Sunday, July 10, 2011

And then the fog rolled in...

Foggy Morning, 11 x 14
In my weekly classes at my home studio, we just finished up a series of "atmospheric" paintings.  We began with atmospheric perspective in general, and studied this topic pertaining to scenes on a clear day.  Then we moved on to studying the effects of morning mist, and finally how to work with fog. This painting was from this past week's demo.  We discovered that, without a strong, direct light source, contrast is kept low on the ground plain and in the distance, and is only apparent on upright objects, such as the trees in this scene (and somewhat on the upright edge of the land mass that meets the water).  To differentiate various areas of the ground plain and the distant trees, we used a combination of low contrast, muted warms and cools up against each other.  It's hard to believe that a painting as subdued as this would be a real workout on the eyes, but seeing the small nuances of low contrast values was indeed a challenge.

No comments:

Post a Comment