“Speed of the line” is a concept that plays an important part in landscape design. Often we see strong diagonals at work in Nature- a mountain, a line of trees, or even a roofline of a building. The more steep and uninterrupted that line is, the “faster” it moves the eye- and often it will […]
Painting Fall Foliage
It may be hard to imagine right now, but soon it will be that time of year– when we are all tempted by the bright colors of fall foliage to throw every high chroma color we can lay our hands on onto a canvas! In many ways, painting this season can be even more daunting […]
Seago Skies
Edward Seago (1910-1974) was a British landscape painter. He is one of the best known and widely collected British artists of the 20th century. He enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime including royal patronage by several members of the Royal Family, including the the Queen Mother, the Duke of Edinborough and Prince Charles. Seago painted […]
The Vault of the Sky
What shape is the sky? As landscape painters we must remember that the sky is not a flat plane in the distance, but a vault which arches up toward and over the viewer’s head. The fact that we are depicting a vault rather than a flat plane affects the perspective we see in the clouds, […]
Sky Values- The Key to Big Atmospheric Skies!
One of the most important ingredients for painting big atmospheric skies is getting the values right. We know that generally speaking the sky will have the lightest values in the landscape because it is the source of light (think Carlson’s Theory of Angles- if you don’t know about that you should!). The value of a […]
Four Value Studies and Notan
Notan is a Japanese word for light-dark, and consists of a two value arrangement of shapes. It can be used to define and simplify shape and value patterns. Notan (two values) and four value designs are not based on how we actually see the world; they are constructs that we can use to see and […]