Do you have any favorite paintings that break these rules? Why do you think the artist did that?
Creating Distance in Landscapes: Foreground, Middle Ground, & Background
This month’s blogs post are all on the theme of creating distance in landscape painting. In painting we have these magical (okay, totally not magic, but feels like it!) ways of creating 3D space on a 2D surface. This week we are starting with the basics. Many paintings, especially landscapes, have three sections in them: Foreground, Middle Ground, and Background.
In this post, I will describe things they way they are generally… please remember that the art police aren’t coming to get you if you break these rules. Lots of fun paintings do play with the rules. I like to tell my students, “You learn the rules so that you can decide which ones you want to break.”
How a Landscape Painting is Organized
The background is at the top of the page, and the foreground at the bottom. If you imagine standing outside, the part of the landscape that is closest to you is at your feet. This is the same way we organize a painting because it is how we see the world.
The foreground is going to have:
- The most details
- The most contrast (darkest darks)
- The most saturated colors
- The warmest colors (Warm colors advance, cool colors recede)
- Larger objects/subjects
Middle ground is going to have:
- Something to help you understand scale. (A person, a tree, a house…)
- Less contrast than the foreground
- A bit more blue-shifted light
- Objects may appear flatter since they have less details
- Often a similar object as in the foreground, but less detailed and smaller.
Background is going to have:
- Usually going to have sky
- Almost always lighter in value than the land
- Very far off places need to have more muter (more white & blue added to the colors used in the foreground or middle ground). We will go into this more later in the post about Atmospheric Perspective.
Let’s look at all of this in a painting.
Can you tell what is in the foreground? I see the rocky landscape, small flowers, a dirt road. This leads towards dark trees. There are people camping out there with a small campfire going. (I provided the link to the image if you want to zoom in, the National Gallery of Art’s website allows you too. Which is very helpful on a large painting like this one.) How much detail can you see? Quite a bit! The fern has individual fronds, there are flowers blooming, and the rocks have lots of texture. How about contrast? Lots – look a a rock. It goes from light to dark. Compare the colors to the background sky. They are much more saturated in the foreground.
Let’s explore the middle ground. Objects are smaller. Look how small the road is now. This scale change is a great way to create more distance. How about value changes? Not as much as the foreground. The drastic darks have given away to more even light. And, then the mountains climb up. I’d make the case that the beginning of those mountains are in the middle ground.
There is a slow transition to the background in the mountains. It can be hard to draw a line and say “here is middle, here is the back.” And that is okay. Nature is like that, too. Compare the color of the mountains farthest away. There is so much sky color in them that they blend in. Color and value-wise, those mountains have more in common with the sky than the foreground!
Distance and Depth in Watercolour
If you’ve ever done any kind of landscape painting , you probably know how important it is to create some sort of depth. For today’s blog post, we’ll take a closer look at how to paint this, and I’ll show 3 different ways to do so.
The first and probably most common method is the layering method. It’s perfect for the minimalist, as all it takes is one colour and a bit of patience. For this method, grab your favourite colour (preferably a darker colour), a large brush, a palette with at least 3 wells, a sheet of watercolour paper or sketchbook, and your containers of water. Next, dilute your paint into 3 different shades, from lightest (i.e. most diluted) to darkest (i.e. least diluted). Tip: Have a scrap piece of watercolour paper to test the tones before painting! And make sure you remember which tone sample matches which well in your palette. Next, use the lightest tone to block in the shape of some mountains. Note: the subject matter is up to you, whether it’s a forest, landscape, seascape, or cityscape. Make sure this painted area starts about a third from the top of your paper, so you have room to paint the following layers. Once you’ve let this first layer dry, follow with another layer of the lightest paint, this time starting a little below where you first started. Make sure to vary the shape of your mountains, trees, whatever your subject matter is! If you’re worried about the overall look, you can always do a light pencil outline before you paint. Again, once this newest layer is done, add another layer, using progressively more saturated paint with each new layer added. This means your painting gets darker as you get towards the foreground, and will create the illusion of depth, as things in the distance will appear lighter than things in the front. The key here is to be patient in building up your layers! The transparent nature of watercolour lends itself well to layering, so even if you wanted to use a different colour per layer (like when using the glazing technique ), underlying layers will still show and influence the layers that come after.
Method 2: The Contrast
If you take a look outside, what do you see? Hopefully, your view isn’t blocked by another building! If you can see something quite far away, you’ll notice that things far away tend to blur together into a limited range of tones (i.e. low contrast), while things in the foreground will have more details of shadows and highlights (i.e. high contrast). This is a great way to separate the foreground from the midground and background, though it will take a little more practice to get the balance right. It’s an especially good trick to use when painting cityscapes, since the background buildings can have minimal tones and details, while the buildings in front can have all the contrast and details.
The last trick is to create a blurry background for that sense of distance. Building on the previous principle that things further away tend to blend together, you can use the “wet-in-wet” technique when painting the background. This consists of wetting your paper with clean water before painting on top. The colours will bleed into one another, which creates much softer blends and thus push the subject matter towards the back. It’s a good tactic to paint skies and flower fields or to create a “bokeh” (out-of-focus) effect in your painting.
Combo Moves
[img:watercolour-distance-4] Armed with these tips and tricks, you’re now free to experiment as you wish! You can even combine some or all of these methods into one large painting, or create several small paintings to see which one you prefer. Finally, keep in mind that the more distant something is, the less detail, lighter-toned, and blurrier it will get! Plus it’s always best to pair your background with a focal foreground subject. This will give your painting even more overall contrast, and push the background even further away. For practice purposes though, you can just stick to doing a background, and see where to go from there. As always, happy painting! Do you have your own tips on creating more depth or distance in your painting? What kind of backgrounds do you prefer to paint? Share with us in the comments below!
Nicola Tsoi is a practicing graphic designer and illustrator based in Hong Kong. During her downtime, she likes to watch birds do funny things, search for stories, and bake up a storm. She keeps a pet sourdough starter named Doughy.
- art tips ,
- watercolour
