ATMOSPHERIC PERSPECTIVE
Below is a landscape of some hills.
What do you notice about the color of the hills as they get
farther away? What do you notice about the value (how
light or dark the hills are)? Does the value and color
change?
Let's talk about the color first. Why do the hills in the
distance appear bluer? Are they really bluish gray?
No. If you were to hike over to the hills in the distance they
would be just as green as the ones in the foreground. So
what is going on?
Now let's talk about value. The word 'value' means
how light or dark something is.
In order to make it easier for you to look at the value I
have reproduced the photograph in gray scale. As you can
see, the hills appear to fade into the distance. They get
lighter as they get farther away. Why do they do that?
Gray scale photograph
This picture clearly shows how objects fade in the
distance. The hills in the background appear lighter in
value.
Let's look at some other landscape photographs now
In all of the above photographs, the background
appears to fade off into the distance. The farther away
something is the lighter the value and the bluer the
color.
This phenomenon is known as 'Atmospheric Perspective'.
Things appear to fade off into the distance because of
dust, humidity and air pollution in the atmosphere.
So, what is causing the mountains in the distance to
appear blue?
Let's look at another photograph to help us answer this
question.
This photo is a bit different from the others...
I took this picture on an overcast day, right before a rain
storm. It was so cloudy that I could not see the sky at all,
The mountains across the lake still appear to be fading but
they don't have much blue in them.
Why not?
The particles in the atmosphere reflect the blue of the sky,
causing the distant mountains to appear grayish blue.
When there is no blue sky visible you won't see as much
blue in the distance.
Other atmospheric variables:
If the air is misty or there is low lying fog, atmospheric
perspective (objects fading off into the distance) will
become more noticeable. Rain or snow may also
magnify this effect.
Twilight on the Quileute
Indian Reservation,
Near Forks, Washington
Twilight on the Quileute
Indian Reservation,
Near Forks, Washington
Twilight on the Quileute Indian Reservation,
Near Forks, Washington
Fog rolling in from the Pacific Ocean,
San Francisco California
Fog rolling in from the Pacific Ocean,
San Francisco, California
Below is a collection of my photographs showing
atmospheric perspective.
In sunshine or rain, on foggy and clear days, in broad
daylight, at sunset and at twilight, the phenomenon of
landscape features fading off into the distance and
reflecting the color of the sky remains the same.
Advancing and receding color:
Colors in the foreground of a painting tend to look brighter.
Colors in the background tend to look washed out and
duller.
When we talk about how bright or dull a color is, we are
referring to its intensity.
If you accidentally paint a bold, bright color in the
background of a landscape painting you will inadvertently
flatten your image and make your artwork look less
realistic.
So, how do you change a color's intensity? How do you
dull down a green so that it looks 'right' in the middle
ground or background?
By adding it's complement or adding white or doing
both.
So, if you have a green hill and you want to make it look
far away, try adding a bit of red to it. It should still look
green but, with a tiny bit of red, the green will not be as
bright.
As you paint the colors in the background, try gradually
adding white so the colors dull down more and appear to
fade.
Add a tiny bit of blue
(because of atmospheric perspective) to this mix the
farther away the mountains are.
Refer to the sample below to help you:
If you are using transparent watercolors, use water
instead of white to lighten your colors.
If you add a tiny bit of black to some water and then
mix it with the background colors you can make your
colors appear to fade as they get farther away.
The Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel The Elder (15251569) employed atmospheric perspective to make
his paintings come to life. Many of his paintings are
hanging in the Kunsthistorisches museum in
Vienna. Here are a few of his paintings:
The Tower of Babel
Hunters in the Snow
Peasants Dancing
In each of these paintings Bruegel was careful to dull
down the colors in the background. The objects in the
background are lighter in hue and appear to fade.
They become grayer in the distance. He also used less
detail when depicting distant objects