How to paint LANDSCAPES with DEPTH - Atmospheric PERSPECTIVE!

Hi there, how's it going? Andrew here with another tutorial and this video we're going to talk about painting landscapes. In particular, how to create that three-dimensional depth and sense of space within a scene. It all has to do with carefully measuring your tones and colors and by having a few little tricks up your sleeve you'll be able to create some dynamic landscapes full of atmosphere. Let's get started. Now I'm really inspired by the landscape here in New Zealand. Let me show you a few of my photographic references that I'm using as the inspiration for this painting. Now you'll see as we flick through these photographs that no one single photo is going to be appropriate to make a painting from, but there are little bits of detail and information that we can use in a final painting. I really like these grassy slopes, some of this atmosphere and depth, afternoon light that cuts through some clouds and illuminates trees, perhaps a river winding its way into the distance, or an exposed rocky hillside, maybe even a farm building or two. But I love these old trees and I think my main subject for this painting has got to be an old pine tree. Now let's take a close look at the palette of Langridge handmade oil colors that I'll be using for this scene. Here on my palette I have titanium white, burnt umber, burnt sienna, yellow oxide, cadmium yellow, cadmium red, quinacridone magenta, ultramarine blue, cobalt teal and phthalo green. I'm also using oleo gel as my medium. Now throughout this demonstration I'm going to be changing up my brushes a little bit, but the three main brushes and perhaps my favorite that I've been painting with are these. I have a dagger number two bristle brush, as well as a trimmed fan brush that has allowed me to create some grassy textures, and this little brush here which is a trimmed number zero synthetic round. That will allow me to create some really fine lines and some grass details in the later part of this demonstration. Now that's enough talking, let's get painting. I'm working on a homemade Belgian linen panel. It's about 12 by 14 inches. The base has been colored with burnt sienna and I've rubbed this back a little bit to reveal some of that linen texture. I'm working directly on this surface with oleo gel and a little bit of Langridge burnt umber. This will form some nice dark lines and form a guide for my composition. I'm drawing all of this pretty much freehand and referring to that photographic reference that we talked about earlier. Once I have the major lines in my composition, after about 10 to 20 minutes here, I can then go about marking in some of my zones of color. I'm going to begin with whatever's furthest away and work my way forward towards the foreground. My sky goes in pretty quickly and I'm using a number four bristle filbert brush. I want a little bit of drama here in the sky and so I'm going to deepen the tone of some of these clouds with ultramarine blue burnt umber and a touch of cobalt teal and just a little bit of quinacridone magenta. I'm going to leave a gap of empty sky showing between these cloud masses and that's going to be predominantly titanium white ultramarine blue and cobalt teal. I'm roughly marking in where the highlights of the clouds are going to go and this is predominantly titanium white although I'm avoiding the top of my tonal range as I normally do and I'm graying this out. Then bringing the scene forward with the next tier of depth I'm working in the distant hills. Now the sun's coming in over the right hand shoulder slightly and so these hills are going to catch a little bit of light. I'm going to make sure that these forested slopes are going to be subdued so that they read well from a distance. I make sure that if ever I'm mixing green here with atmospheric perspective that I blew these notes out. If I get a little bit too much yellow coming through in that green it's going to come forward too far. Moving on to the next hill and you can see here that the shadows have gotten deeper still and now we're starting to establish these tiers of depth one in front of the other. That deeper color that you see here is a mixture of ultramarine blue and burnt umber with a touch of quinacridone magenta. The violet that you can mix by using quinacridone magenta and ultramarine blue really lends itself to atmospheric perspective. Bringing the slope further forward now I'm using this number four filbert bristle brush to communicate a little bit of a grassy slope where we have a paddock meeting that forest on the hillside. I need to make sure though that this green grass is not overly saturated because again it'll come too far forward. I'm softening between brush marks by doing a little bit of blending here at this stage. I'm going to bring some of these tones down into the painting now and start communicating the flat plane that sits below these hills. I'm going to go a little bit darker again and start establishing a little bit more of a tunnel dynamic. The depth in these trees is important because we need them to sit in front of those background hills. This will only happen if we're more saturated and darker with our shadows. I'm now allowing a little bit of phthalo green to come through and you'll notice as I'm marking these poplars that they have a little bit more of that chemically green look. I'm going to go back and touch up some of these areas in the next pass in the painting. But this phthalo green is really going to help achieve a little bit of saturation as we bring the scene forward. For these grassy slopes along what I hope is going to be a riverbank this needs to be a little bit more intense so it reads well here at a more immediate distance. Our major pine tree is going in now and this is ultramarine blue and burnt umber and you can see there's a bit of green coming here too. Now we got to be careful for phthalo because this is going to be a bully and by that I mean it's going to go around and knock the crap out of the other colors that are on your palette. So be wary and use it very sparingly. A little bit goes a long way. Now let's establish this bank here just sitting in front of the tree. I'm using a series of fragmented brush marks. I want this to seem like clumps and tussocks of grass. I'm going to bring it down to meet the water's edge but where there's water here in the foreground I'm going to want to just communicate a little bit of a reflection. This is where whatever's happening above that water line is then drug down through into the body of water. I'm going to come back and re-establish some of these marks make it a little bit more defined later on in the process. Now you can see here just how quickly an image can come together by using this system of working with whatever's furthest away and bringing the scene forward towards the viewer. Now I'm using pretty much a number four brush throughout this entire demonstration. This is allowing me to cover a large amount of ground very quickly. Now normally I'm using really quite big brushes but because this is such a little painting the number four bristle filbert is really helping me cover that area. Now in places I'm going to want to fragment some of these areas to just allow them to communicate a little bit more texture and maybe a little bit more detail. Now for this my trusty number two dagger really comes into its own. This pine tree is going to be catching light in all sorts of places where this intricate detail of clumps of pine needles occur along the right hand edge catching that sun. One of the things I really love about these pine trees is their character how some parts of the tree are kind of dead or dying but they end up with this fragmented open canopy and form a really cool pattern. It also makes this tree look really old and I think might help tell some sort of story with this painting. Over here on the right hand side I want one of these weeping willows to just cling to the riverbank. My block-in is now finished. It's been two days between these passives because I'm using oleo gel. It's going to take about four days all up to cure so at the two day mark it's formed a little bit of a tack or stickiness which is accepting the next layer of brushwork quite well. Now I'll be able to move and manipulate some of that underlying pigment somewhat but I like leaving it maybe two days to just have a little bit of give to that underlying layer. It also means that as I'm adding these brush marks over the top I'm not going to lift up that underlying layer of the block-in. I'm going directly over whatever I've blocked in before with the sky here and just cleaning up some of my marks and some of the tones. I can also add to the top tonal range of some of these cloud highlights for instance by using titanium white, a little bit of burnt umber and a little bit of yellow oxide. This achieves a nice warm tone for those cloud highlights catching the afternoon sun. It's amazing how versatile these number two dagger brushes are. I'm using the broad side of the brush to blend my marks and then occasionally flicking it with just the ends of the bristles. This allows to break and blend some of these areas in the clouds and then again as we did with the block-in bringing these techniques downwards towards the viewer following those tiers of depth as they come forward. To achieve atmospheric perspective our deep shadowed hills need to be slightly blue to violet in order for them to read at a vast distance. This communicates the sheer volume of atmosphere between the viewer and those hills. I want a little bit of erosion or a rocky surface exposed on that main bluff. This is mapped out with a bit of titanium white and a touch of burnt umber to achieve a little bit more of a warmer gray. But here my relationships of blues and grays it's pretty subtle from one color to the next. We can't overdo things at this vast distance. Now I'd consider these passes that I'm making now to be final detail. Normally I'm working with blocking in modeling and detail as three major parts of the painting process but here I've combined my blocking in and modeling as one pass. So I should be finished with this painting as it's coming forward here with the pass that you're seeing now. When we get right up on the painting you can see the types of marks that I'm making. Every time I deposit paint from the brush I go back and I rework those edges. I make sure I have no distracting ridge lines and I make sure that that mark sits really nicely within the space and relates to everything else around it. I'm always checking that everything is operating as it should. Now you can see how just the ends of the bristles are flicking that surface and I'm creating a nice fragmented zone here to communicate those distant trees. I bring my edges together and whilst this surface is still wet I can manipulate those tones a little bit. I leave gaps between my brush marks in case I want to go back in there and deposit paint between those marks. Here I'm using that technique to just change the tone and the hue just slightly and have a little bit more cobalt teal coming through into the amongst the ultramarine blue and quinacridone magenta. I've left a gap between those distant hills to achieve a little bit of a highlight which I'm adding now. I found that a little bit too much yellow was coming through in my highlight from before and I needed to blue this out. So again cobalt teal can help me achieve a really nice blue green. This is going to help these hills register at more of a distance away from the viewer. With some minor adjustments this section is just about finished. Now pay no attention to the horses that you see here in the mid ground. They aren't going to make it. I'm sorry. We're just going to have to imagine some horses up there on those grassy slopes just at the edge of the forest. Again I'm able to work in some of that color that's underlying to just communicate some of these pastoral colors here meeting the hillside. I want a little bit more softness in this zone and one of the things I really like about this scene is that contrast of textures. If I avoid going too dark with my shadows then this area too will recede into space nicely. Having plenty of wet paint out means that I can blend one area in with another and this is just helping soften this area overall and also helping to push it back into the painting. Now let's paint some trees. One of my favorite things about painting landscapes is this illusion of detail that you can create when there's really not much there at all and you'll be surprised that I use this dagger number two to communicate a bit of that detail when most people would think I'm using a very small triple zero sable round for instance. Here we can communicate the edges of trees that are catching that light just along that right hand edge and the fragment this line to communicate those individual leaves catching the sun. So here at this kind of distance we want to give the illusion of detail the impression that something's there without overstating it. I've allowed a little bit more intensity to come through in these colors now. It's the relationship between these colors that is creating this illusion of depth. So having a little more white and a touch more yellow come through now is helping these creep forward a little bit closer. As an artist you can do just about anything. You can even make grass eat horses. Now I must admit I didn't do a compositional sketch or a study before I did this little painting. So one of the things that I discovered through the modeling stage is that the horses were a little bit too much. It became a little bit confusing because I wanted more attention to be given to the tree and that little cabin in the distance rather than on these animals in the foreground. So there's only so many focal points that we can focus on within any given painting that if we put too much in it can really water down the overall message. Here I think just having a lone pine on the bank of the river is enough and will give enough of that pastoral characteristic that I wanted to see in this New Zealand scene. Now with my willow on the right hand side I'm going to deepen the tones and again you can notice now how dark those shadows are in comparison with whatever's in the background. I've allowed a bit of phthalo green to come through here in conjunction with my ultramarine blue and burnt umber and I'm brushing this again with a number two dagger. As a general rule of thumb once I've established all of my shadow notes after the blocking and modeling I'll go back and add crisp highlights. Here I'm using just the point of the dagger brush to manipulate these lighter tones. Again I'm using titanium white and cadmium yellow here predominantly just a touch of ultramarine blue. Now the big lone pine is going to need a very different kind of technique. These marks are going to be shorter and sharper but the dagger number two brush can do a very good job of this and fragment that lead edge. I'm trying to communicate those individual clumps of pine needles so it's just a question of going slowly and surely around that tree being diligent to cover up as much of that block and layer as I can only allowing a hint of it to come through. You can see this brush really lends itself well to this kind of technique because as I deposit the paint I can drag it up in the direction that the pine needles would go. It really starts to take on that character that I'm looking for. Now after a little while I can go back with some of this highlight color but because of the nature of these pine needles it's only going to catch so much light so this color needs to be a little bit more subdued than the highlights I was using for my other trees and a little bit more saturated so that it comes forward still. So here I'm using phthalo green cadmium yellow but I need to warm that green up a little bit so I'm using just a touch of cadmium red as well. I'm always paying attention to my edges so when I have the opportunity I go back and rework the edge of the tree to make sure it blends into the overall scene otherwise we can have a bit of a jarring shape over a field. We don't want that we want it to sit naturally within the overall picture. Now with a very fine synthetic round brush I'm going to just kick in a few highlights where these exposed branches in the trunk are going to be catching the sun. Our scene is really shaping up and we need just a bit more of this grassy texture along the riverbank. I'm using two different brushes for this. A trimmed fan brush to drag out individual strands of grass along with my number two dagger to just drag that paint downwards into the water to form a little bit of a reflection. I'm always saving my highlights and my brightest brights for the very end so we've got a little ways to go from here still. Now for the very immediate foreground here on the right hand side this is where the deepest and darkest shadows are going to go and again following this rule of muted subdued tone in the background and a greater variation of tones in the foreground this will help atmospheric perspective and that illusion of three-dimensional space. So the colors that you see here on the right hand side are very dark indeed a combination of ultramarine blue and burnt umber. If I need to go even darker a really nice combination to try is phthalo green burnt umber and quinacridone magenta. That combination of those three colors will go even darker than my normal burnt umber ultramarine blue. So once I've established the dark shadows I'm going to then go in and lay in the highlights of these blades of grass that have been exposed to the sunlight and get some nice crispy detail here in the immediate foreground. There's no real quick way to do this but with a synthetic round again like I was using for the highlights on the tree I can draw in individual blades and grass here and there. Now it is possible to go overboard with this technique and this is probably a little bit more detailed than I would like to go normally but by just putting a few blades of grass here and there strategically it'll give the illusion that there's detail where there's really not much going on at all. Now I'm alternating these highlight colors I'm not just sticking to one color for the highlight. In some areas it's going to be a little bit more yellow so more titanium white and cadmium yellow is going to come through and then in other areas I'm going to allow it to get a little bit cooler and bluer which that will be titanium white and ultramarine blue. Now here with the water along the riverbank we're going to want a little bit of a sparkle where some exposed stones might just enter the water here. This will lift this area and also bring it forward. Also just dragging through the wet paint with the touch of ultramarine blue and titanium white will give the impression that this water here in the foreground is moving. And with these final little details my painting of this New Zealand pastoral scene is finished. Overall I'm pretty happy with this there's a few things that I'd change if I had to go back and paint it again but I'm happy with the way that tree is sitting in the composition and the depth of the scene. Well I really hope you've enjoyed this video tutorial and if you did then please hit that like button for me. And if you want to see more videos just like this one then make sure you're subscribed to this channel. As always you can find me on Instagram and Facebook but also make sure you're subscribed through my website for bonus content at www.andrewtichler.com. I look forward to seeing you again soon. So long.