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Topic: Cold & Warm / Warm & Cold (Patreon)

Published:
2020-08-24 12:07:39
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Hello dear Patrons, we got a question that we though it would be best to answer publicly as a post as it is something that many of you may question. :)

Jamie, Thank you for your question.

Here is the question:
"Hi guys! First, apologies if this is the wrong place to be putting things like this (if it is, please tell me where to move this). I have a rather general question about choosing consistent highlight and shadows colours I was hoping you could help me with. Something I have heard from you, and several others great painters, is that when painting in ambience, warm highlights tend to produce cool shadows, whereas cool highlights tend to produce warm shadows. My questions is:  Imagine I am painting a (warm) red cape in an atmosphere where there is a cool light producing warm shadows.  Choosing a highlight colour is easy because the red is naturally warm there are lots of relatively cooler colours to choose from. I could highlight by adding white (and going into pink), or by adding a light blue (and tending towards lilac), and I'm sure there are other choices as well. My problem comes when trying to find a warm shadow colour for red. Red is already very warm so I seem to be stuck with one choice, which is to decrease the value without changing to another saturated hue. "


Answer from Marko and Aleksandra:

We should find more time to speak more on this topic as well. But since our demos and earlier vlogs etc, many painters started spreading more ideas on this topic forgetting one main thing that makes confusion, therefore nowadays if you ask anyone: they will tell if you have cold highlights you need warm shadows and if you have warm highlights you need cold highlights. Not implying anything but, we would never say that. (This should not be followed as a rule.) Now you are wondering, why we are using cold/warm/warm/cold etc... it is for the temperature contrast. If we didn't choose the best term here it is because English is not our native so we sometimes use terms literally being sure it would be understood. Take a look at the Mrs.Craftworld - Contrast Video that we shared here and on our YT channel. Making this combination of warm cold and cold warm is just one way of creating contrast. Then you have light and dark, then complementary, then it comes to brushstrokes/textures, big and small, smooth and rough...etc. All of those are different Values of Contrast that you can use in your painting. Speaking on ambience, painting in Ambience by our definition means creating storytelling - or better said explaining ambience and surrounding by your painting, so you can have variations of many warm and cold, light and dark etc. tonal values on your model - all as a information's you are sending to the viewer by painting the project. This leads to that red cape. If you want to do the highlights cold - by mixing colors for highlights you can make them look more cold or warm depending on mix. So even for green highlights they can consist of more blue. Being more "mint" cold. For shadows if you want to go warm on a red cape - if you add blue in mix with red, and get purple by having more red in the mix. That purple will still be warm and darker than cape. etc.. Then it comes to the material of the cape, it can be the one that reflects more or the one that takes light in. There is so many possibilities and things to think about when painting literally anything. But we hope this clarify topic from the question about "Cold & Warm" a bit more. And we will have more of those topics trough the tutorials, works practices etc. :) Thank you everyone! Yours, Aleksandra & Marko

Comments

yann

Thanks you 👍

Jamie Foster

Hi both. Thanks so much for a wonderful detailed answer to my question. There's lots of useful information here and it has cleared up many issues. However, there is one sentence in your answer that I want to make sure that I am understanding correctly: "For shadows if you want to go warm on a red cape - if you add blue in mix with red, and get purple by having more red in the mix. That purple will still be warm and darker than cape." I understand that we can use a dark and warm purple in the shadows of a red cape. The purple may be considered warm when taken in isolation, but adjacent to the red midtone it will look relatively colder (we added blue to get the shadow from the midtone after all). Therefore I would have been tempted to say that a purple is a cool shadow colour for red. Am I misunderstanding? Perhaps it is a semantic difference? Would the right way to think about it be this: purple and red can both be warm, but purple is cooler than red. Nonetheless, when we shadow red with a warm dark purple this is still a warm shadow because purple is warm (it doesn't matter that it is cooler than red).

Maria zur Nedden

Thank you for sharing the answer and explaining this! 😊

Craftworld Studio - Miniature Art Lessons & Tutorials

Maria, thank you and welcome. Jamie, thank you as well and welcome. For the new question. It depends on if you are focusing on a segment or on a whole project. For example let's say purple is warmer then Violet. Violet consisting of more blue, purple consisting of more red. Also there is various red tones if we are going in details, as well as various purple/violet's, colder and warmer yellow..etc. if we understood correctly, you want to say that purple next to red looks cold, it really depends where you take the tone. We wrote the simple example, not literal. So if you need your tone to look warmer you can mix more of the tone that will make it look warm. For example, which blue tone would you mix..etc. Depending on pigments (and acryls used) tones can be more clear and saturated or more muddy and desaturated. Etc. There is just so many theoretical informations that we might say, that in practice works differently. Because it depends on different factors. This is why we are teaching color use rather than stick to theoretical explanations and encourage practice. Because you can have a better chance of trying out and learning from experience. Let's say you mix : colder red and cyan and warmer red and cyan. Results would be different as those are different tonal values, etc.. so in your interpretation, if you are tending to go warmer with the tone, you can use a premade tone that have this value next to the tone that is for example your middle tone. Or more fun, you can play with color mixing and create a tone fitting as warmer tone of shadow. With every new practice, you gain more experience as you learn from your mediums. To sum it up, we encourage colour mixing and experimenting with different tonal values, learning and experiencing how many different tonal values are there from cold, neutral to warm. :)

Jamie Foster
>>42829754

Thank you so much for taking the time to give such a clear answer. I can feel that I've grown a huge amount as an artist being with your patreon for just a few months. Thank you.