Shadows part 3 - Shadows on Groups

This segment builds on the earlier posts about shadows, so please read parts 1 and 2 before getting into this posting. Also, bear with me as I slowly work my way through basic shadow concepts and into more complex ideas.

Note: I still have plenty of room in my upcoming certification classes for Kansas City and Charleston, and I am now building a mailing list for Seattle, Nov. 7th and Vancouver BC (a few days after Seattle, exact date TBA). E-mail me to get on my list!

Shadows on Groups
Last time we talked about shadows it was on a single apple sitting on a table. But how do the shadows change when we add other things around the apple? In this group I have an apple, pear and orange, with a little space between them so you can see how shadows work a little more.

1. Each object casts it's own shadow, same as it would by itself. The pear has a soft, pear-shaped shadow, the apple has an apple-shaped shadow, and the orange has a simple round shadow. the leaf on the pear is far above the table, so it casts a nice soft shadow.

2. Where two shadows overlap it gets a shade darker. So any spot where two shadows meed it will be darker. 3 shadows- even darker, etc. For my finished example I have softened all my shadow shapes together, but I need to remember to keep the shadows darker where tow meet.

3. The closer things are to each other, the less other light can bounce in and make it brighter. In this example the area between the fruit is going to be slightly darker simply because less light can bounce in and fill in the area between them. The top view shows the area that will get extra shadows and where the regular shadows fall.

For the final picture-All three of these fruit are fairly bright, but the apple will be darkest, so I added R89 to really darken it up. Notice the highlight on the orange. Unlike the apple, the orange peel is slightly textured, so to give it the textured feel I made the highlight dotted with my Opaque white. Image: Drawn with a 0.3 mm multiliner onto color laser copier paper.