Painting Lesson: Cottonwoods in Summer

Project: COTTONWOODS IN SUMMER

 

Creating the illusion of depth

 

 

In this project we will learn how to use scale and value to create the illusion of depth in the landscape.

 

Terms we will use: 

Foreground: element in the scene that is closest to you

Background: area in the scene that is farthest away from you

Middle ground: area of interest between foreground and background

Value: the lightness or darkness of a color on the grayscale

Temperature: the warmth or coolness of a color

Intensity: the amount of pure color or hue

Grayed: the more neutral a color is while still retaining it’s “color-ness” (not reading as  gray)

Scrub in: paint thinly with a stiff brush to suggest texture

Scale: the proportion of objects in relation to other objects in the scene

Plane: imagine a glass box with sheets of glass stacked front to back, with slight spaces  between them, marked foreground, middle, back ground. Each sheet is  considered a “plane”.

Overlapping form: used to achieve a believable sense of depth

 

Before you begin, sketch out your composition so you know what values to use.

 Support: canvas

Brushes: flats, rounds, various sizes

Colors: Titanium white, Viridian, Sap Green, Burnt Sienna, Raw Sienna, Ultramarine Blue, cerulean blue, yellow, Naples yellow, terra rosa or cad red

Step 1 

Line drawing and mass block in

Mix a thin wash of odorless mineral spirits with burnt sienna and draw out your composition. Add a little red to the wash to indicate the areas of darker value. 

Evaluate your drawing to see if you need to make any adjustments. Are there overlapping forms? 

Evaluate the scale of the Cottonwood trees in the middle gound to the tree line in the background.

Indicate the approximate location and scale of the fence. 

Step 2

Establish your initial values 

Using a thin mixture of ultramarine blue, raw sienna and white, block in the distant hill. Add viridian to the mixture to indicate the distant trees. Pull this mixture into the middle ground trees, adding more viridian. Keep paint thin and scumble the color onto the canvas. 

Block in the middle ground and foreground using raw sienna and white, adding small amounts of sap green as you paint into the foreground. Keep your greens warm. Paint thinly, scrubbing the color loosely. Use smaller brush marks for the background, larger brush marks for the foreground. 

Evaluate the value relationships. In this demonstration painting, the value of the background is too dark in relation to the foreground. This darker value wants to advance forward so that it appears on the same plane as the middle ground trees. To push it back, wipe off some of the color and restate with white and raw sienna, lightly scrubbed in.

Step 3

Block in the major shape and color areas
 
Using a thinned mixture of cerulean blue, make one deliberate stroke across the top of the sky area, pulling the color down toward the trees. Clean your brush. Using a thicker mixture of white, scrub in the cloud forms, allowing the blue to blend into some areas. Keep the brush work loose.

Mix a variety of greens, using viridian, sap green, ultramarine blue and raw sienna. Roughly lay in the trees and begin to describe the lights and darks. Draw your brush upward to suggest trunks. Push the edges into the sky color, and create sky holes. Begin to suggest the light and dark patterns made by the distant trees against the lighter ground.

Step 4 

Lay in the foreground and begin to refine the middle ground.

 Mix a little raw sienna with white and begin to scrub more paint into the foreground area. Add some burnt sienna and a bit of red to keep the colors warm.
Use Naples yellow in the distant sunlit areas. Pay attention to the variety of edges where the lighter grasses describe the darker tree trunks. Keep brushwork loose, horizontal with a slight diagonal movement to help the eye move backward into the distance. Add a variety of yellows and greens to suggest the different grasses.

 

Step 5

Develop the trees and foreground 

Mix ultramarine blue with the viridian for the darkest areas of shadow. Mix sap green with yellow for the sunlit leaves. It is the outside edges of the trees that describe “leaves” not individual marks. Study the contours in the reference photo to understand these shapes. 

Be sure to create sky holes. Soften edges. Suggest the variety of trunks. Keep the rhythm uneven and moving diagonally back into the background. 

Mix ultramarine blue with burnt sienna to describe the dark fence. Allow some lighter highlights. Begin to suggest the shadows on the foreground shrubs and a variety of textures in the grasses. Diagonal movement will create energy and movement, and lead the eye into the painting. 

Adjust the values on the distant hill in relationship to the values of other elements in the painting. Squint to better see value instead of color. 

Decide which clump of trees will be dominant. Develop the light and dark relationships more fully in this clump, allowing the second clump to play a supporting roll.

Step 6

Details and movement 

Accent the fence with darks and highlights, lost and found edges, overlapping grasses.

Add shadow and color detail to a few of the foreground shrubs. Using a larger brush, lay in thicker, darker paint to suggest the bare ground leading toward the fence.

Add suggestions of shadow in the middle ground to create form and movement. Use smaller brush marks and less detail as you work your way toward the background. As features recede, we see less detail.

Step 7 

Evaluate for design principles and color corrections
 

Are your color choices believable?  Here I softened the yellow-green in the trees and the dark blue of the shadows. Then I needed to gray down the reds in the middle ground to keep this area in the proper color/value relationship to the trees. 

Did you create variation? Look at the edges of your forms to see if the patterns are interesting. I moved two of the smaller trees on the right, pulling them forward.  Look at the blocks of color to see if you have any solid, boring areas. I added some sky and ground “holes” in the trees to create interest and improve the sense of space. 

Is there repetition? Repetition can be created through color, a repeating mark or shape, or repeated directional lines. Is your foreground interesting? Adding detail to the shrubs and grasses extends an invitation to the viewer to enter the painting. 

Did you have fun? Congratulations on a job well done :>}
 

You may copy this lesson for your personal use.  Please ask for permission if you wish to reproduce use any part of this lesson in your own blog .

Sue Smith@2008