Watercolor Tutorial: How to Create Shadow Using Color Theory

Learn the basics of using Color Theory to create shadow in watercolor for beginners, with Sarah Stokes

Sarah Stokes is a watercolor artist based in Worcestershire, UK. Known for her animal paintings, she uses tone and shadow to create movement, definition, and texture in her work. When working with color like Sarah, Color Theory is a great tool to use as it illustrates the relationship between primary, secondary, and tertiary colors and how to use them together.

The color theory tells us that by adding a complementary color to a base color, we can create a darker, more neutral shade, and dull the original base color down. This new shade can then be used to aid composition, depth, and balance when applied as a color to create shadow.

In this beginner's tutorial, Sarah Stokes explains how to use a color wheel to find the complementary color to your base color, and how to create a muddier version of this shade to add shadow.

1. Reactive Your Base Color

The base watercolor you want to add shadow to may have dried. If it has, add water to reactivate it. This will allow for better blending when you add your additional color to create shadow.

2. Add The Opposite Color To Your Base Color

Check the color wheel to find the opposite color of your base color (this is the color that you want to create a neutral shadow tone of). For example, if you want to create a red shadow, adding green (the opposite color on the color wheel), will create a darker, almost brown shade.

Add yellow to purple for a darker purple, orange to blue for a darker blue and red to green for a darker green. This also works the opposite way around for all colors.

3. Use These Colors To Create Shadow

A common mistake that's made when trying to create shadow in watercolor is to add more of the same color to the area you want shadow, but this just makes the paint thicker. Instead, you can add these darker, muddier colors to your piece to create shadows and definition.

It may seem strange to add these colors – a green mixed into a red will create a muddy brown, but you'll see that it's crucial to add this in order to make those brighter base colours pop.

Did you like this tutorial? If you want to learn more from Sarah Stokes, check out her course Artistic Watercolor Techniques for Illustrating Birds.

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