Aerial Perspective in Landscapes

Aerial perspective or atmospheric perspective refers to the effect the atmosphere has on the appearance of an object as it is viewed from a distance, the appearance being its color and value.

In my last post, I talked about the curtains of water particles that inhabit the atmosphere and how these curtains change the color of the sky as it approaches the horizon. The same effect holds true for landscape subjects in the distance. As colors recede from the eye over terrain, they become cooler, with the exception of white. A cooler color means a color that tends to contain blue, while a warm color is made up of reds and yellows. In this picture, the trees in the distance appear cooler in color and change to blue in the far distance.

Color Changes

The greater the distance and the more atmosphere, the bluer the distant objects become. As your eye travels, you will notice that the color yellow disappears first, including all of the yellows that mix with other colors such as yellow green, browns, and oranges.

A warm yellow green in the foreground will transition to an emerald green and then a cool blue-green.

In this picture, the closest greens contain more yellow, and as we look further, the yellows dissipate, until the greens in the distance become a blue-green. The sky at the horizon is also lighter and changes to a gray-rose in color.

Reds will prevail slightly longer than yellow, before they too succumb to blue. That’s why mountains tend toward a warm purple before they change in their farthest distance to blue. Atmospheric particles affect the value of a color as well as the temperature in a landscape. You can see in this photo of a mountain range, the transition from green to blue-green, to purple-blue to blue.

Value Changes

All colors will become lighter as they recede, the lightness tempered by the prevailing sky color. As I said last week, whites tend to become slightly warmer and darker as they recede, due to the atmosphere.

 As you would expect, objects close by are deeper in color, their shapes are sharper and the values are more distinct.

It’s important to note that a flat ground plane is always going to be darker than the sky (except when snow is involved), but never as dark as the upright planes such as trees and buildings.

Painting the Farm River - Part III

Welcome back to Painting on the Farm River. This is the final installment of this series. I hope I have inspired you to go out and paint from life nature in its beauty among the birds, butterflies, and nefarious bugs. If you've never tried it, it seems daunting, but be brave! You will learn so much by working from life, I promise.
Last week, I threw the gauntlet down, and challenged you. The response has been lukewarm and my armor is getting heavy. It would be fun for everyone to see your artistic inspirations, so you have one more week to share.

Aerial Perspective

The view from where I stood included a tree line at the farthest point of the river that stretched two to three miles. To understand how to paint objects in the distance, it is important to understand how Aerial Perspective works. Aerial Perspective is the atmospheric distance between objects in a painting. The presence in the atmosphere of moisture and tiny particles of dust and similar material causes a scattering of light as it passes through them, the degree of scattering being dependent on the wave length which corresponds to the color of the light.

Because light of short wavelength (blue light) is scattered the most, the colors of all distant dark objects tend toward blue. For example, distant mountains have a bluish cast, and yellow disappears as it recedes, followed by red.

The heavier the atmosphere, the more pronounced the effect. It is most apparent in lower elevations that commonly have higher amounts of moisture in the air. There are value changes as well. All things become cooler in color (except white) and lighter as they recede into the distance, and their edges soften. White takes on a warmer and darker shade.

"It would be impossible for me to paint slowly out of doors, even if I wanted to... There is nothing immobile in our surroundings. Water curls up all the time, clouds change shape as they change places; the rope that hangs from that boat over there swings slowly back and forth; the boy jumps; those trees bend their branches and raise them up again...But even if everything were petrified and fixed, it would be enough just for the sun to move, as it does continuously, in order to give a different appearance to things... One must paint quickly, because so much is lost, in an instant, and you never find it again!"

–Joaquin Sorolla, speaking of his time spent painting in Javea

From My View

Three hours had passed by since I began painting en plein air and the painting was starting to take shape. I’m more than ever aware of values and edges as I mixed and applied my paint.
The bushes and trees in the distance were lighter in color, and value, so I lightened them with white (a cool color) and used less yellow in the mix. The vines and trunks became a lighter red/purple. I also softened the edges quite a bit to push them into the distance.
The sky was a nice light blue, with no clouds. The sun was in front of me, overhead but not within sight. It provided some beautiful reflections on the water.
Since I began, the sun had moved and the light was beginning to change, so I stopped. When painting outdoors on a sunny day, you only have between two and three hours before the light changes, affecting the values of the subject and the length and direction of the shadows. Cloudy days are more forgiving.

I finished the painting in my studio, with the memory of the river still fresh. The blue in the water needed more emphasis, as did the moss greens, the rocks, and the lightest highlights on the water, rocks and the hemlock tree. I also darkened my shadows under the fallen trees and near the rocks. I had a photo, but only referred to it for detail information.

Next

Some photos of your artistic endeavors.

"Painting, when you feel it, is the greatest thing in the world. No, I've said it wrong, it's Nature that is beautiful."

-Joaquin Sorolla

Consider Yourself Challenged!

I can’t believe that only two of you have been working on art since the advent of this pandemic. At least, I’ve only heard from two since I’ve started this email lesson. I know there are more of you being creative during this time of seclusion, so step up to the challenge!

Hey, this armor is getting pretty uncomfortable so give me a break. If you've been drawing, painting, doodling, etching, coloring with crayons, sewing, knitting, embroidering, sculpting, making origami or any other type of creative art, send me a photo. 

Color and Aerial Perspective in the Sky

The sky itself, the lightest element in a picture, has different gradations, which causes variations in color and value from its highest point to the horizon. The reason for this is that the atmosphere for the sky at its highest point is the shortest distance with the clearest view. At the horizon, since the distance is longer, there are more “sheets” of atmospheric particles made up of gases between our eyes and the horizon. Like the colors of a rainbow, the zenith is a violet blue, as your eye turns toward the horizon, it changes to a truer blue, then a green-blue, a yellowish green, and finally a small strip of smoky warm rose nearest to the horizon, all the while lightening in value.  

An exception to this is sunrise and sunset, where the horizon takes on more oranges, reds, and purples because of the sun.

The above picture is an exaggeration of the color changes in the sky under sunny conditions.

Aerial Perspective

Aerial Perspective is the change in appearance on items brought on by atmospheric conditions and its effect on color distinction, contrast, value, and hue. The atmosphere is made up of varying densities of gases composed of water particles that are perpetually suspended, similar to a mist. These gases act like slices of films rather than a solid body that collect in layers between our eyes and the distant horizon. The more slices of films between us and the horizon, the more it will affect the hue, contrast, and strength of the items in the distance.  It is said that all colors become cooler as they recede from the eye, except white.  Cooler means that colors take on more blue as the distance increases.
For blue to increase, some colors must decrease. The first hue to decrease is yellow. Yellow alone and in mixtures such as brown, green, and orange, decreases as the distance increase, while violets and blues increase in intensity. For very long distances, such as those found in the mountains and large open spaces of the western United States, after the loss of yellow, reds will then also decrease and blues will finally prevail. Along with the change of hues, all things will become lighter in value as they recede from the eye.  
What this means to an artist is that care should be taken to paint the nearer scenery darkest and most powerful in color and have more yellow and red, while items near the horizon should be painted in lighter values, and contain more blue, and less yellow, and desaturated reds. Edges should be softer, contrasts less distinctive. Whites, the exception, get warmer and darker as they recede.

This is my painting of Camden, Maine, from the park overlooking the harbor. The nearest trees were bright with autumn colors, but as the landscape recedes, the colors become lighter and the yellows start to disappear. The far horizon colors are purples and blues, devoid of all yellow.