Tutorial 93 - Cool Light, Cool Shadows (Patreon)

Most painters are familiar with this teaching. However, a warm or cool primary light source will not always cause shadows to take on a complementary hue. What if our ambient light is the same or similar hue? That hue will still make it into the shadows. 

Though in general, it’s favourable to create images that at least feel like there is a color temperature balance (some words on balance in tutorial 81: (https://www.patreon.com/posts/4866363).

Color Temperature

Skillful use of color temperature will give the viewer a believable sense of realism. Though the warm-cool feeling doesn’t have to be complementary. It's quite possible to create a convincing image with a functioning analogous color scheme that appears to have a slight temperature shift, as illustrated. 

See tutorial 84 (https://www.patreon.com/posts/4886952) for more on analogous color.

Temperature is relative

Relatively speaking, one of two hues presented in a painting will be cooler or warmer feeling than the other, even though they might both be consider cool blue, in general terms.

See tutorial 79 (https://www.patreon.com/posts/4861169) and tutorial 82 (https://www.patreon.com/posts/4904307) for a bit more on color relativity.

Monochrome Color Scheme

Without any hue shift, we'll arrive at a monochrome color scheme, though we still have some flexibility with lightness (value) and saturation (intensity). In the smaller illustration, the ball is a more saturated, brighter cyan than anywhere else in the image.

Tonal

If we lose the saturation control and stay with a single saturation value throughout our image then our scheme is purely tonal, ranging only in value. Value range is the least we need to communicate tone in an image.