Six Steps to Getting 'House' Shadows Right

It's a bit technical, but totally worth learning. Once you 'get it' you got it!

Called cast shadows, shadows which are cast from the sun!

Here's a block in the sun.

I'll show you how to get an accurate shadow.

The purple line is the horizon line.

The light brown side is almost straight-on in our view. Quite square.

It isn't perfect, sorry.

The dark brown side has angled edges, top and bottom.

The dotted lines show the angle the edges need to be to 'vanish' at the horizon line, or go off into the distance. The dot on the far left is a vanishing point. This simple technique helps show that the box is not flat, but has at least two sides, one of which is angled away from us.

The yellow line from the sun to the horizon line establishes the sun's vanishing point (svp). We'll need that later.

The three other lines from the sun tick the three upper corners of the box which we can see. The fourth corner won't effect this shadow because it is behind the box. These are used to help find the edges of the box's shadow.

A line from the svp to each bottom corner, (the orange line, the grey line, and the olive green line), is used to show where the corners and edges of the shadow will be.

Note the intersections of the lines drawn through the top corners and bottom corners: the orange and black line, the grey and purple line, the olive and pink line. A dot on each intersection allows us to draw a line from one to the other and back to the box on each side. (The line around the base of the box is added just to show where the shadow will lie.)

The shadow area is filled in. Maybe not the shape you would have guessed!

Fill in the land........

Erase the perspective lines, and you're ready to fill in other details.

By the way, shadows from all sorts of objects can be found this way.

If your box (house) has a roof, you will want to check out more details on YouTube channels! Or let me know if you'd like me to add more shadow-making tips in this blog.

Happy shadowing!