My instructor said paint from the shadows out, I thought she was nuts

In 2021 I ignored my art teacher's advice and painted the bright spots first, then spent 5 hours layering dark colors over everything to fix contrast in a portrait for a gallery submission.

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sean_walker4516d agoMost Upvoted

...and honestly that whole thing reminds me of what happened to my buddy Marcus back in community college. Dude was doing this acrylic landscape and decided to start with the tiny highlights on the leaves, thinking he'd just add darker stuff later. He ended up with this muddy mess where the whole tree looked like it was glowing in a fog bank, and he spent like three hours trying to paint shadows over it that just wouldn't stick right. He finally got so frustrated he just scraped half the paint off with a palette knife and started over from the dark base layer. Took him another two days but it came out way better than his first attempt, and he turned it in late but passed. Now he swears by doing shadows first, says it's like building a house from the foundation up instead of putting the roof on and then trying to dig a basement underneath. I still paint my bright spots first sometimes cause I'm stubborn, but I always end up paying for it. Your teacher was onto something, it's just one of those things you gotta learn the hard way. That light on light just never works out the way you think it will.