Even while working on this technique, remember to decrease the level of detail that you add towards the background. For example, every leaf on a tree placed in the foreground of a scene is clearly visible, but it will not be when placed very far away.
The First 3500 Years
More often than not, the paintings that really grab my attention are landscapes, and I like to think I’m a somewhat knowledgeable about them in terms of art history. So, I was surprised to learn recently that the word “landscape” — an anglicization of the Dutch landschap — was only introduced into the language — purely as a term for works of art — around the start of the 17th century. That is not to say that landscapes didn’t exist in art before then … apparently there just wasn’t a word for them.
In Western art, the earliest extant example of a painted landscape is a fresco in Akrotiri, an Aegean Bronze Age settlement on the volcanic Greek island of Santorini. It was beautifully preserved under volcanic ash from 1627 BC until about 50 years ago.
Elements of landscape were also depicted in Ancient Egypt, often as a backdrop for hunting scenes set in the reeds of the Nile Delta. In both cases, the emphasis was on individual plant forms and figures on a flat plane, rather than the broad landscape. A rough system of scaling, to convey a sense of distance, evolved as time went on and as the decorating of rooms with frescos of landscapes and mosaics continued through the Hellenistic and ancient Roman periods.
It wasn’t until the 14th century, though, that it became common for the focal action of a narrative painting to be placed against a natural setting, and by the following century, landscape-as-setting had become an accepted genre in European painting. The landscape often became more prominent, the figures less so.
The Renaissance brought significant breakthroughs with the development of a system of graphical perspective, which allowed expansive views to be represented convincingly, with a natural-seeming progression from the foreground to the distant view. The word perspective comes from the Latin perspicere, meaning “to see through”; the application of perspective comes from mathematics. The basic geometry: 1) objects are smaller as their distance from the observer increases; and 2) an object’s dimensions along the line of sight are shorter than its dimensions across the line of sight, a phenomenon known as foreshortening.
Despite artists having learned to render exemplary middle- and far-distance panoramas, until the 19th century landscape painting was relegated to a low position in the accepted hierarchy of genres in Western art. However, Narrative painting — typically biblical or mythological stories — was highly prestigious, and for several centuries Italian and French artists promoted landscapes into history paintings by adding figures to make a narrative scene. In England, landscapes mostly figured as backgrounds to portraits, suggesting the parks or estates of a landowner.
In the Netherlands, pure landscape painting was more quickly accepted, largely due to the repudiation of religious painting in Calvinist society. Many Dutch artists of the 17th century specialized in landscape painting, developing subtle techniques for realistically depicting light and weather. Certain types of scenes repeatedly appear in inventories of the period, including “moonlight,” “woodland,” “farm,” and “village” scenes. Most Dutch landscapes were relatively small: smaller paintings for smaller houses.
Subsequently, religious painting declined throughout the rest of Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. That fact, combined with a new Romanticism — which emphasized emotion, individualism, and the glorification of nature — promoted landscapes to the well-loved place in art which they continue to hold today.
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Use Tones To Create Distance
If your landscape art seems flat, with the scene carrying no sense of distance, carefully examine the tone or value in your painting. The next task at hand that you should undertake is to employ a lighter tone on everything that’s in the distance of a landscape painting. Doing so will immediately give a sense of depth.
Using tone to create a sense of distance in art is known as Aerial Perspective, which often scares many artists. However, there is nothing to be worried about, it is a simple observation that you surely would have explored not just painting but also while admiring landscapes on your vacation (perhaps not familiar with its technical jargon). For example, when you see a scenery with a series of mountains or hills, paying a little attention will help you notice how with the distance they get lighter and lighter, the further away they are. This is what aerial perspective is all about, or a gradual change in tone that adds a sense of distance.
The next step in further manifesting aerial perspective is getting in terms with the facts that things that are located farther away are bluer. So, while lightening the tone of the objects in the distance, you also need to make the colors a little bluer or colder. For instance, while choosing greens for your landscape paintings, make sure to use in the foreground the hues that leans towards yellow while for a mountain positioned farther away, go for those that lean towards blue.
Here’s a basic ‘recipe’ that some seasoned artists recommend while applying aerial perspective:
- Keep the Foreground Normal
- The Middle Distance should be a little lighter in Tone and Bluer
- Those in the Far Distance must be painted much lighter and Bluer
- Remember objects in red appear to be closer, so if you find the perspective in your landscape painting looking flat, do not put a red object (for instance a girl wearing a red dress) in the distance but always place in the foreground, and try adding something in light blue to the distance.
Decrease the Detail in Landscape Paintings
If examined carefully, you would notice that the details of objects (such as trees, plants, etc.) that are closest are more clearly visible. So while capturing any scene, follow the same concept, and add more details in the foreground and less in the middle distance, while only suggest it for the elements existing in the background. However, make sure to give only a sense of texture, tone, and color for manifesting the distance and not working on the specifics.
Quite often while working from a reference photograph, artists get swayed by the extra details visible on the picture taken from ultra-high resolution cameras, such as every minute blade of grass located several kilometers away. In such cases, please keep in mind that you are painting and not attempting to reproduce the photos.
Position of the Horizon Line
Indeed, the horizon line is the foremost and strongest visual element of perspective in a landscape. It is something that you immediately (rather instinctively) use to interpret the perspective of the painting that you are looking at.
So if the horizon line in your nature paintings is either too high or low you are bound to miss on the crucial visual information used by the viewer to perceive the perspective. In fact, you would make the viewer struggle to deal with understanding the placement of the horizon line, its position, and context, and most likely make him/her end up interpreting in relation to everything else placed in the composition. This moment of confusion will certainly be enough to make your landscape feel awkward, and off.
A horizon line placed too high with only a meager sliver above it will go unnoticed by the viewer and won’t be perceived as the sky while a one too low, with little sliver below, will have a risk of not being registered as land. Having said this does not mean that you need to rigidly apply the Rule of Thirds or Golden Mean for calculating the right placement of the horizon line, but rather you need to be careful about having enough above as well as below the horizon line for the viewer to perceive immediately.
