If you wonder how to fill your landscape with depth, space, air, and volume, this landscape painting tutorial will be quite interesting for you.
This art lesson deals with very important things that should be known and used by every beginning artist when painting a landscape. If you paint with oil, acryl, or pencils, these rules will certainly come in handy and be useful to you.
The landscape and the perspective should not be separated. It is impossible to paint a good landscape not using the rules of aerial and linear perspective.
So let’s come over to the first part of our landscape painting lesson
The Aerial Perspective
The aerial perspective is necessarily present in any landscape. So what is an aerial perspective? Literally and simply speaking, the rules of aerial perspective tell that:
The further the object or item is from the observer – the less clear it is seen. Thus, the further the object is from us – the less clear it should be drawn.
Foreground and Background
When it comes to the foreground, you can draw everything in detail (house bricks, patterns, wood texture, flowers, the roughness of tree trunks, automobile constructions…), using saturated paints. The further you move to the depth of the forest or city – the less clear you should depict the objects or miss the details, using the less bright colors and adding a light haze.
If you keep everything 100% focus on your landscape, the viewer will get confused and the appropriate question will arise: “What is the main thing in this painting?” It is uncharacteristic for the human`s eye to see the flower, which is near, and the flower, which is 20 steps from it, equally clear.
The aerial perspective makes the work more voluminous, spacious and airy.
The next step of our landscape painting lesson plan is
The Color in the Aerial Perspective
The second rule of aerial perspective reveals the answer to the question of why this kind of perspective has been called «the aerial perspective».
Everything on our planet is surrounded by air. Accordingly, the further the object is from us – the more air is applied to it. The object, which is far away, gets the color of the airspace, where it is located, for the observer.
The Painting Examples in the Aerial Perspective
The gloomier the sky – the more its color and light will be transmitted to everything around. If you paint the foggy morning, rainy or snowy landscape, there should be more haze and inexpressiveness afar. You can easily “blur” everything that is located far off from the observer.
In the daylight the aerial perspective can be schematically shown in the following way:
The schematic representation of aerial perspective in the daylight. These are just the lines but they look like a landscape.
The rule of the aerial perspective: the brown located afar becomes green and the green, when moving away, loses its intensity and turns into blue or light blue.
And now let`s come over to the next part of our drawing art lesson –
The Linear Perspective
The linear perspective in conjunction with the aerial one will help to create an even more realistic landscape – the proper image which is well and easily perceived.
The main rule of linear perspective: all the parallel lines are converged in the landscape.
The Schemes of Linear Perspective
When you paint a row of similar trees, lanterns, columns and houses in linear perspective, all of them will visually shrink, going far into the perspective, and the distance between these objects will also be reduced.
For example, «Rainy alley» in Afremov style:
The painting «Rainy alley»: each of the following lanterns is closer to the previous one.
The white line is the skyline, the green spot in the center is the vanishing point and the red lines signify the height of lanterns.
Finally, we are coming over to the last stage of our free painting lesson online –
The Perspective and the Perception
When painting something in the linear perspective, you should know and understand that the glance of the viewer will always follow the alley, road, or path and come to the vanishing point.
Make the way, which the viewer`s glance follow, interesting, bright and diverse. It should not be monotonous and boring. Or you can depict something more important and interesting for the viewer in the place where the road converges into one point.
The Example of Paintings
If you know and comply with these several simple rules on the work with a landscape, it will help you avoid the blunders and create beautiful and harmonious landscapes filled with depth, space, and air.
Thus, our landscape painting lesson is over.
I wish you good luck and new success in your creative work!