how to paint drapery and fabric folds: value first, then edges

Paint cloth by working out its light and shadow first, then shaping edges and brushwork to match the fabric, with five masterworks to study.

6 min read

Drapery looks hard because every fold seems to need its own solution. It gets easier once you treat cloth as a tone problem. How convincing a texture looks depends partly on drawing, but mainly on the tone values of its light, half-tone and shadow [1]. Colour comes later. This guide takes you from setting up the cloth to the final edges, and points you to five paintings where the folds are worth studying.

What you need

A piece of cloth you can arrange and leave alone. A plain white or cream fabric shows light and shadow most clearly.
One fixed light source, so the lights and shadows stay put while you work.
Titanium white, ivory black, burnt umber, ultramarine blue, yellow ochre and alizarin crimson. These are the modern equivalents the example records use for cream, white and red fabric; the painters themselves worked with lead white and the lakes of their day.
A few brushes of different sizes, including one wide enough to lay in a whole shadow shape.
A glazing medium, if you plan to finish with translucent layers [2].
A squint, or the eye-closing method, for judging relative values [1].
Optional: photographs by other people, studied for tone and not for copying. Solomon recommends this for learning textures and modelling [1].

Step by step

Fix the setup. Arrange the cloth, light it, and do not touch it again. Solomon notes that folds do not fall twice alike, which is why a painter working on white satin had to paint it direct and in one sitting [3].
Separate light and dark from colour. Goethe advises considering light and dark independently of colour before anything else [4]. Squint at the cloth and ignore its hue.
Name the three tones. Find the highest light, the middle tint and the shadow [4]. Inside the shadow, look for three different things: the shadow of the cloth on itself, shadow it casts on other objects, and the lighter shadow that comes from reflected light [4].
Choose one predominant light. Most solid objects have a single leading light passage, and every other passage has to be lowered in relation to it, however delicately, so that it can lead [5]. Decide which fold carries that light and keep the rest below it.
Block in simple shapes. Solomon tells you to treat silk and satin as just shapes of shadow, middle colour and light, matched in their true relation to each other [6]. Draw the big planes of the cloth and ignore individual wrinkles for now. Work with the paint wet together, so the masses connect [6].
Model in grey before colour, if you work in layers. Solomon describes a Dutch white satin dress as modelled in white and grey first and then thinly coloured [3]. He also says that a quality of grey under a warm translucent covering cannot be had in direct painting [7]. This is the main reason to build the form in a neutral first.
Colour the shadows by their neighbours. Every colour mass is the complement of its neighbour [6]. Goethe's experiments with coloured shadows point the same way: when the light has a tint, the shadow it casts tends toward the complementary of that tint [8]. A warm light therefore asks for a cool shadow in the folds. Check your shadow against the light on the same fold before you mix it.
Let the brush follow the fold. In the records for the Winterhalter family portrait and the Borovikovsky portrait, the strokes on the cloth track the direction of the gathered fabric. Lay each stroke along the way the cloth moves, not across it.
Set the edges last. Cloth has both hard and soft edges. Keep edges soft where a fold turns into shadow and crisper where it meets strong light. Soften only sparingly, because too much blending costs you the freshness and character of the brushwork [6].
Add the final touches. Place a few frank touches for the brightest lights. Solomon values them as evidence of life in the paint [6]. Strongly impasted lights can stay bright when the surrounding colour darkens [2].

Glazing and darkening

If you finish with glazes, expect the picture to get darker. Glazing treats the colour underneath as a light ground, and colours can be enhanced and gain tone this way, but they necessarily become darker [2]. Goethe describes a dark ground that grew stronger over time, so that the middle tints and shadows went obscure and only the impasted lights stayed bright [2]. Keep your shadows lighter than you think they need to be, and leave the final darks to the end.

Common mistakes

Outlining every fold. Look at how the fabric reads through value shifts and subtle highlights, not linear definition. Model the planes instead of drawing around them.
Starting with colour. If you mix hues before you know the values, the form gets lost. Work out light and dark first [4].
Giving every fold the same brightness. With no single predominant light, the cloth goes flat. Lower everything else relative to the leading light [5].
Over-softening. Blending every edge removes the freshness of the brushwork [6]. Keep some hard edges where the cloth catches light.
Ignoring the colour next to the cloth. Chevreul found that grey patterns on a rose ground read as green, and that the grey shadows of rosy flesh in many pictures look green for the same reason, by contrast with the rose beside them [9]. The grey half-tints of a white cloth will do the same against a red sofa or a pink dress. Judge your half-tints against their surroundings.
Painting from a cloth that has moved. Folds do not fall twice alike [3], so a disturbed setup means starting the folds again.
Letting the shadows go dark too early. A dark ground or heavy glazing pulls the middle tints and shadows down over time [2].

Study these paintings

emperor-frederick-iii-of-germany-king-of-prussia-with-his-wife-empress-victoria-and-their-children-prince-william-and: look at the red velvet sofa, which shifts from a brighter red in the highlights to near-black in the deepest folds, with heavier impasto in those shadows. Then look at the cream dress, where visible strokes follow the direction of the gathered fabric where light hits it.

portrait-of-ekaterina-vladimirovna-rodzianko-by-vladimir-borovikovsky: the muslin of the dress is painted with loose, directional brushwork that follows the grain of the folds. Find the golden shadows inside the white dress and compare them with the pale lights. The record gives the fold shadows as a mix of burnt umber, ultramarine and yellow ochre.

adornment-fields-by-william-adolphe-bouguereau: the white chemise has sharply defined folds where the fabric catches light, set against softer transitions in the shadow. The brightest passages are titanium white with only a trace of yellow ochre and ultramarine. Compare the crisp chemise with the almost edgeless face to see how one painter varies edges between materials.

anne-or-molly-cracroft-by-joseph-wright: the drapery and dress sit in a narrow, close range of warm values, and the volume comes from gentle gradation instead of sharp contrast. The folds read through value shifts and subtle highlights, not linear definition. The cream silk is lead white with a tiny touch of yellow ochre.

charlotte-corday-awaiting-execution-by-gerolamo-induno: the white dress is the lightest value in the whole composition, set against a near-binary structure of deep shadow and light. Look at how the folds have soft edges in shadow and crisper definition in the light, which gives the dress weight and volume.

Sources

The Practice of Oil Painting (Solomon J. Solomon (1910)), LIGHT AND SHADE
Theory of Colours (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
The Practice of Oil Painting (Solomon J. Solomon (1910)), J THE DUTCH SCHOOL
Theory of Colours (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
The Practice of Oil Painting (Solomon J. Solomon (1910)), LIGHT AND SHADE
The Practice of Oil Painting (Solomon J. Solomon (1910)), PAINTING IN COLOUR FROM LIFE
The Practice of Oil Painting (Solomon J. Solomon (1910)), THE SCHOOL OF TITIAN
Theory of Colours (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
Laws of Contrast of Colour (M. E. Chevreul)