Tutorial - Painting a real shadow

posted by roman, jarhead, kong

Heyho.
This little article shows you how you can paint a real shadow on to a base or a scene. This is at least not my own work, it is the second miniature ever by my girlfriend. It was her idea and execution - i just try to explain what i have observed.

Anna did build up her base like she wanted and never listened to me for that is really something great about her - she has her own imagination and this nice base was build out of it:

She soon decided that she wanted to paint up the base not casual. She saw the shadow work the room light was doing on her base and decided to paint it up to her base. She also decided to use some blue transparend plastic piece she found in my boxes to give on ring an extra colour...

She wanted to prime everything in white and that is how it looked after primed, except the blue plastic thing:

Ok, now was the time to paint. Time to find the shadow again. I told her, she could use the photo she has done above, but she went the way to paint it from seeing it live. So she moved a lamp in the position to repaint the shadow, she also took the fading of the shadow into her paintwork...

After her gentle shadow has been painted up to the base she glued the blue plastic piece carefully in place and mixed some blue glazes to intense the effect on the places where they hit due the shadow/light situation...

Here is another example by Robert (Chimp) on how he did paint a real shadow at the ground to show that the miniature stands in zenithal Light:

 I know this is not a casual article, but i really like the way Anna went her with the idea... hope it can inspire!

Keep on happy painting!
Regards
Roman