How to create the illusion of depth. As a landscape painter, I want my paintings to look real. It means creating an illusion of depth that gives the viewer the feeling of immersing themselves directly in the scene. Without that bit of magic, the picture looks flat and uninviting.
Two types of perspectives
When we go for a tour, we hold the advantage of seeing the world through a stereoscopic view. Our two eyes enable us to see what’s more like and farther away, which helps us navigate without hitting our legs. On the other hand, the observer of a landscape is visually impaired to a certain extent. Since the surface of a painting is flat, it’s like seeing the scene with one eye. To help the viewer, I like to squeeze the illusion of depth. It is where perspective comes into play; It is important to create the illusion of depth. There are two kinds of views: deep and airy. Linear perspective is the way we think about the most often. Its lexicon contains vanishing points; One, two, and three-point perspective and horizon lines. An Italian engineer and architect, Filippo Brunelleschi, developed this geometric system to design buildings in 1413 during the Renaissance.
The second type of perspective, antenna (or atmospheric), relates to how the air between us and an object affects our perception of the object’s color, particularly in terms of value, temperature, and chrominance, unlike linear scenes, which is the artificial method used to create the illusion of space, the aerial prospect results from the laws of nature. It was first use in the Netherlands in the 15th century. Among other things, Leonardo da Vinci observed and cataloged the effects and theorized why the effects occurred. Before the Renaissance, many European cool drawing ideas with paintings looked flat and two-dimensional. As the observations became sharper and the math more precise, both aerial and linear perspectives helped artists achieve a high level of realism embodied in the 17th century Flemish still life and landscape paintings.
Notes on linear perspective
Perspective techniques can reduce to a few simple tricks. But they’re not tricks, really; they are important visual cues, all based on careful observation of life. Every day we see and interpret these cues visually, but we have become so used to them that we will not notice them unless we have developed a keen eye while we are used to working straight from life. As artists, we need to realize that these visual cues can be invaluable tools in creating a successful painting. First, let’s take a look at what tools linear perspective gives us.
Overlapping objects
Overlapping illustrated: Two bottles appear to be touching in the picture, but their position in space is unclear. In picture B, the bottles overlap, so it is clear which one is closer. Overlapping objects tell us what is in front of it (I classify it with linear perspective because it has to do with the placement of shapes). It’s a simple concept. As children, we learned that when one thing obscures another, it means that the thing obscured is further away. It is surprising how often inexperienced painters forget this concept. You should overlap the shapes as much as possible to make the spatial relationships clear.
Scale
The scale, or apparent size, of an object, decreases with distance. We have all seen several telephone poles and found the farthest ones to appear smaller. You don’t need telephone poles for the illusion to work in a painting. Include only a few objects known to the viewer with a similar real size (as opposed to the apparent size) so that the reduction makes sense. Including the figures is one way of showing the scale.
Notes from an aerial perspective
Now let’s take a look at the aerial perspective. The air scatters the light from the sky, and airborne dust or moisture increases the scatter. This scattering is responsible for most of the atmospheric effects we see, and the more air there is between the viewer and an object, the more pronounced the effects. The next two pointers relate to how the atmosphere affects the value.
Contrast
The contrast decreases with distance. Some of the scattered skylights flow into the dark areas or are even reflected by the viewer, making the dark areas appear brighter. Light areas are also affected, but the effect is not as noticeable.
The sharpness of the edges
The sharpness of the edges also decreases with distance. An edge is defined as the amount of contrast between two adjacent shapes, and the sharper the contrast, the sharper the edge. As the contrast decreases with distance, the edges that contrast dependent appears softer. The next two notes on aerial perspective relate to color. Diffuse skylight has a low chroma blue, and this skylight affects the color of objects.
Temperature
The temperature of color decreases with distance. Diffuse blue light from the sky shifts colors towards the cooler end of the spectrum. The colors don’t necessarily turn blue, however. For example, red becomes a matte red-purple, then a matte purple. The yellow turns to a dull yellow-green.
Chroma
The chrominance of color decreases with distance. Diffuse blue skylight is not a blue with high color intensity; Blue, on the other hand, mixes with white light (other colors) and thus reduces its chrominance. This impure light reduces the saturation of all colors in the landscape. The color can be expected to be completely desaturated for an indefinite time.
Additional information
There are two other ways to add depth that I find useful. The detail (as well as the texture) decreases with distance. In a meadow, for example, grasses can have individual stems and leaves in the foreground. On closer inspection, the individual stems merge into larger masses. Particularly in landscapes, water, or a fence running from the front into the outpost allows an easy way for the eye. While this approach can be cumbersome, a subtle eye path can effectively indicate braking distance.
Place in a nutshell
In short, to produce the fantasy of depth and space, make certain your colors are warm and full, with dark beats, texture senses, and front forces. Save your cool, matte colors, softer edges, and low-contrast elements for the middle ground and distance. Also, use overlapping and scaled items to suggest distance. Finally, when you can find a way to the eye, include it. You can see how I implement many of these pointers in the demo below. Even if I don’t see all of these clues in the scene in front of me, I add or exaggerate their effect to convey the visual depth. It prevents my viewer from getting lost in the room.
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When we go for a tour, we hold the advantage of seeing the world through a stereoscopic view. Our two eyes enable us to see what’s more like and farther away, which helps us navigate without hitting our legs. On the other hand, the observer of a landscape is visually impaired to a certain extent. Since the surface of a painting is flat, it’s like seeing the scene with one eye. To help the viewer, I like to squeeze the illusion of depth. It is where perspective comes into play; It is important to create the illusion of depth. There are two kinds of views: deep and airy. Linear perspective is the way we think about the most often. Its lexicon contains vanishing points; One, two, and three-point perspective and horizon lines. An Italian engineer and architect, Filippo Brunelleschi, developed this geometric system to design buildings in 1413 during the Renaissance.
