Atmospheric Perspective

This past week of classes we focused on atmospheric perspective in our plein air sessions. I was so overjoyed to be able to try out oils for the first time!! Our class gathered at a beautiful park by the river, we all found our spots to paint and the adventure began. I set up my easel and prepped my supplies then took to the canvas in my burnt sienna underpainting.

I specifically chose my view because of the depth I could practice! I could see past a bench, through trees, across the river, to see a bridge with trees behind it. Plenty of layers to capture depth with atmospheric perspective! After my composition was mapped out I started blocking in my colors from back to front, starting with the sky. 

The funniest thing happened while I was painting; I made a little friend! It appears that some park guest had left sandwich bread on the grass near my easel and a groundhog came wandering by for a snack. He walked right under my easel and sniffed around me showing no fear whatsoever of my presence. He sat right next to me and enjoyed his food. While painting he even came up and touched my shoe with his nose! It was so funny! I named him Phil. We’ll see if we meet again lol. Just another reason you should feel inspired to get out and paint in nature!

Anyway, my oil painting from this session is still a work in progress, I’m excited for our next painting session as a class as we plan to go back to this park which will give me the opportunity to work in person on it for another session! Here is where I left off:

Beyond this traditional oil painting experience I took the same concepts into the digital world this week. I found a location that showed good layers of background, middle ground, and foreground and got to painting! A couple reasons why I went digital is because it was a bit cold outside and this let me stay in the protection of my car, oil painting takes more days to work with because of the layering and drying time and digital can be done quicker, and I was curious to try digital painting with the new experience I gained in traditional painting. It’s amazing to see how traditional concepts really help you better understand how to digital paint. If you want to understand the digital painting world it's probably best to understand the world that it was inspired from, which is traditional.

After getting my digital underpainting, just like the traditional practice, I went in back to front and started painting my colors and blocking in values all on one layer like a canvas. When moving through the atmospheric perspective it’s important to remember that things are less saturated and usually lighter the further away they get because the amount of atmosphere you are looking through is greater. Because of this my very background layer of the mountains are less vibrant and more blue. They even blend into the line of the clouds. I also decided to blend that line because as I studied the view I found that I actually couldn’t tell where the mountains ended and the clouds began because of the cloudy day. That was a win for perspective though!

Moving forward I let the colors get warmer and more vibrant the closer I got to the foreground.  The light definitely shifted in my session with the changing cloud coverage but I locked into the aspects I liked and stuck with it even if it changed again. For instance, the sun peaked through the clouds and casted shadows on the road and highlighted tree leaves. I quickly blocked in the lights and darks in general shapes while the sun was out then refined them from there with the help of a picture and my block ins. Overall I really like how it turned out and it looks like a lovely partly cloudy day!

Till next week!

Jesus Bless You Abundantly,

Christina