By Tissa Hewavitarane

Aerial perspective in painting

In landscape painting, however, perspective is less of a problem than it is, for instance, in drawing buildings. There is less need to worry about linear perspective, rather than the need to concentrate on aerial perspective. This is one of the useful techniques in watercolour and gives tonal values which create the illusion of space and depth better than anything else. It is based on basic principle in nature that light tones seems to reduce into distance whereas darker tones seems to come forward.

The next important thing to realise about recession is that objects also appear to contain more blue the further distant they get. You will notice the painting here shows the greens in grass and trees, for example, are quite pale and bluey at two miles away and they get richer and warmer as they get nearer to the viewer.

One would be surprised how many art students seem to be unaware of it or, at any rate, forget it as soon as they start painting. They see what is obviously a dark tree on the horizon about ten fields away. They paint it in a strong dark tone, forgetting that there are still about five layers of trees before the foreground is reached. In other words they have used up their tonal 'big guns' in the background and have nothing more powerful left for the foreground.

This painting demonstrates the effects of an aerial perspective

The same applies if too rich a green is used for a far distant field which should have been held in reserve for a nearer one. I suggest any student to paint from the furthest distance, gradually moving forward in planes to the foreground.

Counterchange

Counterchange is the placing of dark shapes against light ones, and light shapes against dark. Basically this contrasting areas of dark and light as one on the chess board. This principle should be, locked in your mind all the time when you are painting, almost like a fighter waiting for the opportunity to use his favourite punch. All the great masters used this principle when they composed their work.

One would only realise how important it is when you see a painting done by some one who hasn't yet learnt about counterchange. A house may be put next to a tree, both with the same tone, even though they may be different colour, and the only way can be separated is by having to draw a line on top to show the edges which is correct. What they should be doing, instinctively is to darken the tree to show up the edge of the house or darken that bit of the house where it comes in front of the tree.

These things do not just happen by accident in a painting, they have to be thought of before hand. I have painted a simple landscape here with trees to demonstrate the effects of an aerial perspective. In the distance, the trees are small, a flat cool green is applied with no detail.

In the middle ground I have added green with a mixture of light wash of burnt sienna and have painted the trees and bushes in two values, light and dark. By using an aerial perspective, I have created an illusion of depth and space on my paper. The colours I have used in this painting are lemon green, with a layer of transparent glaze over the foreground to brighten it.