“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 […]
Value, Color and Movement
One of the most powerful compositional tools we have as landscape painters is our ability to move the eye of the viewer around the picture plane and even create the illusion of movement into the picture plane by creating the illusion of depth. Movement is a visual pathway through the painting that the artist creates […]
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 […]
Mixing Blues For Skies
When mixing colors for skies we concern ourselves with the three attributes of color: value, temperature and chroma. As we know from Carlson’s Theory of Angles, the sky will generally be the lightest value in the landscape–a range of values actually, as the value of the sky grades from lightest at the horizon to darkest […]
Summer Nights
Last night as I watched the moonlight play across our garden, I couldn’t help but think of the hot, steamy summer nights of my childhood. The chorus of buzzing insects and the flickering of lightening bugs in the woods took me right back to that time. Perhaps that is why I have always been fascinated […]
Glazing
Glazing is one of several methods of applying oil paint that are called “indirect painting”techniques. The term “indirect” simply means that the painting is built up in layers which are allowed to dry before successive layers are added. Glazing is a technique which consists of applying thin layers of transparent color over either transparent or […]