"Thus if one is to be five times as distant, make it five times bluer." That's what Leonardo wrote about his conclusions or observations about aerial perspective, which we more often call atmospheric perspective in art classes today. It's such a science/mathy way to give art instruction! I'd expect nothing less from our true Renaissance Man. Today's project is a quick and easy one, or it can be used as a warm-up practice for a fabulous painting.
As a good reference point, here is a late medieval Italian painting that didn't use atmospheric perspective:
Look at how flat it looks! And confusing because there are shadows on those mountains that make us want to believe they're 3-D, but... And the people on them are clearly much smaller than those on horses, but... There is no background because the mountains jump forward along with everything else (now it clearly wasn't meant to be completely realistic because the sky is gold, which is seen a lot in Medieval art, so we could be really generous and assume they flattened the scenes on purpose for some reason? Or possibly that they didn't know how to make the background recede so they embraced it and painted the sky gold to look like it was on purpose. Which do you think was the case? Or did they even think of it or care? And if the latter is the case, kudos to them for working with what they had but it's an example of how learning the rules can improve your own art or at least give you more options to work with)!
If you want to follow-up, you're welcome to use my photos as reference:
Or go out and take some of your own! You'll probably notice this marvelous effect more now and wonder why it's "purple mountains majesty" instead of blue. Ah well.
For further study...
Really cool site that shows the "gradual change of color and tone with distance."
An in-depth discussion about atmospheric perspective from The Helpful Art Teacher.
Want to look more into the science of atmospheric or aerial perspective? Go here.
Can you find other artists that really nailed it when it comes to atmospheric perspective? How about any that ignored it/broke the rules? Here is a start. Have fun!
Grandma Moses is an amazing inspiration to those of us who aren't getting the chance to paint as much as we'd like to or to pursue other interests at this stage of our lives. She didn't even start painting seriously until she was in her late 70s! And was still painting at age 100! So it's never too late to teach an old dog new tricks :) And never too late to make a dream come true.
Anna Mary Robertson was born on Sept 7th in 1860 and lived to be 101. She was born to a family with 10 kids and then had 10 kids of her own! Bless her heart. She turned to painting because somehow she still had energy left after raising her brood and the needlework she had enjoyed became too hard on her aging hands. Despite the late start, she has now become probably the most beloved American folk artist. Amazing.
Here are a couple of my favorites of her paintings:
County Fair
Sugaring Off
Here's a link to a YouTube video that is a slideshow of tons of her paintings. With some good ol' American music to go along with it.
When I taught her at an art camp a couple years ago, we folded a sheet of cardstock in half (hamburger style) to make a greeting card. I had the kids pick their favorite holiday, talked a little about family traditions and had them draw a picture with colored pencils of what their family would be doing on that holiday. They loved it! I think Grandma Moses is great for kids because she's not intimidating. They look at her paintings and feel confident they can do it too. And everybody loves holidays! One of my daughters kept doing extra cards she loved her so much. I did instruct the kids to fill the entire space. We looked at some of her paintings and showed how she did it, and how she had so many different fun things going on. We talked briefly about helping things look like they're in the background by overlapping and then I told them not to worry about it all being perfect but to just let it tell a story. And to have fun as always!
Here's another great Grandma Moses project idea about the four seasons at Harrington Harmonies. I might give it a try this year!
