Just because fog does not have a solid shape in real life does not mean that we can’t ‘quantify’ it and create a specific shape for it in our fog painting.
How to Paint Fog and Mist for Landscape Paintings
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Transient effects can seem somewhat mysterious. Especially when it comes to figuring out how to paint fog and mist! However, like most things, painting fog and mist is figure out-able. This article will illustrate how to approach the transient effects you encounter in nature. This, along with other helpful tips on how to create a realistic painting, will help bring your painting to life.
Subtlety is very important in painting fog and mist
First of all, subtlety is so important when it comes to painting fog and transient effects. The degree of subtlety with which you approach a work can make or break a painting.
When you look out at a landscape on a misty day there is much less distinction between things. A tree will no longer stand out from the rest of the landscape as a veil of fog covers everything.
For example, look at the painting below by Monet:
One of the first things you will notice in the painting above is its subtlety. For example, The transition between where the ‘parliament building’ ends and the reflection in the water begins is nearly imperceptible. There is a very soft transition. All of the colors in the painting are very similar and are of a similar tonal range. Learn more about tonal range in this introductory guide to tonal values.
This is exactly how to paint fog and mist – by paying close attention to subtlety. Fog and mist inherently make everything less clear and distinctive. In addition, fog and mist creates less distinctive differences in terms of color and value between different parts. It is just as if a veil came over something and made everything closer together in value and unclear.
Creating Atmospheric Space
Atmospheric space is a technique of rendering depth or distance in a painting by modifying the tone, hue and distinctness of objects. So, in other words everything far off in the distance is less clear – and what is closer to the foreground is more clear. This can be manipulated with color, temperature and edges.
In a painting depicting fog, this is all exaggerated. So, what is far off in the distance is even softer than usual. You can see this at play in the painting below by Turner.
You’ll Love This Quick Approach to Painting Fog
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Painting the light effects created by fog can be frustrating at first. Fog is generally moving, so trying to paint it on-site makes the scene ever-changing. This can be maddening, and may cause artists—like Claude Monet—to put a foot right through their canvas! Since we don’t want you to feel foggy when painting, or ruin any of your precious art supplies, we’re here to share a quick and simple solution.
Supersized Photo Reference
For our oil classes, we developed a good exercise which can go a long way toward elucidating the fundamentals of painting fog effects. Instead of trying to keep up with a moving subject, we have our class work in the studio, using one of our photos greatly enlarged.
To make it even more interesting we use an image taken on an exceptional day, when warm yellow sunlight back-lit the subject, turning the normally cool-toned bluish-gray fog effect on its pictorial head. Everything in our subject was suffused with this yellowy tone, even the snow. This can present a serious color mixing and value-matching challenge.
The Value of Color Mixing
Using a large, strong photo reference (such as the one we use in our class), break the image down into large masses of tone and then carefully analyze and match the values and temperatures of those in a pool of color mixed on the palette.
For our yellow-infused, fog-filled image, we identified four main masses in the subject and started to mix the darkest values of each color first. This was followed by mixing a color string of the other tones within that mass until we had all the apparent colors/values mixed and ready. This may sound like a tedious approach to the problem, but it doesn’t take long to do–and it’s a very accurate method.
The importance of this process cannot be overstated. It can save artists from constantly making corrections to colors and main values when painting, which can greatly speed up progress while adapting to a shape-shifting subject outside.
Any of the color strings can be cross-mixed with another and still work as a whole. All that remains when painting is to lighten, or perhaps darken, your colors as necessary.
In short, this exercise is great for teaching artists how to assess colors and tones as large masses/shapes and quickly mix up the correct matches—important, since painting fog is a kind of performance art. Painting outside means there will be moments when the fog lifts in basically no time at all, and your once hauntingly beautiful subject for your next masterpiece has, well, literally evaporated.
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