SPN RBang art post- jasmasson- In the shadows, on the screen

[jenilees]

My first entry for the spn_reversebang  was chosen by the lovely jasmasson.

I am very lucky I had such wonderful authors for this exchange. They both are authors whose work I know, and could say to them- Do what you want, I love your writing! It made this so easy and fun cos I just had to read the end results. LOL I'm so spoiled.

link to story:
In the shadows, on the

Comments

[jenilees]

Thank you! Yes it is just watercolour. Ooh I had to look up grass jelly. I thought it was a type of paint...LOL Looks pretty interesting though.
Most of the background texture on both pieces is done with a tissue. The shirt though was just paint on and bleed across.

To be honest I'm not exactly sure what I did. I scanned it in and used the photo cropper to darken the contrast and played with the hue and saturation. I can't pick areas to lighten or darken with the editor it does the whole picture. Because of that there was a lot darkening areas with paint and rescanning and trying again.

I've never done skin before and the first few attempts at darkening the back guy using paint, didn't work out. They just looked dirty and the skin tone was horrible.
I did use a bit of ultramarine but mostly it was the skin tone in layers and a bit of mixed brownish-black. By the time I got to this point, the shadow from Sam's head on him didn't seem to be right colour-wise so I was a little scared to try darkening the guys whole face too much because of that. This was also the only one I was completely happy with Sam's face in and didn't want to wreck the back guy and have to start over. LOL
So a different blue would have worked? Over the whole face or just in the shadows? And why a desaturated blue? Is it transparency or the tone that counts? I am self-taught so most of what I know is trial and error and I also just read and read...LOL then try it out and read some more. So I really appreciate any little tidbits people tell me.

[exhaledtroop]

I'm not too experienced in watercolor, but here's what I generally go by. I'm also a lot self-taught re: color, so I may not be the best one to give advice on it, so I'll try to be careful with it. ^^;

when we perceive color, it's because there is light bouncing off of it. notice how in dim light things look duller and grayer? in order for us to see color, there MUST be light.

the closer to the light source an object is, the more saturated its color. the further away it is (or if the obj is blocked from the light src), the less saturated it is, since less light is reaching it.

so that's the reason why I suggested a desaturated blue. although it doesn't necessarily have to be blue, it could be purple, or brown like in the Rembrandt painting on this page. what color you decide on for shadow can depend on your stylistic preference, or how strongly colored the light source is. blue is an exaggerated color for shadow in your picture, for example- a redder (ie, browner) shadow would probably look more natural. yeah, I'm taking back my blue comment! or idk, best to play around so you can see it to judge it.

the shadow a light source casts will be the light's complement. yellow lights will cast purple shadows, orange light casts blue shadows, etc.

compared to Sam's coloring, the man in the back's skin is dulled down, but I would say push it even more (desaturate it more), so that it comes off more strongly that he is in the shadows. I would provide less contrast for the structures of his face so that he would be less easy to make out, and then he could become a more flexible figure in your painting.

hope that helps. ^^ and made sense.

[jenilees]

Thank you! That helps more than you'll know. I've never had saturated/desaturated colour explained in a way that I understood what they were. I'd see examples of the colour itself in magazines but not why they are that way and I thought it was only a watercolour term and had something to do with how it stained the paper.

Also I know of complementary colours but never thought to apply that to the shadows...which makes me kind of feel like a dork for it never occurring to me. LOLOL I have always chosen by what feels right. It doesn't always work out.. now I will have a better idea why.

I had bought a couple of books of lessons in color theory but never got around to doing them. It would probably help me a great deal but my attention span is terrible with stuff like that and I do better when I have to apply it to a painting.

Thanks again for the help. I really do appreciate it. Can't wait to try it out.

[exhaledtroop]

no problem. no need to feel like a dork abt the complementary shadows thing, I mean, it wasn't something that was obvious to me either. I learned about it in one of my art classes, and they showed us a video about colored lights.

and it's not like the color of the shadow will always be so obvious. it can be really subtle sometimes, or influenced by other colors around it to the point where it registers to us as some other color. I want to learn more about color theory, cos it really brings home that everything is relative. that is, a bright ray of sunlight on a window blind may register to us as "white," but it may actually be a light yellow or blue or whatever.

one of my teachers talked about an artist who said smth like, "Give me the color of mud, and I will paint the Venus de Milo!" basically, that he could work the color relationships in his painting so that we would be able to read the brown of the Venus de Milo as representing white. cool right! I think so! haha.