When painting a picture of fabric, what color are you supposed to use for shadow

Question:like if you have baby blue curtains, what color are you supposed to color the dark parts with? The baby blue mixed with black or dark blue?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: like if you have baby blue curtains, what color are you supposed to color the dark parts with? The baby blue mixed with black or dark blue?

That depends on several factors. I will tell you about some of them, but it would be better to train yourself to see what colors the shadows actually are and how the paint that you're working with blends to make those colors--basically to develop the eye of an artist. However, there are some basic tips:

1) What color is the fabric? Look at a (subtractive) color wheel and see what color is directly opposite of the color of your fabric. This color is the complementary color and is generally good for shading. (white's opposite is black, green's opposite is red, etc...) You can overlay or mix this color with the color of your fabric.

2) How strong is the light source? You can use the color found in step 1 above alone for shading, but you may want to add white or black to increase light and shadow effects.

That should get you started.

both, dark blue for the first part of the shade and then black and dark blue for the darkest, and sometimes just dark blue if the shadow isn't that dark, if you look at the shadows closly you will see that there are several different shades of that shadow, GL! HTH!