What we're going to do in the final exercise is to paint a cylinder with a checkerboard on it.
This checkerboard is specially arranged
so that the color of the light squares in shadow is the same as the dark squares in light
we're going to paint this with acrylic paint cobalt blue ultramarine blue cadmium yellow
raw sienna red oxide quinacridone scarlet ivory black titanium white and this is a neutral gray
that i'll use for that special square i've painted a swatch of it here and in
case you have a Pantone color matching book that's 424C this is a watercolor sketchbook
and the first step is to draw the cylinder with the help of this ellipse template you don't have
to use an ellipse template but this is a 15 degree one which is a fairly narrow ellipse and once you
have the center line of the long axis of the ellipse and the center line for the short axis
you can place the template down over that and using either the outside or the inside of the slot
you can draw the ellipse i want to make a bigger ellipse on the
top and a smaller ellipse on the bottom to make it look like three-point perspective
So the bottom of the ellipse the long axis is here
Here's the other half of that upper ellipse
I'm drawing on the outside of that curve
and then when i'm drawing at the bottom i'll draw on the inside of that curve
Which makes a smaller ellipse then when i connect those those lines will converge downwards
actually the bottom ellipse should be a different degree it should be slightly
more circular less pinched but that's okay for this purpose it's going to be fine
we've got about six inches at the top and about a five and a half inch
ellipse at the bottom so if you're good at freehanding ellipses you can freehand this
what we're going to want though is two more ellipses going down the side of this cylinder
and i'm going to speed up the take here so that you don't have to watch all this in real time
i'll use the template to draw these two intermediate lines
and now i need to draw the verticals between the checkerboard pattern
the square that's closest to us might be a little bigger than an inch and as the squares go back
around they rapidly get smaller in size i'm just estimating this for the purpose of this diagram
now i'm drawing the verticals they're actually slightly converging downward
let's start by wetting the surface
i'm using a large synthetic flat brush and up above on the pallet area i've
got cadmium yellow medium cobalt blue which i'm mixing now for the shadow color
and there's ultramarine blue below that a touch of black the neutral gray over on the right and then
quinacridone scarlet and raw sienna this is acrylic paint but you could use gouache and the
idea with the lighting is to light the cylinder from the left hand side so that the darker shadow
area will be on the right side of the cylinder with a gradient between the two because i'm
painting a painted gradient i'll have to keep the colors wet together and blend them with a brush
so i'm working fairly fast to keep those gradients smooth in the background
and when i get to it on the cylinder i'll paint the light surfaces first and
then paint the dark squares over that soften those edges of the cast shadow
clean the brush out i have the
rag there to dry out the brush now that gray is the color of the warm light valued patches
in cool light so the cool light cancels the warmth and we get a neutral gray
and then we're gonna make a gradient from the gray shadow to the yellowish light
so now i can switch the color to an opaque but fairly light yellow color
while everything's still wet i'll try to blend this color as it goes from light into shadow
i'll have to match this gradient with a parallel gradation
of the dark squares when i get to those later
i'm painting it transparently enough that i can still see the pencil lines
through the paint if i got too opaque i'd lose those but if that did happen i could always find
them again by using that ellipse template and redrawing them on top of the dry paint
let's use slightly more opaque gray paint to make that shadow color a little bit flatter
and for the purposes of this diagram we're going to want the light side fairly flat
and the dark side the shadow side fairly flat with a soft gradient between them
rather than having a whole lot of reflected light or highlights or anything like that going on
in this form modeling
i've picked a light beige color for the top surface of the cylinder
which is receiving both the cool light from the right and the warm light from the left
so it wouldn't have a strong warm or cool character.
And it might be a little bit darker than the light side here and a little lighter than the dark side
hey let me just take a minute out of this video to tell you about the full-length video that this is
an excerpt from the whole video is called gradients and it's part of the color and
practice series it's mostly practice and a little bit of theory i'll take you through
six different ways of mixing gradients and so you'll do exercises to follow along with
and then we'll do on location paintings of the alleyway landscape with a spot of light in the
middle of it but we'll also do ferns in the woods and we'll do an outdoor landscape with clouds
all using this idea of color changing from one area to another this is a great way
packed full of information but a great way for you to not just watch videos but also put them
to practice and do the practice yourself so you really learn it so check out color and practice
gradients and the link is in the description now we're going to need to paint the dark squares
so we want that to be in the shadow side a deep blue a mix of ultramarine and black
we're imagining these dark squares are cool in color fairly dark and
since they're receiving blue light in the shadow they're going to be a fairly good blue
starting with this square that's just after the form has turned from light into shadow
and then the one next to that down below
about the same color
with a flat brush like this you can paint a quadrilateral fairly quickly
if the shapes aren't perfect that's okay we can clean up the edges later
and then these skinny squares as they turn right at the edge of the form
the next thing that we need to do is to carry the color of those dark squares across that same
gradient into the light in parallel to the changes that we did in that lighter yellow light color
So as the other one gets lighter and warmer this one also gets lighter and warmer but
from a dark blue gray or blue black lighter and warmer means closer to that wonderful
neutral gray it's our magic unifying color here so i mix some of that gray in the left
and do a brushed gradient within each square and pick up on the
color this time of the square with just a little blue on one side and pretty
much a pure gray on the left hand side of that square these squares will use that gray purely
and as long as these two local colors that are moving
in the checkerboard fashion as long as they're moving in the same way
meaning the values and the chroma change in the same direction then the eye will accept this as a
surface coloration that's moving in parallel let's deepen the shadow a little bit more because the
color of the surface the whole thing is sitting on is a
warmish color but it's not as yellow as the light side of the cylinder
so compared to the yellow on the light side of the cylinder the surface color is more of a white
warmed by the warm light that means that the shadows should also be lighter and cooler
than the color of the light squares in shadow
all these comparisons are ones that you're making all the time when you're painting
now we want to make that gray a little bit more solid and opaque in the shadow and in the light
It's pretty typical to start a diagram or a painting like this semi-transparently so
you can see the lines through the paint and then make it opaque when you need to
and for the purpose of this diagram i want to make sure it's nice and opaque
so that we can make it really clear that these colors are exactly the same
i'm using another flat brush here but similar idea
okay now what can we do to sharpen up those lines how about running
a white thin white line between the squares the same color and value as the ground surface like
the paper that the thing is sitting on so this set of white stripes will have to go
through the same transformation the same parallel gradient as all the other colors had to go through
here it's just a white with a little yellow added but it's whiter white than the yellow color
i'm using a rigger brush riggers are long thin brushes that come to a point
sometimes they come to a flat tip but they let you paint thin lines
that are consistently thin now as it comes into the shadow it's that cerulean blue color
and now i have all these relationships i just want to clean up a few edges
maybe i can make that near side of the top of the cylinder a little bit warmer
to emphasize the warm light that's shining on it
and i can thin that out with water to kind of soften it up and
gradate it toward the gray that's at the back of the cylinder top
too red use a little blue in there
okay and
i can also put in a bit of a highlight edge along the top surface
or i can put a contact line where the thing touches the ground
a little cooler there
again that top surface is a mix of the warm light and the cool light shining in the whole scene
let's mix up a black or close to a black use that real thin rigger and just make a thin contact line
to show that this thing is sitting and touching on that surface
most objects when they're touching a surface will do so on a nice sharp accent line
So hopefully you'll be convinced that the gray in this square the dark gray and the light is the
same gray as this light square in the shadow all this is just two-dimensional paint on paper and if
you follow this process of painting this diagram you'll be convinced you'll convince yourself that
colors can be very changeable and you can fool the eye by taking a gradient from light to shadow
from one color to another doing two colors in parallel and making the eye think it's seeing
something that is really not it's a basic principle in painting try all these gradients
watercolor the brush gradient the brayer gradient and try them until you get used to doing them
and then you'll have a real strong tool in your tool belt as a painter