How to paint shades
The painting of shades is one of the most important techniques in pastel painting to make a picture appear three-dimensional and thus also realistic. Of course, it takes a little practice to make shading with pastel chalk look really natural. With the help of a few tips, however, you will be able to paint the shading much faster.
This is how to paint shadows in pastel painting
Painting shadows in pastel painting works in a very similar way to painting gradients. However, there are a few things that need special attention.
- One of the most common mistakes when painting shades is keeping them all black. If you take a closer look around your surroundings and pay attention to what the shadows really look like there, you can see that these are by no means completely black, but only the color of the respective background darken.
- Furthermore, shadows usually have no clear boundaries, which is why it is important to paint shades as color gradients. It may well be that the color gradient goes all the way to black at the darkest point.
- Take a close look at the surface of the object you want to paint. Depending on the shape of the object and the lighting conditions, the shadows on it may look and run very differently. The art of looking closely is often more difficult to learn than actually painting.
The technique of painting shades
As I said, shadows are not simply black. Nonetheless, when painting shades, one starts with using black pastel chalk to paint a color gradient along the respective edges where the shades are to be created.
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- To do this, first paint the darkest part of the shading by moving the chalk back and forth on the paper under relatively strong pressure on and parallel to the respective edge.
- Then move further and further away from the edge, keeping the movement of the chalk but gradually applying the pressure decrease, which means that the black is applied in the less opaque, until it is finally completely with the release of the pressure faded.
- Then paint perpendicular to and away from the edge with the black chalk over this gradient, also reducing the pressure the further you move away from the edge.
- If the black gradient has finally succeeded so far, you can now use a piece of chalk in the Paint the respective object in the same way over it to make the shades to finish.
If you follow these guidelines, the shades should look very realistic. If you want, you can also intensify the effect by blurring the shadows with a special wiper pen.
