Shadows play a very important role in the still life paintings because they bring life to the drawing. If you look around the nature you shall hardly find any object, which does not hold a shadow.

The shadow that I like is the simple cast shadow. If any object is supposed to block the light source or the sun the shadow will always be cased. The shadows which are based on the object that needs to be painted with the similar color of the object and a warm color can be added. You can use warm colors like red, orange, yellow as the sun is little warm.

In the landscape painting the value of the shadow will depend on the timings chosen during the day. The shadows in the early morning are quite longer as well as darker and the afternoon shadows are shorter as well as lighter. According to the rule, the shadow is 50 percent dark than that of the portion of an object which is there in the light.

The size and the direction of the shadow have to be very carefully thought out. While painting always take care of the length of the shadows. Regarding the vase of the shadow if you make the shadow two times longer than that of the vase it will not look real. A shorter or the same sized shadow as of the vase will make it look more realistic.

To actually make the painting of the shadow you should always start doing the shadow directly from the side of your subject. The last thing to take care will be about shadows, is the consistency.

Like if you are doing on a landscape where there are many trees, they need to have the similar shadows. Shadows add realism to the landscape. Do not be scared to use them, do it very carefully.