This pesky light illusion ruins so many beginner drawings!

Other colour tutorials:

I’ve always thought of optical illusions as a bit of mind-bending fun. It wasn’t until I started researching this video that I realised that these illusions have a massive impact on us when we’re learning to draw and paint.

We don’t see light or colours in isolation, they are always in context. Our eyes adjust to different lighting, and our brains process light and colour information in real-time to help us understand it more clearly. However, those same processes that help us process the world also distort our understanding of what we’re really seeing.

It would be useful to be able to turn off all our automated processing of light and colour information and just see the rays as they “really are”, but unfortunately that isn’t possible. Instead, we can retrain our eyes and brains to see with more clarity, and we can use powerful techniques like squinting and do simplified value studies.

I hope you enjoy these fascinating topics as much as me!

[scottscott]

You are such a great teacher. You seem genuinely patient, compassionate and kind. A great thing to be towards those often frustrated hopeful artists with huge mountains to climb.

[mallorydurrick]

Thanks for making this video. I love the reasons behind WHY things don’t look right.

[vivaldirules]

You are so good at teaching, Kenzo. Thank you! You explain things so well partly because you’re learning as you go. The fact that you so openly admit to how dumbfounded you are by that last image is terrific. Thank you.

[stephstokes]

My last painting teacher spent like a whole year training me to see this. Your lightest shadow should never be lighter than you darkest light, and your darkest light should never be darker than your lightest shadow!

[CameraEd]

"The Interaction of Color" by Josef Albers is a great resources on this topic. Every artist should own a copy of it...

[vishvamitrar]

dood you talk from heart ... was so natural like a conversation.

[Janehaver]

Oh my goodness, your channel is underrated, this is the type of explanation on light I have been looking for thanks!

[michelegirard]

I don’t understand why you don’t have more subscribers, you’re one of the best channels on YouTube .

[katrinatia-jasmine]

The absolute wealth of knowledge contained within this channel never ceases to amaze me. One of the best quality art channels out there. Thank you!

[bobxbaker]

my struggle with tones in general is that i don't know how to handle the darkest midtones, it feels like i always do the darkest midtones too bright to begin with because i always average out the midtone to be somewhere in the middle of the midtones and so when i go brighter it has less range to go so i try to push darker midtones in but it creates this cascading problem of needing to redefine every form shadow.

[totalme]

I appreciate that you tried, I know it is hard to explain this sort of things, but you did well

[lifeisfun_]

Wow!!! Your videos are awesome♡♡♡ I just happened to come across your channel this morning and have learned a LOT on how to depict shadows and light in my paintings. Your way of explaining and giving simple demos to illustrate your point are SPOT ON in making them 'click' in my head. (Like how the form gets lost when you focus on all the subtle value differences (losing the light vs dark idea) by making them more exagerated than they are, etc. )

I love the quiz questions too because it makes me realize misconceptions I didn't even realize I had, causing me to focus on them as you progress through the video. (This video has many great demos and examples. It was gard to believe the strip across the value chart was all the same color. I thought you did it in reverse it something. As simple as some examples may seem, it is critical to think of those concepts we take for granted because our brain just does it for us. Even the example where you showed a compare and contrast of the reflected/bounce off light onto an orange on white vs black cloth. Black absorbs all wavelengths but it is easy to forget to think about it when analyzing and painting what you see. Another great example was the simple, but mind opening demo of your hand with and without your other hand underneath, illustrating how much of a difference that reflected light can make.

Like in psychology, it seems like common sense, but easy to miss if you don't train your mind to think of the 'why' and what I am actually looking at inorder to be able to convey it in a painting.

I have heard the paint coach and many other artusts discuss the same technical concept of getting the value correct, but it still all felt vague getting lost in the art lingo. Rather than reducing things to in the light vs shadow as you did, he would just say "value" and my brain would flash back to that crazy ten+ gray gradient strip, in turn made the whole concept as clear as mud, due to how difficult it can be to determine the value of a color without taking a black and white pic of the object to really determine which subtle value change it matches.

...This video was so eye opening. No wonder fifuring out the correct value right off the bat so hard!! The exact color can look totally different depending on the surroundings, which gets tricky to when you try to paint an interpretation of "what you think you see" rather than how it is in real life. Haha ( You also showing images to contrast a bad vs good vs great drawing due to common misconceptions is super helpful on "why" those frustrating issues constantly come up and how to fix them.

Thanks for the videos!!

[GenericInternetter]

6:45 I tested this in an image editing application and they're not actually the same exact colour - This is probably due to youtube's video compression system. These two colours are however, both around 135/255 GREY. Yes, both very similar greys, the difference is barely noticeable. One is very slightly blueish and the other very slightly yellowish - You need to literally put pixels next to each other to tell them apart.

[JSebLf]

Thank you for this journey through light and color, to which you invite us. Is awesome
Thank you very much Kenzo

[vampirethespiderbatgod]

THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
I just want to say, you're one of the best masters in the world. Thank you for sharing your knowledge back into this world. Which shows that you're a good man.

[laurahowden]

This is so valuable for me as a beginning artist. Thank you!

[Top.G.Andy.C]

Your lighting in this video is another perfect example of your explanation when squinting and focusing normal. I realised this while testing the theory you mention as I watched haha

[bricarri]

Good one Kenzo! Questioning the nature of “reality” is good!

[daftcruz]

Great video!
The "squint tip" is very good, you can even see the two matching gray values in that illusion.
And here's another tip : if you're on to digital painting or using photos, you can use the Cutout Filter in Photoshop to simplify the value tones.

[Wal]

Thank you so much for this, I REALLY struggle with this. I can see that this is responsible for my almost good efforts that never really have that simple clarity of light to dark that I’m after, and probably why my flowers never work out when I try to put shadows on. I will try to keep the principles that you explained so well in mind from now on.