spectrum you make when you go from electric blue to vermillion.
- Colour is so relative based on the lighting/colour of the object/surrounding. - Also pay attention to the theory of colour/light. For example, where does a blue need to travel to get warm in relation to the scene. Ie, a neutral grey is warmer than a typical blue local colour so in context would read as being warm . Similarly a slightly desaturated red/purple, could appear cool against a saturated red. Even though we think of red as being hot. -A cool thing to note (pun intended) is that ambient occlusion is almost always relatively warm due to the strength of warm light Vs cool. Short wavelength (cool colours like blue, indigo etc) are not able to travel as far and lose energy far quicker. So ANY light that your eyes would see would be that of long wavelength (warm colours). And that is why ambient occlusion/occlusion shadow is relatively warm. - Bottom line of things to access: what is the local colour? How reflective is the material? What is the temperature of the light(and hue), same for skylight/ambience. And then make your colour decisions accordingly.
Thank you ! I am less confused now. Roger Dean uses electric blue for shadows and it looks incredible, but it also reinforces the surreal feel of his landscapes. A no-go for realism x')
Thank you for making this video. I do pixel art and there’s a huge misconception that practically every tutorial for the medium teaches, where all shadows tend towards a saturated purple color and this cleared up a lot
What a fantastic explanation of warm li... ok, of lightS and ShadowS, object and environment around! Thanks, very helpful and fun to watch. Your a master painter and a great teacher, brillant! Thanks for sharing this profound knowledge.
So glad you found this helpful!! Be sure to check out Nathan's courses on Schoolism for more lessons like this😊 schoolism.com/courses/online-art-classes ~S
while I agree that warm light means cool shadow should not be a rule of thumb and understanding ambient light etc is important, I think there's also something to be said about experimenting with shadow temp and color which is why I don't think the student using saturated blue as a bad example. I think it could work great if the student knew what they were doing well enough.
Itten's colour theory expands on contrasts, it's very interesting and great to have in mind whenever one draws/paints/sketches; you showed one of them in this video, the grey one. The one where the "colour" grey can take certain tone qualities if next to another colour, usually the contrary colour. Example: if you have grey next to violet, the grey will "seem" a little bit yellow. I think the warm light makes cool shadow and viceversa still stands, not always as saturated, and also not always there. It's one way of doing things, not an "always do it this way only". Like you said, many artists fall into traps of doing stuff without truly thinking about it, heck, I have done it too. Great video as always :)
The rabbit hole actually goes a bit deeper if you try to figure out why this happens to be true. And also, that it's not only the case for grey next to a color, but for any colors viewed next to each other and even different values perceived next to each other influence your experience of them, it's generally referred to as simultaneous contrast. An important factor to note as well that the AMOUNT of the specific hues or values present and how close they are to each other in the viewing plane matters a lot for how strong the effect is. All of this gives the insight and boils down to: Context is pretty much everything. It determines how hues, saturation and values ultimately are truly perceived. So your choices in colors should always depend on the context you place them in. colorusage.arc.nasa.gov/Simult_and_succ_cont.php www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color4.html#simultaneous The whole language of 'cool' and 'warm' are very limiting ideas if you go to this extent of manipulating the color experience, since the relationships between them are far more complex than that.
@@PeppoMusic indeed! My paint teacher always tells us that contrast and context is everything in a painting, he couldn't be more right! Thank you for the webpage, I'll check it out!
I think it's also important not to conflate the principle of simultaneous contrast with color constancy. The former (those gray boxes on different colored backgrounds) has a negligible effect on picture making, as demonstrated by the fact that the examples always used to show this employ relatively small areas of pure gray (zero chroma) surrounded by a lot of a single saturated color. Color constancy is similar (in that it can make the same color appear different in two different places within the same painting), but it is MUCH more powerful. It is so powerful that we truly cannot judge colors and values in the absolute sense at all (we've all seen the checkerboard illusion and that rubik's cube thing where the yellow appears as a brown on one side). This is because our visual apparatus is so highly refined for deducing "local color" from a lighting context that it truly has no ability to see color objectively, and THAT is what's critical for painting (setting up those kinds of relationships, with color and value).
That color constancy is one of the key problems I think the idea of the "naive eye" attempts to give you a tool to handle. You try to not name the object you are looking at. It is nice to gather knowledge and use it to help us paint, and its also nice to let all the assumptions go see what you see. You mentioned " setting up those kinds of relationships" which makes you think you are already onto a solution to the color challenge. Have you listen to Dr.Paul Ingbretson already? If not your comment makes me think you might find interest in some of the ideas he discusses. He is a sample you might a enjoy: th-cam.com/video/cbt2unwL-xM/w-d-xo.html These are a bigger look at the idea painting the way they appear as opposed to painting things the way they are: th-cam.com/video/A6i6pRknzcQ/w-d-xo.html Part 1 Velasquez th-cam.com/video/Yg1JkR7ubLw/w-d-xo.html Part 2 Vermeer th-cam.com/video/ipxkB60O-BQ/w-d-xo.html Part 3 Chardin th-cam.com/video/GbfsHeWmRAo/w-d-xo.html Part 4 Monet th-cam.com/video/9fEE3mShNN4/w-d-xo.html Part 5 Sargent I have gotten value from understanding light and building a model of it in my head (the painting by the object) and also from letting those models go (painting by the spot). I hope you get value from both types of content as well. Here recently im putting myself outside and trying to get the look of nature in my backyard so wish me luck :).
the part of me that never grew past high school was too satisfied over already knowing why the shadows looked like that (the environment/reflections) in the 3:58 and onward artworks 😂
O_o Woah that bright blue shadow. I didn't know about the rule of shadow having the opposite shadow. I thought the shadow was based on the ambient light. Blue is a good color to go by. That is not because it is opposite of sunlight. It is because because it comes from the ambient light from the blue sky. This is not a hard and fast rule though. If something is inside with no access to sky or other blue things, the blue shadow wouldn't occur anymore. I realized that I was right. The video is an awesome tutorial. I could use a good review. I don't want to be too harsh on the student for her mistake. This involves lighting and saturation. This is something that is more advanced and nuanced. It is something I am currently learning and practicing on. If a novice doesn't know about that yet, they can fall into the trap of using really bright colors when it isn't always appropriate. I used to use bright colors too. So I can't throw stones. I call this my sparkle dog phase. I didn't really make any sparkle dogs. However I did make the same problems. I have the saturation turned all the way up. It is bright and vivid. My one saving grace it to put limits on how many hues to work with at once. It is even more problematic to have all kinds of hues across the rainbow spectrum and put them together with no rhyme or reason. Depending on ones opinion, the results either looks cool or looks garish. To me, I think it looks like unicorn vomit. I did grow out of my sparkle dog phase. It is when I learn about saturation and lighting. It is a lot more nuanced than learning about local color and about the basics of shading. Saturated colors do have their strengths. They are great at cartoons, especially the 2D versions. They are also good for advertisments and logos. Bright colors are fun and catch attention. Unsaturated colors also have major strengths. I have heard advice to avoid saturated colors. I didn't understand at first. The reasoning is that saturated colors look bad. They are garish and gaudy. It did not come across for me. It wasn't until I became more experienced that I finally appreciated desaturated colors. I used them more often. Turning down the saturation a bit makes the colors more realistic. This is a look I enjoy a lot more. Realistic rendering can still be done, even if the subject mater is not realistic. There is a powerful immersion. I get sucked in. I love doing fantasy art. So the subject matter is wierd. Yet really realistic rendering can still bring immersion. Going the vibrant route or realistic route can still work. It depends on what one is aiming for. I like to move toawrds realistic. My favorite picture in this video is the one of the parrots. It is a nice finale. The parrots are not realistic in design. They are cartoony. However there is still a realistic rendering with the lighting and texture. This is a great example of what I like to aim for. Cartoon parrots alone is tame subject matter for unrealistic stuff. However it still has a nice dose of cartoony to set it apart from the other pictures. I would like to learn more about saturation, and how it works in lighting. In this video I learned that desaturated colors may appear warm or cool to contrast the more saturated colors. This is not an objective change in color, but on how that color is percieved. I wonder how much more is there. Having bright blue shadows is not realistic. It is too saturated. It is also not dark enough. Ambient light is very weak. So it is something that would be learned by advanced artists.
That is a very well done and explained video about the topic removing common says and misconceptions we sometimes acquire from looking at videos. Thank you! By the way - wonderful sketches!
Warm light, cool shadows as I was taught it derives from the science of light and how our eyes compensate for saturated hues. If you turn on a colored light in a completely dark room and stick an object or your hand under that light, the shadow will start to look like the complimentary color to the light, because your eyes are compensating for the overabundance of color pouring into your eyes- which relates to what Nathan is explaining with the grey tones next to different hues. This is why hospitals have pastel blue or green scrubs in operating rooms- to help compensate for the amount of blood the doctors and nurses have to look at sometimes for hours on end. The principle of warm light, cool shadow is overly simplified, and thus works best within a frame of overly simplified or stylized/abstracted work like comics or cartoons. In this setting, very often the only considerations for light source are its color (to the exclusion of bounce light, local color, reflected color, etc) and it works very well. When you start transitioning to more realistic work, you have to take other principles of light into consideration. So overall, I'd have to disagree that it's not useful or unnecessary. It's just not useful or necessary for work where you want to take all attributes of light into account.
part of the object on the light, will shift towards the color of the light source. - the rest, will stay the color it would be, under a white light, it's “actual color” (unless there's bounced light- which there always is, which would ALSO drag the shadow SLIGHTLY towards the same direction of the light.) - A WARM LIGHT DOES NOT MAKE THE COLORS IN SHADE COOLER, IT MAKES THEM COOLER IN RELATION TO THE LIGHT
there's this game i play called i love hue that's kind of like the assignment you gave - it's a gradient colour puzzle that very clearly shows how different colours can look next to each other, its kinda trippy
Somebody made a comment on saturation and desaturation. I'd like to learn to paint in more of a realistic or desaturated color schemes. I'm used to cartoons and harsh color scheme or flats.
that will depend on how much light an object absorbs and reflects back into the enviroment and in on itself, theoritical objects (meaning no surface is bouncing on the object) will have just a darker shade of the same base color due to it's chemistry, providing that you have no artificial light of a certain hue pointing at the object
Black absorbs and white reflects ^.^ color temperature is relative to the color of the objects and color of light. and contrast of color can influence the perception of the color temperature.
i love how you interpret light, it's not some color theory thing. It's just... light. A wave/particle. Warm light does not mean cool shadows, either that's the environment or it's just visual snow (at least for me, it comes in all colors, but mostly blue) I'm not sure why I amen't subscribed to you (I'm quite sure I subbed, sometime, just don't remember when I unsubbed) Though is some of the bounce-lighting is a bit off? ... especially in 9:37 where some of the intense reflected light doesn't make its way to the larger rock in the background. I remember looking at a big mass of rock while I was traveling, not even that much reflected light and already the shadows were bright. I see this alot in materials we use, even our hands, computers, books, cardboards, everything we see tends to reflect bounce light a lot (which is why we can see them). Mirrors absorb i think only around 5% of the incoming light, meaning technically you can make 2 mirrors stare at each other and still see the 15th reflection without too much problem. Main concerns here is 7:02 which looks like it has a little bit too little reflected light, and in 8:53 where the blue light doesn't even contribute to the reflection, making the explanation a tad bit off. Is this a mistake or was it intended for demonstration purposes, or was the video correct and my understanding of light was wrong? Please answer because I'm a bit confused. Thanks.
I do use blues and purples in shadows sometimes to add more contrast and vibrancy to a painting, no technical explanation for ya. It just looks cool, lol.
I think the issue is that for one, like someone else noted, in the dawn of art there really was just "the sun lights the subject and the sky colors the shadows", so that likely ingrained itself into the teachings of painters. But more so, as a quick and dirty rule it is useful for new artists to get good contrasts in their work. By the time they are ready to more deeply understand color and light, and actually try to parse all that knowledge, they will likely be moving beyond that "rule". So it's really just a way to not overload a new artist's brain and give them something to latch onto for the time being, something they can then expand beyond when they have other fundamentals like their values down. Of course no one will go beyond it without the lessons of how to, so I'm not saying this video shouldn't exist. I just think there is some merit in the simplified "rule" for those starting out.
oh no... i still have so many questions... all the same, i'm glad i stumbled across this, since it's been one of my biggest sources of confusion in my art, and now i'm... slightly less confused.
If you're interested in this topic, Nathan teaches "Designing with Color and Light" and "Pictorial Composition" on www.schoolism.com which go into much more detail! ~S
can i ask you, if we have for example an opaque warm color object( red ) in a completely closed void white room o gray room with a one warm source light, which color will every shadow be? And if them will be cold which cool color we have to choose for shadows in this case?
Thank you! I thought I had a learning disability because I couldn’t make sense of the warm/cool rule with what I was seeing. So paint what you see or intuit and are personally expressive.
Is hue being confused with shadow temp in this video? We could have yellow sunlight hitting one side of the sphere, and cool yellow shadows on the other side. As long as the shadows are cooler than the directly lit side, we have cool shadows. Shadows don't have to be colored by the cool side of the color wheel to be cooler. Shadows need to be cooler, not necessarily "blue".
I watched the video and I'm very grateful for it! I heard about both, that the colour of an object is determined by its surroundings, but also the warm-light-cool-shadow-thing. And because there are many pictures where it did add up and many where it didn't I wasn't sure which one was right, if you combine both etc. (I don't have a teacher I can ask.) Thanks for clearing that up! Just one question, I might have missed it, but how is the colour of the direct casting shadow determined? Is it just dark grey/black at the darkest region slowly blending into the colour of the table/floor/tile an object is on, the further away it is from the object? (Again sorry if this was already answered, English is not my native language, so some nuances and variations in word choices might get lost sometimes.)
Thank you so much for this video, I'm so grateful you took the time to get it out to us!! i loved it, I admit I was also struggling with my art because I thought I had to follow the rule of warm light = cold shadows, but it just wasnt working for me, since it didn't quite make complete sense. Thanks again!
So glad to hear you found this video so helpful! Nathan is an incredible teacher and is able to explain these types of theories with ease. Thanks for watching! ~S
I've seen the "blue light from the sky" mentioned by another artist. The sky light is not visibly blue tinted at all. It only takes a white paper placed on the ground on a sunny day. The white paper is... white.
Ehat about the "rule" that says "Warm rich color advances, cool desaturated color retreats"? Isn't it generally true that as color moves "away from the viewer" it trends towards a "more cool desaturated color " efen thouhg that color (the retreating co.or I mean) may still be fairly warm in itself? Won't it generally be true that it will be slightly cooler than the high,ight colors u less the light is itself cool?
great stuff - thank you - really upped our journey with light in our work - it's our passion, and this is simple and foundational and delightfully complex :O) - Yummy - cheers
@@BobbyChiu We've been walking around the house analyzing color and light -practicing 'unseeing' lines - investigating every light source/reflection... so eye opening and exciting - cheers - not easy but satisfying, encouraging/empowering - lots to explore/grow and learn :O)
I read about the "cool light = warm shadows, warm light = cool shadows" concept from James Gurney's book, Color and Light, and I didn't get it all (it made me stop reading the book midway, it was all so confusing). Thank you for this, light and shadows are really tricky especially for artists like me who are still trying to understand art fundamentals one concept at a time :) Very excited to get my hands on your book! :)
9:28 your cube is WRONG Why lightest area is farthest from the light sourse Why no your warm shadow plane reflex stronger near cast shadow DIsbalance in shadow occlusion makes cube seemingly floating
The next video will be about color hue and saturation relationships which I hope will answer some of the questions here. Be out in a few weeks.
Waiting for it
Thanks a lot
great video Nathan, your art has that expresssive magic in it. its great to be your student (even if its virtually!)
Hello Nathan, thanks for that cristal clear video ! Can we post the assignment on Insta ? Because I don't have (use) twitter, too many medias :p Cheers
Hi Nathan! I love your videos and courses, they help me to improve a lot, however i have a question, that maybe would be useful. Traditionally, is thought that the primary colors are yellow, red and blue, so the complementaries, would be, red-green, blue-orange, and yellow-violet. However when we paint at the computer, the colors are mixed from green, red and blue, so the complementary for red may be a sort of cyan. Maybe I'm quite confused, but would be great to have your opinion in this matter.
Thanks you very much for this vidéo about the Color Impacts. It's interesting because i remember the letters of Van Gogh to his brother Théo and the color theories of Johannes ITTEN . Have a best Mr !!!
I just did a piece on Muddy Colors about this very subject. It's one I preach about A LOT. I think much of the complication comes from the very concept of "shadows". We talk about a light "casting shadows" for example. Light can only cast light. Really there is no shadow (except maybe that's a good term for nearly black occluded areas). If you can see something, it is being lit. Rather than thinking in terms of shadows, thinking of a shadow as a darker version of the "local color" which is then influenced by some secondary light, I encourage students to think only in terms of light, light, light, shining, bouncing, refracting.
so
in terms of existentiality, what actually is a shadow
because we always say darkness travels faster than light
its funny because light is also confused. people used to say it isnt a form of matter or that its not real when its both a particle and wave
Not exaggerating, this video and your comment has basically changed my whole perception.
@@avengeallheroes-nocommenta9878 a shadow is just an absence of (direct) light from a given source (usually because it's being blocked). Darkness can "travel" faster than light because it doesn't really travel - it's just an absence: what is travelling is the light. The region light is not reaching may change over time, but that still happens through light travelling at it's own speed.
So, as Chris put, anything which isn't pitch black is being seen through some light (or really a combination of lights).
About the nature of light, the current best understanding comes from something like quantum electrodynamics / quantum field theories. Even in plain old quantum mechanics, saying light "*is* a particle and a wave" is sort of a simplification. This makes sense because light acts in ways you expect each to act: it has energy which changes in discrete steps, can exert pressure, interferes, polarizes, refracts and etc.
that's cool but do you think you are automatically a better artist by knowing this? @@user-sl6gn1ss8p
That is a pretty smart thought!
I hope people will understand what value this carry and it's for free... Thank you Nathan!
Thank you for watching! Glad you enjoyed the video.
~S
Not free. We help to support him with ads, but they deserve it!
Value is the key; right?
I never understood why the warm cool and cool warm thing is taught as a fact and rule when shadows just take the colour of the ambient light, reflected/bounced light, and/or colour of a contacting surface/the surroundings. Only exception are contact shadows and sometimes ambient occlusion which just get darker as no external light affects them
It can be a useful rule if your goal is to create saturated high-contrast shadows. But yeah, certainly not a general rule.
Exactly, it's basically an oversimplified version of saying that ambient sky light makes the shadows blue. Only after I watched this video, and read color and light by James Gurney, did it all make sense.
It is a maxim of traditional school of painting, where for hundreds of years most common available light source for painters are daylight for main light and sky light for ambient light, causing warm light and cool shadows.
I pressed like because I think exactly like you but I guess that it is more a rule of harmony than a rule of reality, like musical rules are almost always harmonic rules while there is othere rules that are a question of reality like the fact that a vibration of 440 Hz will also create vibration of 220, 110, 55 etc, and the rule of using notes that are the same but an octave higher or lower is more a rule of harmony because it gies well together.
Like the "rules" of colors composition like adjacent, complementary, triadic, split conplementary, etc...
Not rules of exact reality, just a "rule" of harmony, that we should take more as a tool than a rule. Btw I think that it should be the way to teach it, rules of harmony being tools, not exact rules that we cannot deviate from.
But it's my opinion, I never took any real course so may e there is teachers and maybe more about it, like saying that like it was like this and no way to question it.
I would not be surprise, at all. "People" are so full of certainties that they follow "rules" without questioning anything..
In french we speak about the things that horses have on the eyes to be able to see ONLY what is afront and cannot see at all what is on the side (oeillères) an expression says that a person has these when this person see only what we told him and never question it, never think by himself (il/elle a des oeillères) because these things is to keep the horse attention afront, not allowing him to look around. To keep the horse see what we want him (it, I know but for me animals aren't objects) to see.
Just ask yourself, when you learn a rule, what kind of rule it is, for this just try to understand it, the reality of it and the reasons of it existence.
If it has no reality but serves a purpose that makes sense you can considere it to not being an unquestionnable rule like a rule of physic (we cannot fly on actual earth without external help because of gravity) so what kind of rule it is, in this case, I considere it to be a rule of harmony, but even in harmony it is a bit questionnable because yellowish green and redish purple, which one is cold, which one is warm.. ? I'll replace it by "complementary shadow" which from where you can arrive at what really happens, just taking this rule as a simplifaction rule, of harmony.
True but in reality you won't likely ever find a setting where ambient light is warmer than a warm source of direct light, or cooler than a cool source oh light. Even just darkening a color will desaturate it, which in context will make it cool-er. The same thing happens in an over cast setting, the gray/white sky light will desaturate colors making them cooler in relationship to their local color, any warm direct light hitting in this context will be warmer. So I still think the rule makes sense when you are painting a big landscape and need to set the overal mood tone before going deeper into these concepts of "local color that aren't hit by sky light and bounce lights are warm accents", etc. What makes it confusing when someone it's starting to learn is grasping the concept of color relationships where even a warm gray can be a "cool" color if sorrounded by warmer colors. Changing the words cool and warm to cooler and warmer would amke more sense.
yesss, definitely agree with a lot nathan said, when i'm painting my own stuff, i usually don't think of whether i should have cool shadows or things like that, i usually just think about what color is being reflected by what
I did my IB ART class research, particularly the notes/analysis for my final, on advanced color theory. It REALLY changed my approach to art, and observing life in general, when I started seeing *every* material as essentially reflective. Scientifically, it is, all we're ever seeing is constantly-bouncing light.
So cool to hear that your advanced color theory course changed your perspective on not just art, but the world!😊 Thank you for sharing that!
~S
Much of what Nathan Fowkes is describing is what Johannes Itten called simultaneous contrast. Neutral colors tend to take on the appearance of whichever color is complementary to the saturated color put next to it. The example with a grey square on an orange field next to grey square on a green field is straight out of Johannes Itten's The Elements of Color.
There's noting to be against in this video! Stellar explanation. I would put emphasis on "Relative" as you say. Richard Schmid in his videos always says that warm light produces cool shadows and vice versa but he's always meant it relatively and as a general guideline and not as a rule that is not to be broken...
Good point! Thank you for bringing that up!
~S
I also suspect we're talking about Schmid. In Alla Prima p.123 under "color and light": "The great (and almost perfect) color law". "Cool light produces warm shadows, [and vice versa]". I didn't remember it as very equivocal. Love the guy, but this and things like, (p. 115) a color can't be "neutralized" by its complement because there's no such thing as a neutral color, made me question him. But then I'm a lousy student. I think she took a questionable idea and overdid it.
8:37 "what is next to a color can have a major influence" this is exactly what I was thinking of a started working on since around one and half week. Trying to make people see blue blueberries in a canvas where I don't use any blue at all, so no colors containing blue, no green, no purple, not even browns or bluish geys.. using only yellow orange red magenta black and white.
I started thinking about the complementaries that we teach us (orange being blue complementary) and I quickly realise that just by starting by exagerating orange athmosphere by painting an orange layer everywhere there will be no blue before starting puting orangish mix of the colors. That my idea that should've be correct (grey to make blue, grey and yellow to make green and grey and magenta to make purple), was not exactly, the magenta helped a lot making a false purple, the yellow and grey is ok to make false green because when we see an olive-camo color, we associate it woth green even if it has no or very little blue in it (guys ! And girls of course, try to mix black with yellow, eventually a bit of white with it, olive greens, camo greens are for me fake greens, there no blue, or sometimes a very little of it but try to play with yellow, black and white, you ll be surprise ! 😉, for me it's a base that we don't speak enough to beginners, never heard it in any youtube video, I discovered it by myself more than 20 years ago.)
So, back to the subject. I searched for pictures of color illusion where we would see blue but in fact the color is grey and I've find one with a rubicube, a little girl with a rubicube and the center color or the rubicube face was grey, 100% (the same image beside with a kind of magenta purple filter I think and the same pure grey was making is see yellow). The picture was like if it had a color filter that would make us adapt our vision to the filter and make us "read" (cerbral, visual lecture) the grey as blue, BUT, the "filter" wasn't orange, it wasn't a grey in an orangish environement that mske us see (read) the grey as blue, it was yellow, a kind of yellow filter impression or simply apply to all exept the middle square, a yellow filter and then replace the square with a pure grey, I giess it's the technic.
So now the question is: why do a yellow filter makes us read grey as yellow but a king a purple magenta or someting like this but NOT BLUE, makes us read the grey as yellow.. ??
And this is where I think complementary colors is a very complexe thing.. in a video of a guy that made a color wheel and placed the classic colors paints on the market, they was a kind of test to see complementary apparing by fixing a black dot (I'm sure a lot of tou did see it, don't hesitate to put the link in the comments, if nobody does I will search for it and do it myself). And the idea was to say that the complemenaries that we "teached" (someone correct me please, I'm learning english, I know it's wrong, more like "tought" but I really struggle with these words with ght or things like this, as terminaison) us are wrong and that for example yellow complementary would be blue (not cyan, more the blue of a rubicube) and others difference and I put many comments because I've seen this video many times and everytime I had the same result that wasnt the one he had, my result was more of a between, the yellow gived me a bluish purple not blue (as complementary) and same for the others, like if my perception was between what we taught us (I finaly searched, is it correct ?) and what the guy in the video says.
All this because now, take a again the picture that I was speaking, one have a yellow filter and you see or read grey as blue (a blue that isn't green at all, more the blue that we would make with magenta and cyan, you know this blue that is very deep, like the blue of the Bic pen). And the other picture has or magenta or purplish magenta (so not blue, not even this "Bic" blue) makes our eyes, brain, read (or see) the grey as yellow.
So I guess sometimes, in certain situation, sometimes even in the same color system (additive, substractive, etc), we can have diiferent complementary system..
Would be cool, great, huge, exraordinary !! To study all this, seriously, to do a scientific study amd publish it, to publish a big scientific study on color theory about complementary, in which case complementary are this and which other it is that, and when, how, why, sometimes in the same systeme (filter in this example) complentaries can be different !
Do anyone can answer why this difference ? And know if someone alrrady studied all this and can say for exemple how to make a pure grey be seen as a greenish turquoise for example, or a redish orange, which color of filter ? Or simply for basic colors like a basic green ? If to see blue we need a yellow filter, do we need an orange filter to see grey as green, and with a red filter would grey be read as yellow.. ? Oh no, neds a more purple or magenta fliter.. so with a redish filter a pure grey would be read as a yellowish green ?
I would love to find content on all this !
Édit, sorry I did a mistake, the grey square appear yellow with a blue (this same « bic blue ») filter.
So now the question is for the other colors, magenta with green? Cyan with orange ? Do we need to correct the color wheel and complemtaries ? Maybe this filter technic is the best, the more precise way, to find the exact complementary of every color, take a picture with a lot of colors, apply to it a filter of the color that you want to know the complementary and then select the color that, considering what we’ve seen, is the most chance of being the complementary, cyan filter, take the orange that you think has the most probability of being the complementary of your cyan and replace it by a pure grey (choose the orange before applying the filter, apply the filter, check the color just by curiosity and if it’s not the no color 50/50 white and black grey, replace it by this « pure grey » the color that you’ll see ( but cannot mesure because it will just be grey) will be the complementary of the color of the filter, I guess.. but you’ll need, in my opinion, a picture where you will associate colors like skin, the relation between rubicube squares, etc, you’ll need references.
This is my first time listening to Nathan Fowkes, I love his accent!!
Thanks for watching!! Hope you found this video helpful😊
~S
Nathan Fowkes's art makes me enjoy life and appreciate having functional eyes. That's all I want to say.
That's perhaps the highest complement an artist can receive!!😊
~S
4:20 this reminds me of renaissance painting mode called "Cangiante" - in theory the shadow on the object was painted with different hue of colour (i.e. Red shadow on yellow object - yellow is not dark enough to convey the Illusion of the shadow, but red is close in hue and still vibrant enough)
Yes! A great comparison😊
~S
The best explanation. I had these thoughts in my head for many years. Thanks.
That's awesome! Nathan is amazing at explaining art-related concepts (as proven in his many Schoolism courses!)😊 Thanks for watching!
~S
I think a good learning tool would be to remind them it's a spectrum again and you should consider where you're at on the spectrum and if you want it a little warmer, to just go warmER. If you're knee deep in the cold stuff move on to the warmer-cold stuff to warm it up a little. Consider the giant leap across the spectrum you make when you go from electric blue to vermillion.
- Colour is so relative based on the lighting/colour of the object/surrounding.
- Also pay attention to the theory of colour/light. For example, where does a blue need to travel to get warm in relation to the scene. Ie, a neutral grey is warmer than a typical blue local colour so in context would read as being warm . Similarly a slightly desaturated red/purple, could appear cool against a saturated red. Even though we think of red as being hot.
-A cool thing to note (pun intended) is that ambient occlusion is almost always relatively warm due to the strength of warm light Vs cool. Short wavelength (cool colours like blue, indigo etc) are not able to travel as far and lose energy far quicker. So ANY light that your eyes would see would be that of long wavelength (warm colours). And that is why ambient occlusion/occlusion shadow is relatively warm.
- Bottom line of things to access: what is the local colour? How reflective is the material? What is the temperature of the light(and hue), same for skylight/ambience. And then make your colour decisions accordingly.
💯💯💯 Great tips!
~S
Thank you ! I am less confused now. Roger Dean uses electric blue for shadows and it looks incredible, but it also reinforces the surreal feel of his landscapes. A no-go for realism x')
Thanks for watching! :)
~S
Great content and helps me understand my failed first painting. Loved your gouache sketches.
Thank you for making this video. I do pixel art and there’s a huge misconception that practically every tutorial for the medium teaches, where all shadows tend towards a saturated purple color and this cleared up a lot
Great to hear this helped clear things up! It's a tricky topic so we're glad this was helpful😊
~S
That’s the most beautiful sphere I’ve ever seen
I always struggled with colouring but this was very helpful. Thank you
Thanks for watching, Daniel! Glad this video was helpful to you😊
~S
Another amazing video. So much wisdom from Nathan, a master
What a fantastic explanation of warm li... ok, of lightS and ShadowS, object and environment around! Thanks, very helpful and fun to watch. Your a master painter and a great teacher, brillant! Thanks for sharing this profound knowledge.
Glad it was helpful!! Thanks for watching!
~S
Excellent video, I needed this clarification as I had heard this rule and the results were never satifying to me.
i am loving this new series!
thank you!
Thank you so much for explaining this concept. The best explanation I've come across.
Glad it was helpful! Thank you for watching ~Nancy
i learned alot thank you for your time! evn though your busy.
So glad you found this helpful!! Be sure to check out Nathan's courses on Schoolism for more lessons like this😊 schoolism.com/courses/online-art-classes
~S
This is so helpful!! I never know how to shift hues and where shifting hues makes sense when it come to lighting… thank you!!
Glad it helped!
Maybe I'll finally catch one of these live. XD love your stuff bobby!
thanks Nick :)
I am really grateful for this video. I have been painting for a while but really struggled with this concept.
Awesome to hear that this video helped clear things up a bit when it comes to color temperature! Thank you for watching😊
~S
while I agree that warm light means cool shadow should not be a rule of thumb and understanding ambient light etc is important, I think there's also something to be said about experimenting with shadow temp and color which is why I don't think the student using saturated blue as a bad example. I think it could work great if the student knew what they were doing well enough.
Itten's colour theory expands on contrasts, it's very interesting and great to have in mind whenever one draws/paints/sketches; you showed one of them in this video, the grey one.
The one where the "colour" grey can take certain tone qualities if next to another colour, usually the contrary colour. Example: if you have grey next to violet, the grey will "seem" a little bit yellow.
I think the warm light makes cool shadow and viceversa still stands, not always as saturated, and also not always there. It's one way of doing things, not an "always do it this way only". Like you said, many artists fall into traps of doing stuff without truly thinking about it, heck, I have done it too.
Great video as always :)
The rabbit hole actually goes a bit deeper if you try to figure out why this happens to be true. And also, that it's not only the case for grey next to a color, but for any colors viewed next to each other and even different values perceived next to each other influence your experience of them, it's generally referred to as simultaneous contrast.
An important factor to note as well that the AMOUNT of the specific hues or values present and how close they are to each other in the viewing plane matters a lot for how strong the effect is.
All of this gives the insight and boils down to: Context is pretty much everything. It determines how hues, saturation and values ultimately are truly perceived. So your choices in colors should always depend on the context you place them in.
colorusage.arc.nasa.gov/Simult_and_succ_cont.php
www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color4.html#simultaneous
The whole language of 'cool' and 'warm' are very limiting ideas if you go to this extent of manipulating the color experience, since the relationships between them are far more complex than that.
@@PeppoMusic indeed! My paint teacher always tells us that contrast and context is everything in a painting, he couldn't be more right!
Thank you for the webpage, I'll check it out!
I think it's also important not to conflate the principle of simultaneous contrast with color constancy. The former (those gray boxes on different colored backgrounds) has a negligible effect on picture making, as demonstrated by the fact that the examples always used to show this employ relatively small areas of pure gray (zero chroma) surrounded by a lot of a single saturated color. Color constancy is similar (in that it can make the same color appear different in two different places within the same painting), but it is MUCH more powerful. It is so powerful that we truly cannot judge colors and values in the absolute sense at all (we've all seen the checkerboard illusion and that rubik's cube thing where the yellow appears as a brown on one side). This is because our visual apparatus is so highly refined for deducing "local color" from a lighting context that it truly has no ability to see color objectively, and THAT is what's critical for painting (setting up those kinds of relationships, with color and value).
That color constancy is one of the key problems I think the idea of the "naive eye" attempts to give you a tool to handle. You try to not name the object you are looking at.
It is nice to gather knowledge and use it to help us paint, and its also nice to let all the assumptions go see what you see.
You mentioned " setting up those kinds of relationships" which makes you think you are already onto a solution to the color challenge.
Have you listen to Dr.Paul Ingbretson already? If not your comment makes me think you might find interest in some of the ideas he discusses.
He is a sample you might a enjoy:
th-cam.com/video/cbt2unwL-xM/w-d-xo.html
These are a bigger look at the idea painting the way they appear as opposed to painting things the way they are:
th-cam.com/video/A6i6pRknzcQ/w-d-xo.html Part 1 Velasquez
th-cam.com/video/Yg1JkR7ubLw/w-d-xo.html Part 2 Vermeer
th-cam.com/video/ipxkB60O-BQ/w-d-xo.html Part 3 Chardin
th-cam.com/video/GbfsHeWmRAo/w-d-xo.html Part 4 Monet
th-cam.com/video/9fEE3mShNN4/w-d-xo.html Part 5 Sargent
I have gotten value from understanding light and building a model of it in my head (the painting by the object) and also from letting those models go (painting by the spot). I hope you get value from both types of content as well.
Here recently im putting myself outside and trying to get the look of nature in my backyard so wish me luck :).
Thanks to the op for the comment (and muddy colors post) and thanks to @@partingmist8550 for the excellent info.
This is to good. Thank for sharing your experience with us. you are my hero
Thanks for watching! Glad you enjoyed the video! :)
~S
the part of me that never grew past high school was too satisfied over already knowing why the shadows looked like that (the environment/reflections) in the 3:58 and onward artworks 😂
This is excellent. A very helpful presentation.
Glad you found this video helpful! Thank you for watching.
~S
O_o Woah that bright blue shadow.
I didn't know about the rule of shadow having the opposite shadow. I thought the shadow was based on the ambient light. Blue is a good color to go by. That is not because it is opposite of sunlight. It is because because it comes from the ambient light from the blue sky. This is not a hard and fast rule though. If something is inside with no access to sky or other blue things, the blue shadow wouldn't occur anymore. I realized that I was right. The video is an awesome tutorial. I could use a good review.
I don't want to be too harsh on the student for her mistake. This involves lighting and saturation. This is something that is more advanced and nuanced. It is something I am currently learning and practicing on. If a novice doesn't know about that yet, they can fall into the trap of using really bright colors when it isn't always appropriate. I used to use bright colors too. So I can't throw stones. I call this my sparkle dog phase. I didn't really make any sparkle dogs. However I did make the same problems. I have the saturation turned all the way up. It is bright and vivid. My one saving grace it to put limits on how many hues to work with at once. It is even more problematic to have all kinds of hues across the rainbow spectrum and put them together with no rhyme or reason. Depending on ones opinion, the results either looks cool or looks garish. To me, I think it looks like unicorn vomit.
I did grow out of my sparkle dog phase. It is when I learn about saturation and lighting. It is a lot more nuanced than learning about local color and about the basics of shading. Saturated colors do have their strengths. They are great at cartoons, especially the 2D versions. They are also good for advertisments and logos. Bright colors are fun and catch attention. Unsaturated colors also have major strengths. I have heard advice to avoid saturated colors. I didn't understand at first. The reasoning is that saturated colors look bad. They are garish and gaudy. It did not come across for me. It wasn't until I became more experienced that I finally appreciated desaturated colors. I used them more often. Turning down the saturation a bit makes the colors more realistic. This is a look I enjoy a lot more. Realistic rendering can still be done, even if the subject mater is not realistic. There is a powerful immersion. I get sucked in. I love doing fantasy art. So the subject matter is wierd. Yet really realistic rendering can still bring immersion. Going the vibrant route or realistic route can still work. It depends on what one is aiming for. I like to move toawrds realistic. My favorite picture in this video is the one of the parrots. It is a nice finale. The parrots are not realistic in design. They are cartoony. However there is still a realistic rendering with the lighting and texture. This is a great example of what I like to aim for. Cartoon parrots alone is tame subject matter for unrealistic stuff. However it still has a nice dose of cartoony to set it apart from the other pictures.
I would like to learn more about saturation, and how it works in lighting. In this video I learned that desaturated colors may appear warm or cool to contrast the more saturated colors. This is not an objective change in color, but on how that color is percieved. I wonder how much more is there. Having bright blue shadows is not realistic. It is too saturated. It is also not dark enough. Ambient light is very weak. So it is something that would be learned by advanced artists.
I really like the brush work in this piece. Any recommendations for brush sets?
This reminds me of the black and blue and white and yellow dress trend. It was all about color temperature.
Yes! Great point!
~S
That is a very well done and explained video about the topic removing common says and misconceptions we sometimes acquire from looking at videos. Thank you! By the way - wonderful sketches!
Warm light, cool shadows as I was taught it derives from the science of light and how our eyes compensate for saturated hues. If you turn on a colored light in a completely dark room and stick an object or your hand under that light, the shadow will start to look like the complimentary color to the light, because your eyes are compensating for the overabundance of color pouring into your eyes- which relates to what Nathan is explaining with the grey tones next to different hues. This is why hospitals have pastel blue or green scrubs in operating rooms- to help compensate for the amount of blood the doctors and nurses have to look at sometimes for hours on end.
The principle of warm light, cool shadow is overly simplified, and thus works best within a frame of overly simplified or stylized/abstracted work like comics or cartoons. In this setting, very often the only considerations for light source are its color (to the exclusion of bounce light, local color, reflected color, etc) and it works very well. When you start transitioning to more realistic work, you have to take other principles of light into consideration. So overall, I'd have to disagree that it's not useful or unnecessary. It's just not useful or necessary for work where you want to take all attributes of light into account.
beautifully phrased! i totally agree.
This helped me understand what he was trying to say. Thank you
part of the object on the light, will shift towards the color of the light source.
-
the rest, will stay the color it would be, under a white light, it's “actual color” (unless there's bounced light- which there always is, which would ALSO drag the shadow SLIGHTLY towards the same direction of the light.)
-
A WARM LIGHT DOES NOT MAKE THE COLORS IN SHADE COOLER, IT MAKES THEM COOLER
IN RELATION
TO THE LIGHT
My jaw dropped non-stop throughout the "rio" image explanation.
🤯🤩🤯🤩🤯🤩
~S
@@BobbyChiu Pretty much like that, yeah
there's this game i play called i love hue that's kind of like the assignment you gave - it's a gradient colour puzzle that very clearly shows how different colours can look next to each other, its kinda trippy
where can this be played?
@@philippfrogel9355 i play it on my phone! im using android so im not sure if the appstore has it though
@@qtipq_ playing it, thanks!
top thx man I will try this out
Art is art
Thank you Nathan always appreciate your insights
great information
Looking forward
Warm source means cold shadow, got it, thanks :)
Glad you found this helpful!! :)
~S
Good one! :)
insanely helpful
Do you have a brush set for photoshop ? Man I love the brush strokes in your demo artworks on this video .
Somebody made a comment on saturation and desaturation. I'd like to learn to paint in more of a realistic or desaturated color schemes. I'm used to cartoons and harsh color scheme or flats.
Very informative!!! Thank you very much for doing this.
Glad you found this video informative! Thank you for watching! :)
~S
that will depend on how much light an object absorbs and reflects back into the enviroment and in on itself, theoritical objects (meaning no surface is bouncing on the object) will have just a darker shade of the same base color due to it's chemistry, providing that you have no artificial light of a certain hue pointing at the object
Oh, this looks interesting! ; )
@Phuck Boi at least that clown is an entertaining puppet but this is not the place to talk about that...
THANK YOU so much!
Thanks for watching! Hope you enjoyed this (Not) Rules video!
~S
Absolutely critical information here. Awesome share.
Thanks for watching! Glad you enjoyed it! :)
~S
Amazing tutorial..learned so much.
Glad it was helpful! :)
That was very informative, thank you!
very interesting, thank you
This is gold Bobby
Glad you liked this one! Thanks for watching! :)
~S
Yes Yes Yes Thank YOU So Much ❤️ , God Bless You ❤️ I'm latina But I'm Happy , I Found This Wonderful Video
Thank you for watching!! :)
~S
There's no shame in using highly saturated blues and reflexes in the shadows if you can do it right. I enjoy stylized color a lot.
Black absorbs and white reflects ^.^ color temperature is relative to the color of the objects and color of light. and contrast of color can influence the perception of the color temperature.
8:16 would the bounce light change a bit to become more warmer or would it not matter enough?
i love how you interpret light, it's not some color theory thing. It's just... light. A wave/particle. Warm light does not mean cool shadows, either that's the environment or it's just visual snow (at least for me, it comes in all colors, but mostly blue) I'm not sure why I amen't subscribed to you (I'm quite sure I subbed, sometime, just don't remember when I unsubbed)
Though is some of the bounce-lighting is a bit off? ... especially in 9:37 where some of the intense reflected light doesn't make its way to the larger rock in the background. I remember looking at a big mass of rock while I was traveling, not even that much reflected light and already the shadows were bright. I see this alot in materials we use, even our hands, computers, books, cardboards, everything we see tends to reflect bounce light a lot (which is why we can see them).
Mirrors absorb i think only around 5% of the incoming light, meaning technically you can make 2 mirrors stare at each other and still see the 15th reflection without too much problem.
Main concerns here is 7:02 which looks like it has a little bit too little reflected light, and in 8:53 where the blue light doesn't even contribute to the reflection, making the explanation a tad bit off. Is this a mistake or was it intended for demonstration purposes, or was the video correct and my understanding of light was wrong? Please answer because I'm a bit confused. Thanks.
Thank you for the break down and critical analysis (:
I love your video thank you for it
Glad to hear you enjoyed it! Thanks for watching :)
~S
This blows mah mind lol
Thanks a lot!
Thanks for watching! Glad it was helpful😊
~S
Incredible learning time as always!
I love you Nathan
Best rant ever!!
3:50 "The Kramer."
Amazing video
I do use blues and purples in shadows sometimes to add more contrast and vibrancy to a painting, no technical explanation for ya. It just looks cool, lol.
There are no hard rules to art, so if it looks good, do it!😊😊😊 Thanks for watching!
~D
I think the issue is that for one, like someone else noted, in the dawn of art there really was just "the sun lights the subject and the sky colors the shadows", so that likely ingrained itself into the teachings of painters. But more so, as a quick and dirty rule it is useful for new artists to get good contrasts in their work. By the time they are ready to more deeply understand color and light, and actually try to parse all that knowledge, they will likely be moving beyond that "rule". So it's really just a way to not overload a new artist's brain and give them something to latch onto for the time being, something they can then expand beyond when they have other fundamentals like their values down.
Of course no one will go beyond it without the lessons of how to, so I'm not saying this video shouldn't exist. I just think there is some merit in the simplified "rule" for those starting out.
Excellent as always, thanks for inspiring me to start uploading my own videos on my channel ♥
That's so awesome!!! Beat of luck with your channel!! :)
~S
Thank you.
oh no... i still have so many questions... all the same, i'm glad i stumbled across this, since it's been one of my biggest sources of confusion in my art, and now i'm... slightly less confused.
If you're interested in this topic, Nathan teaches "Designing with Color and Light" and "Pictorial Composition" on www.schoolism.com which go into much more detail!
~S
This is. Amazing. Thank you!
So glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for watching! :)
~S
can i ask you, if we have for example an opaque warm color object( red ) in a completely closed void white room o gray room with a one warm source light, which color will every shadow be? And if them will be cold which cool color we have to choose for shadows in this case?
Thank you! I thought I had a learning disability because I couldn’t make sense of the warm/cool rule with what I was seeing.
So paint what you see or intuit and are personally expressive.
Great to hear this video helped you to understand color temperature a little better!!😊
~S
Is hue being confused with shadow temp in this video? We could have yellow sunlight hitting one side of the sphere, and cool yellow shadows on the other side. As long as the shadows are cooler than the directly lit side, we have cool shadows. Shadows don't have to be colored by the cool side of the color wheel to be cooler. Shadows need to be cooler, not necessarily "blue".
I watched the video and I'm very grateful for it! I heard about both, that the colour of an object is determined by its surroundings, but also the warm-light-cool-shadow-thing. And because there are many pictures where it did add up and many where it didn't I wasn't sure which one was right, if you combine both etc. (I don't have a teacher I can ask.) Thanks for clearing that up!
Just one question, I might have missed it, but how is the colour of the direct casting shadow determined? Is it just dark grey/black at the darkest region slowly blending into the colour of the table/floor/tile an object is on, the further away it is from the object? (Again sorry if this was already answered, English is not my native language, so some nuances and variations in word choices might get lost sometimes.)
1:35
😅 of course, who would.
(Me having drawn 12 spheres with extreme shadows)
Don't worry, we're all still learning all the time! ~JL
@@BobbyChiu very true, learning never really ends
This was very helpful!
Glad you thought so!! :) Thanks for watching.
~S
How about warm light - cooler (not exactly cold) shadows? With the exception of transparent material and bounce light.
Thank you so much for this video, I'm so grateful you took the time to get it out to us!! i loved it, I admit I was also struggling with my art because I thought I had to follow the rule of warm light = cold shadows, but it just wasnt working for me, since it didn't quite make complete sense. Thanks again!
So glad to hear you found this video so helpful! Nathan is an incredible teacher and is able to explain these types of theories with ease. Thanks for watching!
~S
'Relatively' is the key word.
magic~
Nathan is an artistic magician🪄🪄🪄!
~S
This is the first time I heard that "rule", and I've been doing art for decades. Glad to see I wasn't missing anything.
I've seen the "blue light from the sky" mentioned by another artist. The sky light is not visibly blue tinted at all. It only takes a white paper placed on the ground on a sunny day. The white paper is... white.
He’s saying blue from the sky, not the sun. If you put a white piece of paper in the shadows on a sunny day, you can get blue
Wow thank you
Thank you for watching!:)
~S
Ehat about the "rule" that says "Warm rich color advances, cool desaturated color retreats"? Isn't it generally true that as color moves "away from the viewer" it trends towards a "more cool desaturated color " efen thouhg that color (the retreating co.or I mean) may still be fairly warm in itself? Won't it generally be true that it will be slightly cooler than the high,ight colors u less the light is itself cool?
great stuff - thank you - really upped our journey with light in our work - it's our passion, and this is simple and foundational and delightfully complex :O) - Yummy - cheers
That's awesome to hear!!🤗🙌
~S
@@BobbyChiu We've been walking around the house analyzing color and light -practicing 'unseeing' lines - investigating every light source/reflection... so eye opening and exciting - cheers - not easy but satisfying, encouraging/empowering - lots to explore/grow and learn :O)
So could we fix the "warm light needs cold shadow" with "warmer (local colour) light needs a colder( of the local colour) shadow"(?)
I read about the "cool light = warm shadows, warm light = cool shadows" concept from James Gurney's book, Color and Light, and I didn't get it all (it made me stop reading the book midway, it was all so confusing). Thank you for this, light and shadows are really tricky especially for artists like me who are still trying to understand art fundamentals one concept at a time :) Very excited to get my hands on your book! :)
Wonderful to hear that this video helped clarify this topic a bit for you!! Thanks so much for watching! :)
~S
Wow I can't believe i made it!
what is the best to paint with the egg temperature on the canvas or something else?
Where do I find solution examples to this homework?
Thanks.
I don't understand the one with the birds
both blue highlights (on the far right birds) look like sunlight to me, so which one is the sky light??
9:28 your cube is WRONG
Why lightest area is farthest from the light sourse
Why no your warm shadow plane reflex stronger near cast shadow
DIsbalance in shadow occlusion makes cube seemingly floating