Why My Shadows Used to Look Like Dark Patches

As a photographer, I understood shadows perfectly well. They were a nuisance. They obscured detail.

They stopped me going out at midday to photograph wildlife, because I didn't want the shadow of a bird's beak falling across its chest.

In my drawings, I didn't think about shadows at all. To this day, I'm still not sure where that disconnect came from.

When I was learning, everyone kept saying the same thing. "Push the shadows." - "It will be great when it's finished, but you still have to get the darks in there." - "Go darker to add that needed contrast."

So I used black pencil. You can't go darker than black, can you?

But adding black pupils to an eye or a deep black hole inside a jug wasn't doing the job.

I had worked so hard to get smooth layers with sharp edges that adding soft gradients seemed like a waste of time. I wanted to finish and start a new drawing, not endlessly make bits darker. And when I did try, the shadows looked bad and were impossible to erase.

Eventually I gave in.

I reluctantly darkened an area, then looked at it from across the room and thought, actually, that is better. So I repeated it everywhere, expecting an instant transformation. The results did change instantly. I now had faded drawings with big dark patches. It still didn't look three-dimensional.

"Now build up the medium tones," they said. Haven't I already done that? "Blend them into the darks, but don't use black."

If I can't use black, what do I use?

I picked up the darkest coloured pencils I had and started playing with layering. Dark Indigo. Dark Sepia. Black Raspberry. Tucson Red. Gradually, through trial and error, the shadows started to look more convincing. Not because they were darker, but because they had colour in them.

The phrase that finally made it click for me was "go softly into the shadows." It wasn't about picking up a dark pencil and pressing hard. It was about softly layering many different darks, and covering less area with each layer.

That's what this page is about. Not the theory of light and shadow in the abstract, but the practical business of seeing shadows clearly and getting them into your drawings in a way that creates form.

This guide is part of the fundamentals of drawing, where I cover the core skills that help coloured pencil work look solid and believable.

If you want to go deeper into how light and dark create the illusion of form, this guide to value in drawing explains how artists use tonal changes to make objects look solid and three-dimensional.

Understanding Your Light Source

In my early days I thought of light as either on or off.

It didn't occur to me that there were types of light, or that they could be harsh or diffuse. Light was just the thing that let me see what I was drawing.

That started to change when I began experimenting with a desk lamp. I moved it very close to my subject, and the shadows it cast had sharp, hard edges, just like the shadows I'd been drawing. Then I moved the lamp further away. The edges became softer and more natural looking. Instead of half the object sitting in darkness, the shadow gradually transitioned across the surface. The object looked more realistic, almost rounded.

That was a revelation. The distance of the light source changes everything about the shadows it creates.

Watch for Competing Shadows

One thing that confused me early on was finding double shadows. One appeared where I expected it, on the opposite side of the object from my lamp. The other could appear anywhere.

It took me a while to realise I still had the room light on. It was coming from a different direction, further away, and paler and softer, which is why I hadn't noticed it at first. But it was casting its own set of shadows, competing with the lamp.

Turn off the overhead lights. Close the blinds if needed. Commit to one light source. It seems like a small thing but it simplifies everything. One light means one set of shadows, and that's far easier to read and draw.

Light Quality

Once you start paying attention, you'll notice that a north-facing window on an overcast day gives you a similar effect to a lamp placed further away. Gentle gradations, soft edges. For learning, that kind of soft light is your friend.

The harder, more dramatic shadows from direct sunlight or a close bare bulb are worth exploring later, but they're less forgiving when you're still finding your feet.

Two Types of Shadow

Curious about what I was actually seeing, I did some research and learned there are two types of shadow: form shadows and cast shadows.

Cast shadows I understood immediately.

When photographing a butterfly, you don't put yourself between the sun and the insect or you'll cast a shadow on it, which will cause it to fly off. A cast shadow is simply what happens when an object blocks the light from reaching a surface behind or beneath it. They're darkest and sharpest right at the base of the object and become lighter and softer-edged as they stretch away.

But form shadows? What were they?

It turns out I was back to my soft-edged transitions. When light hits a curved surface, the side turning away from the light receives less and less of it. You could say the object itself is part of the shadow. That gradual darkening across the surface is what gives a drawn object its three-dimensional appearance.

The practical difference matters when you're drawing.

Cast shadows need darker values and a clear shape.

Form shadows need gentle gradation, that "go softly into the shadows" approach. Getting the two confused is what creates those flat-looking drawings with dark patches instead of convincing form.

The Colour in Shadows

In the opening I described reaching for Dark Indigo, Dark Sepia, Black Raspberry instead of black, and discovering that shadows looked more convincing with colour in them.

But knowing that shadows have colour is one thing. Seeing it is another.

If you struggle to see the colours in a shadow, here's a trick that helped me. Take a photo of your subject and open it on the computer. Lighten the image and push the saturation slider up. The colours hiding in the shadows will come out.

When you reset the image back to normal, those colours will still be obvious to your eyes. Once you've seen them, you can't unsee them.

What you find might surprise you.

Shadows are rarely just darker versions of the object's colour. If your light source is warm, the shadows will often lean cool, towards blue-violet. Cool light tends to push shadows warmer. And with brightly coloured objects, you'll sometimes find a hint of the object's own colour peeping through the shadow, reflected light catching the edges.

For a deeper look at how to identify and render shadow colours in coloured pencil, including choosing your shadow palette and layering techniques, see What Colour is a Shadow?

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