Plane painting for landscapes

There is a classic art book called “Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting” by John F Carlson which was written in the middle of the last century but is still a much used resource for landscape painters today. Inside its covers is a wealth of information about the way to see and the way to paint, so I recommend getting your hands on a copy if you are into landscape painting.

One of the ideas he proposes is that there are planes in the landscape that help us see the landscape in simple value blocks and therefore we can simplify the way we paint it. He writes of four values which we should look for – light, semi-light, semi-dark and dark. These depend upon the amount of light from the sky that is hitting them.

1. So, the lightest value is the sky itself,

2. followed by the ground plane which is semi-light as it receives the most direct light from the sky.

3. Any mountains or distant things are semi-dark because they are at an angle to the sky,

4. and finally trees and anything else that is vertical receive the least direct light and are therefore the darkest value.

• 

• 

You can see it in action here. I did an experiment by cutting out some shapes from a piece of grey card, placing them in position (the hills slanting backwards, the trees and building vertical) and then photographed them with the light above. As you can see the sky is lightest, followed by the ground plane, then the distant hills and then the vertical elements are darkest value.

This is a handy rule to keep in mind, but of course there are exceptions to any rule.

• 

• 

On the left I moved the light source further back which created a backlit or even night-time scene. The four planes are still visible, and in the same order. On the right I moved the light source to the front and lower down to make an evening scene as if the sun was setting. As you can see the values of the four planes are different, but they are still clearly defined and separated from each other.

Here is the principle in action in the black and white version of my painting below. Can you see the four planes? Perhaps the sky and the ground are too similar, but certainly there are three value planes distinctly shown.

I hope this is a helpful insight into the world around us and how you might go about painting it.

#art #painting #learningtopaint #landscape #Composition #paintingtips #JohnFCarlson #inspiration