Virtual Art Academy® Form Painting Lessons

Knowing how to make things look three-dimensional is fundamental to making your painting look real. Course unit 1 includes an important technique I learned from Craig Nelson and Luca Cambiaso (1527-1585) for how to capture the basics of form in a few minutes.

It is really quite easy to give the impression of form by using just two values. This 15 minute color study uses just a few light/shade planes: the hair, the shirt, and the legs and face. That is all that is needed to create a convincing illusion of form. The key to doing this is to get the shapes right. If you also master the hue changes across a form ( course unit 3), you will be amazed at how little you actually need to do to make things look solid.

When you want to develop a painting in more detail, particularly in a still life or portrait painting, you will need to know more than just the two planes of the light and shade. It is also important to understand the role of reflected light (that is light that is reflected into the shadows from nearby objects), and also what happens at the edge of objects. Typically the color at the edges of objects will have a value and saturation change. When you apply that knowledge, your forms will look more round.

In this unit you will learn what happens to the hue and saturation of colors on objects when light falls on them. Mastering these effects produces paintings that have truly beautiful color and is what makes the work of some of the great masters stand out. Unfortunately many art instruction books treat this topic in a very simple way that misses out some key information. The simple rule: cool light, warm shadows or warm light, cool shadows just does not give the full story.