London 4

United Kingdom

London

Color Transition in the Shadows

The dreamy mood of the pastel colors really spoke to me and it was the perfect scene to play with something that I learned in one of Marco Buccis Tutorials: Color Transition in the shadows. The challenge that intrigued me was how to create this effect in a vector program and make it look like a painting!

In this image I took a lot of creative freedom to change the colors and the entire mood of the scene.What originally spoke to me was the heavy contrast of the red door, the light stone of the building and the tree in the shadow as well as the shadow of the tree. As I was working on it, I tried different color variations with the recolor artwork feature.

Use the slider to see the Outline compared to the final illustration.

Photo by Russell Viers

Light Falloff in the shadow

Compressed Color Fall Off

Color Transition inthe Shadows

The color transition between light and shadow areas is a wonderful effect that can add some realism and beauty to your illustrations and paintings. The Effect occurs because the color of the light is changing as it loses energy into the shadows. It is basically a Light Fall Off in a very compressed space. If you want to learn more about this effect, how it works and how to apply it to your art, watch this great video by Marco Bucco.

Light

Color variation

Shadow

Watch "Master This Color Transition In Your Paintings" by Marco Bucci

Blending Modes

How to achieve this in Adobe illustrator

From This to This with Blend Modes and Blur.

The question now is how to achieve this effect in a vector program like Adobe Illustrator. I am sharing here how I achieved this effect. Since this effect depends on the blending modes and the colors you are using in your art, you might have to vary and play with the blending modes until you get the result you like. Here comes the Setup!

1.

In these step I added a Gaussian Blur Effect to the big tree shadow and you can see that the transition between light and shadow is starting to become more colorful. I added a Gaussian Blur to the stroke and a separate Blur to the fill to control the different strengths.

2.

Gaussian Blur

Screen

Multiply

Stroke and Fill

The big shadow shape of the tree has a purple fill color that is set to "Multiply" and a peach stroke color of 4 point, that is set to the Blending Mode "Screen".

3.

At the end I added a layer with some Grain to the image to add texture and grit. This is simply a rectangle with a 50% gray Fill, with a Grain Effect applied and set to Overlay.

4.

Grainy Texture

50% Grey

Make it sing

On top of my composition I added a layer with a free form gradient and set it to Overlay. This effect really brings out the color transition in the shadows.

Light Falloff in the shadow

Light

Color variation

Shadow