Shading/shadowing term question

[Sven Lynch]

First I would like to say hello to everyone and that I am glad to be here among so many fine letter people.

I have been lucky enough informally trained some by Minneapolis sign painter Phil Vandervarrt but I am mostly self taught.

anyway I just thought this would be a good place to ask about this shadow question I have,

Phil taught me how to paint great shadows really quick, He called it a hobo shade. Basically it is a quick shade that is kept at a distance from the actual letters, I guess hobo's in the 30's painted signs really quick so they'd get paid before they missed the next train, or something like that...

I see this shading done all the time but I wonder if there is another term for it.

I was about to refer to it as relief shading but then I wasn't sure, cause I started getting confused about the terms shade and shadow. I think I got it figured out that shading is what I have thought of as a 3D and shadow is like a drop shadow.

this is more of a shadow effect although it can be either or in between.

any ideas on another word for this?

[Billy Pickett]

...you said it... , "DROP SHADOW".

[Raymond Chapman]

Explain it to him, Jackson. This discussion has been around for years and I've yet to understand it.

[Mike Jackson]

Sven,
I did an article on this for SC a long time ago and spent quite a bit of time researching the terms before writing it. In some circles, the two terms are used interchangeably, but there actually is a difference.

The two are quite simple to understand.

A "shadow" is a term used when the darker value is cast onto another background surface. For this one, you get the feeling the letters are standing slightly off the surface and casting a shadow onto the background.

When you use the term "shade", it is referring to the artist trying to imitate the sides of a letter or group of letters. The lines of a shade are often done at about a 45° from the corners, but that isn't a specific rule. If you were to look at a letter cut out of a piece of plywood from an angle, you'd see all the layers as slightly different values. That would be called a split shade. In the old days, it was also common to try to blend behind the split shades to imitate even more of an illusion of depth of the thickness, often called a "split-blended shade". You can also have a "perspective" shade in which the lines on the sides of the lettering appear to be converging towards a single vanishing point on the horizon...extreme letter thickness.

You mentioned the small space between the lettering and the shade or shadow. That is often called a "relief". You could have a relief shade or a relief shadow. You can also have a shade on the sides of the letter, and a shadow cast onto a surface.

In the old days of hand lettering, the relief was a tool to let the sign painter add the shade or shadow immediately after painting the lettering. They didn't have wait for the first part to dry or worry about picking up some of the neighboring paint. If your friend used the word "Hobo shade" or "Hobo shadow", they were probably referring to that trick.

You sometimes hear the term "drop shade". That term seems to me to be more of a bastardized combination of the two terms. In the old days, the painter would simply move the pattern down and over a little to end up with two identical lines of text. The main letter was usually the upper version and the shadow was represented by the lower version. I think the proper term is "drop shadow".

Again, a shadow is cast onto a surface, while the shade was used to indicate thickness.

(Much of this information came from CJ Strong's Detroit School of Lettering Booklets from 1907)

Mike Jackson

[Mike Jackson]

Maybe as an interesting side note, about the time I was writing that article for SC, I was also talking to the people at Gerber Scientific Products. They were in the process of introducing a Shades/Shadows module for the old SignMaker 4b and Sprints. I pleaded with them to let me help them get the terminology correct before they introduced the products. There was already quite a bit of confusion in terminology, but I'd hate to think what would have happened if a bunch of non-signmaking engineers had tried to label the effects. Thankfully, they listened, got it right, and added in a few of the extra features to what they were going to release like "relief".

[Raymond Chapman]

See...I told you he knew what he was talking about.