How Professional Artists Paint Natural Looking Dappled Light in Watercolor

Dappled light is one of the most beautiful effects in nature, and yet it is very difficult to paint. Most painters try to paint every little spot of light and shadow, and the result usually feels busy instead of believable. Here's the approach that I use instead. Hi, I'm Brienne. This scene has everything that makes dappled light challenging. Has the light shining through the trees, lots of little light and shadow shapes on the house, the ground, and the garden. But I am not going to paint every little light and shadow shape. Instead, I'm going to simplify what I see. You'll find that by organizing the shadow shapes into larger, more connected shapes, it makes painting dappled light easier and less intimidating. So let me show you what I mean. Like any painting that I do, I started with a value study. And if haven't seen my previous video about value studies and why they're important, please check that out. So this is a value study that I did for that video, and I thought it would be good to paint it because it works great for learning about dappled light. Well, after doing the value study, I make sure that I draw out my composition much more carefully, measuring angles, and this is where I get, you know, the position of things more accurate. But at this stage, I'm not going to necessarily draw out the dappled light. That'll do with painting. I am going to lightly take off some of the graphite with a kneaded eraser. And here's going to be my first wash. Now, in most cases, and in this case, I am just tinting the lights. So all of those, the white, for instance, of the house, notice how it's warmer than the back of the light of the roof, right? And now I'm warming it up even more with a little more pigment, but all of this is really light. This is tea consistency. So if you haven't seen the tea to butter, go check out that video as well. Now, I am just with this first wash, putting, you know, changing up the temperature of some of those, those lights, but then I'm also going to drop in some of the bright azalea flower color, right? And then do a little bit of splattering. This is just the first wash, and I'm going to let this dry with all those lights tinted. Now I can move on to the middle value. Notice as I put this middle value down, how light that's what my first wash is, right? So these are just tinted whites in a way. Okay, so as I'm bringing in this middle value, I am dropping in, you know, I have the sky color and then dropping in some of the back trees, and then I'm going to bring more pigment into the front main tree. And this is because I noticed it was just too light. It's not going to be as light as the house, so it needed another layer if you want to think about it. And always changing up my composition. I'm using red, yellow, and blue, basically, which is cobalt blue, quinacridone rose, and transparent yellow oxide, then with a few other colors. Now as I start painting the shadow on this house, this is where we're going to start going into the dappled light areas, okay? So I've got the shadow that's under the eaves. Notice how I'm cooling and warming things up, you know, so I'm adjusting my mother pool with either a little more blue or a little more red or a little more yellow, adding in some lavender as well because I love the opacity of that. So as I'm going to focus on just the shadow shape, so I'm not thinking of form of the house yet, and I'll bring in the details, windows, and stuff later, right? This is just getting the big shadow. So this is one of the keys to dappled light. I'm not going to try to get all the little lights that I see. There's too many, and it would end up looking spotted. So what I'm thinking of is connecting as much of the shapes if I can. If I have a more connected shape with just a few areas of dappled light here and there, you know, light peeking through, then that's good enough for me. Now I'm going around the lights of the azaleas in front, right? And then I'm going to soften some of those edges, and I adjusted the pigment and water ratio while I painted this overall shadow shape with some of those, just a few dappled light peeking through, okay? So basically two main key points. The shape of, actually three. The shape of the shadow is important, adjusting the colors within that shadow shape, and then doing one overall value shape, painting that all together. Okay, with that dappled light in the back, I am going to just go right into the shadowed side of the azaleas. So the azaleas are mostly in shadow with just a few highlights on, you know, as the light filters through. So I wanted to do that in one so that the shadow from the house can blend right into the shadow from the azaleas. Then I dropped in some of the green shapes, but I'm looking, they're very similar value, maybe a little darker than the azaleas, and I'm just looking at the photo reference to kind of use those green shapes and paint around the masses of flowers. It's a lot like painting masses of trees. If you haven't seen that video, you can check that one out as well. All right, so now I'm going into the ground, and what I'm doing is, see there's these warm pine needles, and they have like a warmer light, you know, with the dappled light that's on those, and so this is that undercoat. So this isn't the dark shadow of a value yet. This is actually still the sunlit portion on those pine needles. So this is kind of a second wash that I'm doing. I just want to, and you'll see as I put in the value of the shadow on the ground, how this is going to work. Okay, so this is that middle value stage, and I'm going that second wash, and I'm going to let that dry before I go on to this next part. I decided to start with the dark of the tree. Now I don't always do this, it just depends on the painting, but this one was important to, this tree was important, so I end up bringing in this dark because it's a massive value shape, and from my value study, I know that it's a big key piece. So that's the shape that I'm going to start with. So notice as I'm painting this dark, this is kind of pink consistency of milk to some cream. I'll bring in more cream later, but there's a variation, and notice how there's a variation of color. So with these darks, I'm bringing in ultramarine blue as well as quinrose and then transparent red oxide. That's my combination of red, yellow, and blue basically, and then a little bit of lavender because again, I like that opacity in some of the areas, and some I'm gonna use more water than others, so I vary the consistency as well as vary the colors within this big shape. Okay, so now what I'm going to do is, I have more water in my brush, so I'm going to use some of that warm transparent yellow oxide, and, but I got some of the water out with my paper towel. Notice how I keep dabbing it, because I don't want to add too much water to this. Now this, the dark shapes are still wet, you know, they're still pretty damp, but I don't want to add too much water or it'll just spread, right, and then I won't have these nice soft edges. So I'm just softening some of these, these are the, this is going to be the dappled light that's on the side of the tree, okay, which I'm painting very differently than I did the house, right, because the house is, the shadow is darker than the light on the house. Here I'm kind of painted around the light, and then I'm also going to lift a few places and get nice soft edges. All right, after I have those basic dappled light shapes, then I'm going to go through and start bringing in some details and texture on the tree. So I got the form first, and the basic value, and then I'm going to bring in these darker details, which will help just to give more interest and form to the tree itself, right, because I'm painting these lines along the contour of the tree. Okay, so now I can just bring in masses of, indicate masses of leaves at the top. I'm going to bring in other shapes because now we have this really dark, pretty much fully formed tree. That's as much detail as I'll put in the tree, but now we need the other values in because it's standing out. You might think, oh, that's so dark. Well, that's just because everything else is light, so it needs, it needs other darks to make it fit. Indicating a few of those picket fence shapes in the back, and then I'm going to bring in the dappled light on the ground now. So notice how I'm bringing in a darker shadow color. It's a warm shadow color, so it's got transparent red oxide in it, and quinrose, and you know, lavender, all my mixture, but I just warmed it up, and I am painting around the dappled light shapes on the ground, but notice how that warm, the warm light that's coming through is filling more like, you know, like it fits, right, and the shapes I'm doing, I'm, they're kind of oval and oblong. We're going to talk about that in a minute, but notice how I'm still overall trying to paint that one value shape together, and now what I'm going to do is bring in, notice how I changed my shadow color, so now we're on the lighter ground, not those pine needles anymore, so it's more of a lighter value, and it's more purplish, so still red, yellow, and blue combination, but now cooler, and painting, I didn't let these dry. I want them to bleed together, okay, and then I can drop in a few darks within the shadow shape, and that will help the transparency. Let's pause for a minute, and I want to talk about the shapes of the dappled light, so look at the house, and notice that as I circle those shapes, there's only a few, but notice how they're a little more circular, and then also look at the ones on the tree. They're oblong, but yet they're going along the form of the tree, right, being wrapped around the tree. Now look at the ground, see how they're flat and oval, you know, flat and oblong, so it's because the dappled light is going to go along the terrain, so you've got to think of the shape and pay attention to the shape of that dappled light. That's more important than getting every single light, so the shape is key. Okay, now in order to continue to finish the painting, I will drop more of these darks in, right, and this is going to create form, this is going to create depth, and this is the darks underneath those flowers, and then I can add the details, and I can add as much, you can add as much detail as you want. It's really a personal choice. I don't think there's a right or wrong. I just kind of add what feels good, what I feel the painting needs, and that's a personal choice, but basically the overall big value shapes are done. I have my highlights that I'm going to put, and then I'm finished the painting, and the key thing that I always want to compare it to is the value study. If I've hit the big shapes, I'm finished. Painting dappled light isn't about trying to capture every little piece of sunlight. It's about trying to simplify what we see and still maintain believability. When your shadow shapes are well designed, and the value shapes are connected, and then the colors within them subtly shift, then your painting begins to capture that feeling of sunlight instead of trying to depict it exactly. Always remember you want to paint the pattern of light, not every patch of light. I challenge you this week to try a painting with dappled light. Simplify as best you can and design your shadow shapes. Thank you for watching. I hope this video is helpful. Please like and subscribe to my channel. I really appreciate it. It helps. Also, if you would like to learn more from me online or see this full demonstration start to finish, then you can join my membership on travelingcolorstudio.com. Find out the options. Thanks so much and happy painting.