Making shadows
I’d like to theorize about displaying shades.
The shade depends on conditions of lighting and from the subject form. As it is known, without light the shade does not exist. To understand shadows, we need to understand what it is light.
Light can be natural (solar) and artificial. Only natural light makes white color, at it in regular intervals (almost in regular intervals) there are waves of all lengths. Connection of all waves (from ultra-violet till infra-red) also gives us natural white light.
Artificial light couldn’t be white. It can be warm orange – from incandescing lamp, or more cold blue – from a fluorescent lamp.
The shade which is created by various light sources, will vary. For us it is important to remember that a shade always contrast in relation to a light source. In warm orange light of incandescing lamps the shade always has a cold violet nuance. In the light of fluorescent lamps it, on the contrary, will be warm brown. Only the daylight gives us rather neutral shade. But for realness I do not recommend to use black color for shade creation. The real black color in the nature does not exist. Black color is a prerogative of physical conditional ideally black body, no more
Now about the shade form. Here are its elements:
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Light – a surface brightly shined with a light source;
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Highlight - a light stain on brightly shined convex or flat glossy surface;
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Shade – the dark or poorly shined sites of a subject, on them gets least light;
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Penumbra – places between light and a shade;
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Reflex – poorly shined places formed by light reflected in environment.
In paper modeling it means:
We should remember that our aim is not creation of the form of a subject with light and shade. Our object – as I it see – more likely in making defects of assemblage less visible using graphic methods. Therefore it is not necessary to make real lights and shadows of object. We just have to help nature make its lights and shadows. We need only add a little volume by shades, to add a patch of light on the most acting points of model a little.
In practical expression it means that we use transparency modes at imposing of layers, freely we operate with graphic tools of a Photoshop or other editor. And, of course, attentively we observe world around