Techniques to Create Distance in the Landscape?

[Deborah Secor]

I'm just curious. How do you landscape painters go about creating distance or 'air' in your paintings? I know the 'rules', of course, but what I'm asking is what techniques you use to achieve the rules, and/or break them.

The Rules (for the record--add to or correct or subtract anything you think needs changing!)

As one looks into the distance:

Colors become cooler.
Colors become less intense.
Detail is lost.
Edges soften.
Value contrasts diminish.

This is a subject that I've been puzzling out recently, and I need some input from others now. I think of paintings with grayer colors as being more tonalist, but I've always thought of myself as more of a colorist. Not strictly, of course, since I believe wholeheartedly in the primacy of tone as it's linked to color! But as one who has often relied on color to do the work, and has used other techniques to achieve distance or recession, I'm re-thinking things.

I started a discussion on this with a couple people here but now I thought I'd just post a thread and ask more people to contribute.

What are your thoughts? Thanks in advance for your input on this...

Deborah

[cjorgensen]

Well, I am pretty new, but this is what I do:

The air is full of cyan. But it is not just pasted onto the back of the sky, it FILLS the air. Therefore, cyan is between you and your subject like a veil or haze, and obscures the view as things get farther away. Only on a sunny day after a rain is it really crystal clear. Therefore, As I paint the farther-away things:

I add (dull) light blue to my distant mountain colors.
I lighten the ground towards the back (lighter green, lighter yellow, lighter asphalt).
I make the sky warmer and lighter as it approaches the horizon (or I add darker blue near the top of the sky).

Only whites get darker as they recede. (snow, clouds, white buildings)

If you look at clouds dotted in the sky on a sunny day, the closer clouds will be white with gray underneath. The farther clouds will be beige-er with bluish or purple underneath.

This is what Larry Seilor says:

1. Go outside to paint
2. Mix up the paint
3. Hold up your palette knife with the paint on it and compare it to whatever you are trying to paint: is is lighter/darker? Warmer/cooler?

This is what helped me get the hang of it. Photos only tell you so much.

Good luck!

[Landale]

I too am struggling with this very subject right now and will be watching this thread for some enlightenment. Thanks for starting it Deborah.

Andy

[oldradagast]

I think one of the key things that has helped me is getting away from trying to define colors by object, but to rather define them by how the distance and the lighting in the scene.

For example, "Leaves are green" - well, are they? They are different shades of green depending upon the tree, time of day/year, and the distance (more blue and less color and variation in color as they receed)

"Clouds are white" - not really. They can be white, but they often have greys, purples, yellows and pinks in them. Tossing white paint on a perfectly blue sky rarely produces realistic clouds, with the exception of high-altitude cirrus clouds during the day.

"The sky is blue" - not really. It is blue overhead, but fades into the haze along the horizon, and that has is has some mix of yellow, purple, pink, grey, etc. in it.

Once I understood that I cannot just apply a color to an object, it really helped improve both the lighting and sense of distance in my paintings.

[objectivistartist]

A lot has to do with where ye be - some areas of the earth have such clear sky that distances merely lose their detail, and perhaps turn to a bluishness, yet the edges remain... other spots are so thick in atmosphere, a block away is like a fog, obscuring not just detail but edges and almost all color except the dustiness of the air itself... then there are all the other areas in between... so much depends on WHAT it is ye wish to paint, and when - for 'tis different morn and eve... for myself, since my worlds are from my head, I prefer the ancient Greece clarity of air, where details lack in the distance, but one can 'see' almost 'to infinity' as it were - to the curve of the land and beyond... and the foreground so detailed one is tempted to pick up the rock to throw, or the floral to pot... [that is, of course, on a good day - sometimes am so impatient to 'show', I neglect that intense care over all the work, doing enough to 'show' my intents, and little more...]

[Michaelmcg]

You've covered all the variables there Deborah. The thing that differentiates between light conditions or "keys" is how these vary relative to one another. The more I paint, the more I am convnced that the best way to improve as a landscape painter is to paint plein air. Probably not what you wanted to hear, but coming from someone in a place that does not lend itself to plein air work, based on very painful experience.

Michael

[JeffG]

Also, beyond color and value, one can look to the compositional elements that create a feeling of distance, most notably the increasingly diminished space between horizontal elements that imply distance. I used that in this one I just finished:

[viking57]

Hi Deborah,
I've found out that the best way to push distance that really has a great look to it is to use Grey.
I used to use white mixed in with background elements. That worked for a while but something didn't look right. Then one day I read somewhere to use grey mixed with these elements. I tried it and fell in love with grey. I use a little bit of Paynes Grey to either mix in the background colors or just paint those colors in and then go over it with a slight mix of the same color and the grey. The nice thing is that if I run out of grey I can use the sludge from cleaning your brushes at the bottom of your turpentine jar...it is a wonderful grey only slightly darker than Paynes Grey. I tried adding the opposite color to get a neutral grey but it is just so much faster to have a little grey on hand ready to go and not waste time mixing.
The best thing is that grey adds a wonderful "distance" to the colors. Below you can see how this grey in the background pushes the distance and contrasts great with the more pure foreground colors.

In the overall painting the grey is very subtle in the background.


Here, a bit closer, you can see how well it pushes the distance...there is Paynes Grey mixed in everything but the sky back there and the foreground grasses and trees.

Ron

[objectivistartist]

Oooh, nice one, Jeff - I like that, a series of almost horizontal stretches which manage well to give the sense of immense distance...

[Bill Wray]

Be Ray Roberts.

[Deborah Secor]

I'm just sitting here enjoying all the information and ideas I'm seeing here. All these paintings are flat, drop-dead gorgeous.

I have a couple more questions but no time now...still interested in the discussion,though, so I'll run back in later!

Deborah

[noge]

Its simple for me - go out and paint what you see only

dont forget : buildings trees .....follow all the rules of perspective -

[maggie latham]

Deborah and everyone,

I have also been following this post with interest and some wonderful points have been discussed. I thought it ironic (fantastically ironic) that Ron talked about greys and the mixing of them and the usefulness of them for pushing back……as I think you had a post recently on your blog, Deborah, about the usefulness of greys.

Recently I have been making a lot of colour mixing charts in various mediums and have been concentrating on mixing some yummy purple greys. Instead of my usual surface mixing techniques I have been really trying to focus on mixing the right colour, putting it down and leaving it alone.

I have never really thought about your questions before, because when I paint I just paint…. and don’t think…'oh, now I have to push that back….. so….how am I going to do that?…. ' ….It’s more intuitive than that....

Great thread, looking forward to reading more comments.

Maggie

[Michaelmcg]

Originally Posted by Bill Wray

Be Ray Roberts.

I've had a look at his website and there is some great work there, but this one is by far the best example of creating depth. What I notice is the very subtle cooling and dulling of the shadow side of the trees as they recede. The values shift is also very subtle which creates the illusion of a heat haze. Even without the dramatic mountain backdrop, the recession effect is very strong. Thanks for showing this, Bill.

Michael

[AlainJ]

Very interesting post. Most of the suggestions I have read here are from users of oil and acrylics. So I am not certain the extent to which my techniques will apply. I agree with the comment that the main source of distance is generated by the use of perspective. But beyond that, the tones and shades will create the atmosphere.

In watercolour you tend to increase the transparency as the image recedes. This is done by diminishing the amount of pigment and use the paper to create softer colours.
Second element, we tend to blurr the contours by washing the edges as the objects are further away, avoiding hard edges for mountain tops and trees.
Third is to create cooler versions of the colours by adding a touch of their complement to the colour as they become closer to the horizon (purple vs yellows, blues vs oranges and reds,...)