Yes, youve heard it before Anyone can paint and that is true. It does not depend on inherent talent but developing artistic skills. This takes time to go through the learning curve to fine tune these skills where you can emerge as a professional. However, painting a portrait and painting an abstract requires a different set of skills. Getting a likeness is not easy and requires total focus on the sitter whereas painting a landscape you can get away with murder and it will look beautiful.
To be a professional landscape painter requires a basic study of perspective and that includes not only how things disappear in the distance but also very important is aerial perspective. Why? Because it gives a feeling to a painting or, in other words, an emotional quality.
What does a beginner need to know? You have this white canvas in front of you and behind that you can see this beautiful landscape. Very intimidating eh? To start a landscape painting remember the rule of three where your canvas is divided into three both horizontally and vertically. Where your vertical lines cross the horizontal, this is where you place your focal point in the picture.
So you now have the sky which can be either one third or two thirds. Never place a skyline exactly in the center of the canvasor anything right in the middle. This is step number one.
Step Two:
Knock the pristine white canvas out with broad brushstrokes of gray. You cannot evaluate the correct values (the lightness or darkness of a color) when a color falls adjacent to white.
Step Three:
You do not want to see leaves or grass but only the very broad masses of the scene in front of you. So how do you eliminate all this detail? Its quite easy. You half close your eyes or squint until you only see a blura broad mass of shapes with no detail. Paint these very broad masses in with a LARGE brush. You will fiddle with detail if you use a small brush. At this stage you only paint in the broad masses, nothing else.
OK. Step Four:
Once all the broad masses are in placethats the sky and foreground, stand back from your canvas about 30 feet, yes, 30 feet. Squint your eyes again then take a peek at your canvas with eyes wide open then–back again to the landscape, squinting. You will be able to evaluate if your proportions are about right. They do not have to be accurate; just a broad mass of two or three colors.
Step Five
In your landscape do you see foothills, a group of trees, a river, clumps of rocks or anything other than the sky or foreground mass? Any or all of these will be your secondary mass, take careful note of the tone values! Squint again and paint them as you see and feel them; then take a step back about 30 feet and evaluate then change as needed. The important thing is VALUE, not color; its the value in relationship to all other individual masses on the canvas. This cant be stressed enough!
Step Six
If you feel happy with your results, check for any tertiary things on your landscape. They can be farmhouse buildings, small bright shrubs, farm animals, flowers close-up or even people in the distance. Paint these in as you see them. Take note of the preceding steps where you half close your eyes to do a correct evaluation of your values. Your highest contrast is always on the third point you have marked on your canvas–where the darkest color (black if you like) meets the lightest (white) or the brightest colors against a dark color.
These basics must be known cold:
1) The basics of painting a landscape is not to fiddle with detail; broad strokes with a large brush (size 10 12) works best.
2) Use a limited pallet of six colors and your painting will not look muddy.
3) Never make any two intervals the same, for example, dividing your skyline and foreground exactly halfway.
4) Balance your shapes; dont have a large form on one side of your landscape.
5) Lead the viewers eye into your painting from soft edges of forms to your focal point.
6) Divide your canvas up into three; it makes for a dynamic composition.
7) Color is less important than tonal values.
You can create a dynamic landscape painting using only grays.
These are the basics of landscape painting.
Once these are known you are on your way to being a professional landscape painter.
Jonathon Mumford is an artist, freelance writer, animator and cartoonist for online publications and writes for family enjoyment and child education. If you want to have some fun and laughter, go to this Kid-Friendly Website A top line resource on clean humor for young families with lots of activities for kids.
Recent Comments