atmospheric perspective

Hello my friends. Since I'm out this week at the Oviedo arts board meeting, this week's art class is to be done at home.  Below you will find the instructions on what to do for this week's class on atmospheric perspective.

Atmospheric perspective (or Aerial perspective) refers to the effect the atmosphere has on the appearance of an object as it is viewed from a distance. This phenomena is because of the effect of the earth's atmosphere on the way we perceive tones and colors as they recede towards the horizon.

Step One

Understand the concept.
As the distance between an object and a viewer increases, the contrast between the object and its background decreases. The colors of the object become more muted and less saturated. The objects take on more of the background color and the value of the far away objects gradually move to more of the same value as the background. This can be done by adding more water to your pigment. The colors also drift more toward cool tones as they go back. Often times this is done by adding more blue from the sky color on your palette.

Look around at what you see outside. Is there a stretch of road you can see that goes far away that is interesting to you? Look down your own street or down a path. See if you can notice how the buildings, trees and objects become more faint in the distance.

See the examples below of paintings that use a strong sense of atmospheric perspective.

Step Two

Pick your subject
Do you have a photograph from your travels that shows back into the distance? If not, then select a photograph from online or from a magazine that have good atmospheric perspective.  Good examples would be: Beach/shoreline, a wooded area, a barn, the city, a country lane, a vineyard, grove or field, a small pond or lake.

Do not paint from another person's painting, I'd prefer that you work from a photograph or directly from real life.

Step Three

Sketch and paint your subject
Once you have found something to paint, wet and tape down your watercolor paper (whatever size you'd like). Lightly sketch with pencil your scene.

You may want to paint your scene all with one color using different values (monochromatic)  because it will be simpler that way vs. using full color. I leave that up to your choice.

In the first stage of the painting, start by wetting your paper with clean water slightly and painting the lightest colors of the background. Let the colors intermingle on the paper (similar to how we did when painting the stormy sky.)

Walk away and let it completely dry or use the hair dryer. This could take about 30 minutes.

Next, quickly wet over your background with clean water and paint in some soft and fuzzy versions of the trees, rocks or whatever is in the distance. Make it a similar color and value (lightness or darkness) as the background. Your paint will softly fuzz into the water. Let it do this and create some interesting shapes. Try dropping in some variety of colors.

Walk away again and let this dry completely.

Once your paper is totally dry, paint the middle ground a slightly darker value with more detail. in front of and on top of what you did in the previous step. Be careful not to cover all of your soft gauzy layer up. It should be poking out behind what you are painting now and left alone.

Let it dry.

Continue to darken up the scene as you paint in the details of the landscape elements with less water and more pigment in them. You'll want the edges to become more crisp as the items move more towards the viewer. In the example on the left , the detailed items are not in the foreground but more towards the middle, but you can see the progression of the steps through a landscape. 

Lastly, paint in the final details and darker items.

Bring your painted scene to class next week.