Landscape Basics

Mobile, Alabama Trip

So today, I get to talk aerial perspective. This won't be rocket science by any means, but here is what I think through. First and foremost when making a landscape, I check to see how much depth is going to be given to the piece and probably because I've been using photoshop for so long, I think of it in layers. This own has three 'layers.' Foreground, Midground, and Background.  Value and Color are the two considerations I constantly keep in mind as I laydown the paint.

Value is the lightness or darkness of a pigment. The darkest and lightest values are in the foreground, so when I putting down paint, I locate where those darkest darks and lightest lights are. In this cause, the sky and the reflection of it in the water is the brightest and the darkest darks in the shadow of the nearest tree.

The midground has darker highlights in the lights and brighter darks in the shadows.

Finally, the background even more diminishes in contrast with more subdued light and shadow.

Color. The foreground has the truest colors in it. True yellows and reds and oranges are most intense in this 'layer.' The more distant an object is, the less brilliant those colors will be, usually. I will say usually because all 'rules when dealing with color can always be broken. That's part of the beauty of painting.

The midground as I've said, loses the brilliance of it's yellows and reds the greater distance (usually). The more air between you and the object you're looking at, the more you can see the effect of it. The sun during the day, makes the atmosphere of our sky blue and it is this blue that tints the air, more and more perceptively the greater the distance.

The background has the most 'blue,' or cooling effect. The saturation of the colors diminishes and more and more white is added as a way to cool the colors and lighten the values.

Finally, there is a crispness to the foreground and loss of clarity to the edges in the background.

As I said before, all those 'rules' can be broken.

Desert Saguaro Sunset, Kevin McCain

At sunset,  the atmosphere and the clouds shift into the red spectrum and affect color similar to the way that the blue sky changes color, that effect increasing with distance. Here the reds are strong in the distance and all those general rules I gave earlier are thrown out. No matter what rules you are given, the best thing to do is observe life and light and how it reacts in reality. If you can, paint it in reality. Photos lose a great deal of true color and value patterns because they are captured by a machine. Trust your eyes and not the machine's. You'll be surprised how much color and subtlety you'll find with them when you look for it. 

Hope that helps. If you want a really good reference for color and such, I definitely recommend James Gurney's Color and Light. It's the best most comprehensive book on color theory and I love Gurney's writing style. Very easy to understand and down to earth. No 'artsy highend' impossible to understand stuff and beautiful, beautiful art. Love it. :)