Exercise 12: DRAWING SHADOWS IN PERSPECTIVE

Indicating shadows usually follows a basic set of rules. Remember that shadows have there own vanishing points that may or may not correspond to the vanishing points of objects in the scene. These vanishingpoints are called light vanishing points or shadow vanishing points.

Drawing convincing shadows requires drawing the objects in the scene first according the perspective environment. Before shading the objects to give them mass or volume you must determine the angle of your light source. This is accomplished by drawing a diagonal line off of a prominent corner of an objectto establish the elevation of the light source in relation to the object.

Take note: Moving the light source vanishing point to the right will cause the shadow to rotate around the object to the left.

Raising this vanishing point will pull the shadow in toward the object.The shadow edges line up with the vanishing points in perspective.

Steps:

In this exercise;

1. Draw a box or cube in two point perspective sitting at a fairly shallow angle to the viewer as below.

2. Next, locate a point above the box to the right or left at about a 45 degree angle like the example below. This will be your light vanishing point.

3. Draw a vertical line directly down from this point to a place roughly at a right angle to the box. This will establish your shadow vanishing point.

4. Draw converging lines from the shadow vanishing point through the bottom corners of the box including the hidden corner.

5. Draw light convergence lines out from the light vanishing point down through the top corners of the box until they intersect with the shadow convergence lines. This establishes the corners of the cast shadow on the opposite side of the box from the light source.

There are four rules in manipulating a shadow.

#1-To change the direction of your light source rotate this floating point in space around the object to, for example, go from morning to afternoon light.

#2-The shadow vanishing point for sunlight and moonlight is always directly below the location of the light source.

#3-If the light source is coming from directly above, the shadow will be cat in all directions around the edge of the object.

#4-Multiple objects sitting at different heights like a box sitting on top of another box will have different shadow vanishing points.

Take note: The angle of the shadow remains the same from one side of the object to the other.Other objects at different locations in an outdoor scene could be rendered at the same angle.

An indoor scene with a close light source would require changing the angle of the shadow as demonstrated in the first part of this handout. These two diagonals are connected with a line that extends out from the bottom of the box to the corner of the shadow. The shadow edges line up with the vanishing points in perspective.