Painting

The tones and colors of things in the distance cannot be the same tones and colors as
those same things in the foreground. Aerial Perspective is an effect that we get by lightening the tone and diminishing the color of things that are farther away from your point of view.

To help you recognize how different the tones and colors of foreground things and distant things are . . . look at a place of a subject in the foreground, which means the up-and-down plane of a barn or a tree, and actually paint a spot of that tone in the foreground of your canvas. Now, look at something in the distance that is also up and down, such as a mountain, and paint a spot of that tone in the upper part of the canvas.

These two tones will act as the control for all the colors from far to near and improve the appearance of aerial perspective.

Some of us hate to even think about perspective, but when you are painting outdoors, it is so much easier if you have this reference. We all will be thinking about painting outdoors now that the good weather is coming. Hope this tip helps with your Aerial Perspective.

Arrange the colors on your palette: This is a personal matter. The important
thing is to arrange the colors in a way that makes sense to you (and stick to that arrangement.) Then you will at least know where your color is. One useful method is to arrange the paints across the top of the palette, going from left to right and from warm to cool. You move from red, to yellow, to green and finally to blue. You can put white on the left.

Confused about warm and cool colors???? There are three warm colors: Yellow, Orange and Red, and three cool colors: Violet, Blue and Green.

The warm color can be cooled by adding a touch of a cool color, and the cool colors are warmed by a small addition of a warm color. The result is a warmed cool color and a cool warm color. (Easy, huh!)

Here's how this works! Since a painting of a subject and its surroundings actually record a lighting on that composition, all the colors have to be consistently influenced by that colored light. Therefore, if you were to shine a red colored spotlight on your subject matter, a little red color would have to be included in all the color mixtures of the entire composition.

Relating this to your painting, it would seem that you must train your eye to recognize the subtle difference of warm and cool versions of color.

Look at your color wheel (if you don't have one then go buy one right away because they are so valuable in understanding color temperature.) Each of the colors can vary in hue because it tends toward the color next to it on the color wheel. When a yellow tends toward cool green and is a greenish yellow, it is a cooler version of yellow than a yellow that tends toward orange.

As a former student of Helen Van Wyk, this was drummed into me and has followed me through many years of oil paintings and watercolors.

[Submitted by Joan Roster]

I have been painting in oils for over thirty years, have shown my work in many galleries in Mass. and RI., thought I would like to make a suggestion to the artists that feel insecure about painting a summer scene with a lot of green. Yes, it can be difficult but by using a warm under-painting, like red or orange, you can keep the green warm because the under-painting will keep coming through.

For those that don't know how, try using a combination of red and a touch of white painted very thinly with turpentine or try orange and white using the same method. This combination has a wonderful way of coming through and keeping the green warm.

Remember that to keep this a successful scene to add something red (such as a bush with red berries, flowers, a boat) anyway, you get the message. Keep it fun because painting is a wonderful therapy and you can never feel bored or lack for something to do.

Have fun, experiment and most of all don't be afraid to try it. If you don't like what you have done you can always wipe it down or paint over it.

[Submitted by Joan Roster]