[Archived Class 1] Week Two - Atmospheric Perspective

[Form]

Week Two Focus: Atmospheric Perspective

Recapping Week One:
Hello again! Congratulations to those of you who managed to get everything in on time last week. This week please pay attention to the due date and get started on your work early! Those of you who didnt manage to get your stuff in have recieved an F on the week 1 mark sheet. There are a handful of people who have asked to join the class, and if the same people cant manage again this week, I will be swapping out and letting a reserve lister come in. As the topics get less 'fundemental' and more abstract (colour, composition, idea development), we will need to be in full swing discussion, throwing ideas and concepts around. Just reading the task and uploading an image at the end of the week is NOT participation. I don't have all the time in the world, so please help out by critting each other as well.
Remember, you will each be recieving a document with feedback and gradings at the end of the course - this will heavily reflect your participation. There will also be other incentives for those who are regularly participating and helping the others out.

Week Two:

This week we are focusing on atmospheric perspective (also called arial perspective when painting an outdoor scene).

Painting in a representational manner, whether it be studying from life/reference or creating concepts from our mind, is about creating an ILLUSION. Our task is to manipulate our materials of varying limitations to create an illusion of what we see in our eyes or imagination. We are turning a flat page into a space with breadth and depth, as if we were looking through a window. Atmospheric perspective deals with the methods we use to enhance this illusion, (and sometimes exaggerate it) to create depth through our image and create an impression of space.

The study task this week will comprise of one activity.

Study Task: Ref Studies - 2 hours
In task A) we will start with observation. I want you to choose two photoreferences from the page I have supplied, and do colour studies of them. These studies do not have to be detailed - you can reduce trees and rocks and other details to a few strokes. What you are studying is the atmospheric perspective. This starts with some observation, and asking the question: what happens to colour as it recedes in space? Check for yourself in photoshop, run your colour picker across. Ask me questions. Discuss it with each other. Find more photoref if you want to. Look at different causes of atmospheric perspective - is it physical fog? Or just distance haze? In a day or two we will start resolving this into a list of rules about atmospheric perspective which you can then use to help with your production piece. I will post more advice and material as we go along. The task is to choose two of the photorefs, observe and then do a study copy of it. NO COLOUR PICKING IS ALLOWED. Try to capture the atmospheric effects, and make the space feel 'deep'. Dont worry about detail! The rest of your study time needs to be spent analysing what makes atmospheric perspective work, and discussing that here in the thread. This discussion will be a Fail, Pass, High Pass, or Pro on the marking sheet.

Ref Sheet:





Week Two Portfolio Artwork: Focus on Atmospheric Perspective. ‘The Path’
This week we are producing a panorama. The goal is to demonstrate your knowledge of atmospheric perspective (and linear perspective too, if you can ) to create an environment with the illusion of depth. Here is the task:

I would like you to paint a panoramic long shot of a landscape with a path in it. The image can be shot from on or above the path looking over the landscape, but the visible distance should be at least 5-10 miles. You are looking out over a vast area. The path leads to a large object in the distance (asteroid? castle? floating mountain? - make sure it makes sense at that distance). This object needs to be readable, but still be affected by the atmospheric perspective, and also make sure your foreground images 'pop forward' enough - its up to you to figure out how this is achieved!

Posting Your Results

We will be keeping everything consolidated in one thread this week, so feel free to post work in progress shots, ask questions, throw feedback around etc. Dont worry if you are faster or slower than someone else in posting - we all have different schedules. Critique will be given to anything that is posted. I will also be running through all the production tasks myself and will post up my results alongside as we go through each topic. Furthermore, I will try to dig up good references and further reading to go along with it all.

This week I am adding a new mark - high pass.The Fail/Pass/High Pass/Professional gradings will be given out at week's end. A pass is awarded if all tasks are attempted, and a High Pass if they are attempted succesfully. Pro is for work that is at a professional level, above par. Please have ALL of your study work and your portfolio piece submitted 7 days from the time this was posted!

Deadline:
GMT + 10 (my time) = 5PM SUNDAY
GMT - 8 (pacific time) = 11PM SATURDAY

Lets have more discussion and wip posting this week, I will try to keep you guys stocked up with ref, inspiration and advice.

Now git to it!

[D.Labruyere]

ok, just to make sure, this is what we got to do, or is this done a bit TO easy?

[chaosrocks]

holy s***T
ya'll better appreciate this!
crx

[Gundersen]

ok, just to make sure, this is what we got to do, or is this done a bit TO easy?

The colours of the image you have chosen doesnt seem to get blurry as your painting is getting. It is stuff like that you want to look for...

Well I gave it a try aswell... two quick wips ... gonna work more on it later/tomorow .. The second one turned out better. Tried to focus on not useing blurred colours, rather change the tone from the strongest more towards pure white as i moves inward in the picture, At least that gave me the effect of what it shows on my speedpaints atm

[Windmaker]

D.Labruyere: That's a nice start! I'd push it a bit further though. Also, the darkest green strip in your picture makes it look as though the ground is rising while in the reference picture the ground is getting lower. The dark tone breaks up the illusion of depth you would've otherwise achieved.
I'm think you could solve the problem by increasing the sharpness of the rocks. In the reference picture even the furthest rock in the foreground has crisper edges than the trees in the midground and background. Also, you may try adding a rock exactly where the foreground and the midground meet so that the contrast becomes immediatly obvious.

I hope some of this helps and is to some degree correct.

Here is my first study and a step-by-step of the process.

[Gundersen]

Nice one Windmaker. Looks good

[Agustin Poratti]

looking sweet, chaos!

[S!R]

I know these are bad but Im so new, I work real realll slow so cut it off somewhere near the suggested time...Def think the green one (second attempt) is much closer but still a LOT to learn..

Cheers, all.
S!R

[Form]

uh... guys... i don't think you are on the class roster?

the reason for the class limit is so I don't fry my own brain trying to manage more people than I can handle as far as pushing certain tasks and critiquing. Its also so we can keep it in one thread without it exploding. Im going to create a thread for lurkers to follow along, but I won't be looking at it. The ten guys in the class can feel free to look at it and help out too, but if anyone can post in here I will go completely insane.... cheers
f

[S!R]

Oh, sorry. Didnt realize it was closed. No worries, totally understandable..

Cheers
S!R

[Windmaker]

Gundersen: The studies look really nice! Hope to see them finished soon

Here's my second study and a process pic. I think maybe it's easier to give critiques and advice if you have an idea of the process. So there.

[Gundersen]

I like the way you show the proces Windmaker, and i think you are getting pretty close to what he wants. I was thinking a bit in my sleep tonight about it.
And what do you guys prefere when painting like this, Would you prefere to start with the colour farthest away, or do start on the closest colours first?

Logicly we probably should start with the objects farthest away from us when building up a painting, but it feels more correctly to get the strong colours first then adjusting them as you go inwards in the picture.


ANY thoughts on this? (we need to discuss aswell as paint)

[Windmaker]

Hey
I think it's best to start with a gradient. The main sky colour is on top of the picture (whre you would normally find the sky) and the main foreground colour is at the bottom. Then you blend them to extent you wish and meet them where the horizon is.
I would try to paint at both ends of the picture simultaneously. That way you don't focus on just one part of it and avoid the danger of overrendering early in the process.
Also, one thing I found really helpful is to work really small. Either that or really zoom out. I worked both of my studies at about the size of the reference picture. Which was at about 16% zoom in my case.

[rvdtor]

windmaker i like yours...they're very vague but the impression of the overall depth and idea is definately there...good work.
here are mine done very fast just to get the feel of colors and stuff. getting the colors right was harder than i though but they came out ok i guess. i started recording the steps but i got carried away and didnt want to break my concentration so just have the end result.

[Gundersen]

rvdtor Those ones are realy nice! Love the way they are simple but still show the details it needs to do. And i think you captured the essence of the picture very good.

Can you tell a bit more about your proces then? Like what is the difference in the two pictures. and how you worked them up, doesnt need to be shown in images, can rather be explained aswell

For me it seems like the first picture has been focused on the rock, so the stuff that gets further away get washed away because of the atmospheric effect, While the second one seems to be more fog then atmospheric perspectiv. Those images was pretty good on that example. Yes the flower has the full focus of the "camera", but if it would be a non foggy forest i think the image would look diffrent, It would not have the blurry effect that the photo has there atm. (Am a Photographer so know some about this )

What do you guys think of that?

[Windmaker]

rvdtor: They came out great! The one with the flower particularly. Good work!

Gundersen: I agree about the forest. It would look different if there was no fog. The trees don't seem to be as far as needed to get atmospheric effects showing. That's why people usually atmospheric perspective to show the size of things - it only shows when something's huge. On the other hand, I think what we're seeing with the flower is more of a depth of field issue (if that's what it's called). It happens when the surroundings of the subject are out of focus. It can be observed in macro photography.
Sooo... they look similar (the atmospheric effects and depth of field), but they're different.

Also, here's a third study I did. I decided to try and compensate my lack of experience with lots of studies. I gathered up reference material for my production piece and plan on doing studies of each of the pictures before going to work on the piece itself.

Here goes:

[Gundersen]

Looks great Windmaker, the one dark green strip looks a bit to dark thats the only comment

Ill post some work later , am at uni atm so no drawingboard here

Taken from Wikipedia:

Aerial perspective or atmospheric perspective is the effect on the appearance of an object by the atmosphere between it and a viewer (or the technique of depicting this effect in a work of art, such as a landscape painting). As the distance between an object and a viewer increases, the contrast between the object and its background decreases. The contrast of any markings or details on the object also decreases. The colours of the object also become less saturated and shift towards blue.

[Windmaker]

Gundersen: Thanks

Here's one more.

[DanJohnCox]

Windmaker, good on ya to do lots of studies. but while lots are great sometimes one is just as good. esspecially when youre starting out, you may just be making lots of inaccurate drawings, rushing through and not taking the time to really take in what youre seeing, just shorthanding your experiences.

from a colour standpoint, you need to pull away from what you think the object's colour is. and look at the object itself, with no preconcieved notions of its colour. your trees in your second study for example. in that image, there is actually very little green at all! regardless of the fact that there are trees there and that trees are green. its mostly reds, yellows, and blues, with just a few touches of green on the transitions between light and shadow.

next time you do an image, take a stab at the colours yourself. put them down in blocks, dont even worry about the image itself just the main colours you see. judge whether the trees are green, or orange.
then take the colour picker across all those areas and studying what colour they really are and youll often be very suprised. (i took one image sometime back and did this. it was a sunset beach, i thought i saw blue, purple, green and red and yellow. but found the entire image was only red and yellow, nothing else at all.)
the colour picker isnt a crutch, so dont use it as one. just use it to reveal to you the true nature of what you think youre seeing..... if that last line makes any sense

btw, id suggest taking more then double the time on the next image. that way you can really take in the information you're seeing. or more over, dont time yourself at all. just know you should spend more time then you have and do it till you feel youve really understood the scene.

danmilligan gave me a great pointer on making a scene using the Three C's: Contrast, Clarity, Colour think of those while you study atmospheric perspective.

[Windmaker]

blinkythemouse: Thanks Colour isn't my strongpoint sooo yeah... I see what you mean. Now that you've mentioned it it seems obvious enough, so I'll try to keep that in mind. If you see any other problems with the studies I'll be glad if you point them out.

[DanJohnCox]

no problem wind! will do!

oh and gunderson, the trees in your first image. make sure youre drawing whats there, and not whats in your imagination. same as my suggestions to windmakers colours. what you ended up drawing was the equivalent of pine trees. try and make sure you follow those big shapes in the trees themselves. in fact, ignore what the object itself it and pretty much anything you think you know about it. your preconceived notions actually getting in the way at the moment. with these studies, draw PURELY what you see, nothing else.

this is a tricky concept, so dont feel bad if youre not getting right away.

and since im at it. rvd, those look simply great! but since i dont like pure praise, ill give a crit altho its minor stuff. the background in the first image could use some distancing in terms of its brightness. it doesnt feel quite as far as the source image. lightening the bottom section of it and adding more blue should fix that. and also adding more value range to the forground, ground in the second image. more detail can be useful in just the foreground to give that sense of space. mind you im just talking about the ground, the flower looks fine.

[Gundersen]

I think the idea of this concept is rather to learn how to use colour to make an atmospheric perspective, not only copy an image. As Form stated in the begining it didnt mather if it looked the same, more that we learned the rules of atmospheric perspective.
So i dont think its about drawing purely what you see, its about understanding the concept of perspective!

But thanks for critt

no problem wind! will do!

oh and gunderson, the trees in your first image. make sure youre drawing whats there, and not whats in your imagination. same as my suggestions to windmakers colours. what you ended up drawing was the equivalent of pine trees. try and make sure you follow those big shapes in the trees themselves. in fact, ignore what the object itself it and pretty much anything you think you know about it. your preconceived notions actually getting in the way at the moment. with these studies, draw PURELY what you see, nothing else.

this is a tricky concept, so dont feel bad if youre not getting right away.

and since im at it. rvd, those look simply great! but since i dont like pure praise, ill give a crit altho its minor stuff. the background in the first image could use some distancing in terms of its brightness. it doesnt feel quite as far as the source image. lightening the bottom section of it and adding more blue should fix that. and also adding more value range to the forground, ground in the second image. more detail can be useful in just the foreground to give that sense of space. mind you im just talking about the ground, the flower looks fine.

[Agustin Poratti]

Ok, here we go with the colour studies.

In both studies I observed how in the distance, colours would catch or mix up a lot more with the "atmosphere/sky" colour.



In study 1, I noticed colours in the distant mountain would become grayish, or desaturated. The shadows seemed to catch up a lot more sky/atmospheric blue compared to the shadows of the trees in the middle. Grass was a bitch to paint.



In study 2, I saw how in foregroudn, completely in shadow, everything bent towards that blueish tone, coming from the sky. I think palette comes into play, because all colours start to lose their "local" identity to become part of this... bleuish palette, and in their surroundings, colours make sense, but if you take them outside, it's rather confusing. Welcome to palette!. At mid-distance we had this beam of sunlight wich caused lit parts to come towards orange and shadows remained blueish, but somewhat desaturated because of the distance, thus creating that beautiful sense of depth... me guess. The white of some of the buildings was slightly yellowgreen bone white in light and some lilac in mids/shadow.
In the background, mountains cut against the bright white sky in some desaturated blue-gray tone, cause of distance and atmosphere's doing.

to complicate things more, in study 2 i tried to record my process, in case someone benefits. i was very paranoid about the blinking corners indicating active recording.



about the video, do notice:
-i'm not sure if that's a good way to start a study like this. my first studies of this kind.
-how at some given point, i throw a nice chunk of transparent blue in those shadows.
-i color pick a lot in MY OWN PAINTING, and always try to build up my palette
-at the end i flip canvas to refresh my sight, and decide to apply a quick "overlay" layer using some transparent pink/orange to create that sun beam effect
-after i stop the recording. i add two more brushstrokes to the street. i also notice the sky is a bit too pink.
-real time: 25 minutes.

btw, NICE studies all around, will comment on you guys later! this whole thing has taken up a lot of time to get posted up- gotta run!

[Gundersen]

Agustin nice video and nice post! Like you ideas and understand what you say, I seem to have some painting problems today, all turns out to SHIT, but the movie was inspireing so i will give it another try

[Gundersen]

Tried to force out some paintings, not the highest quality, sorry for that.

But as i painted i seem to nice several differences,
- sometimes there is a clear "blue" difference as you go deeper, The natural effect of Atmospheric perspectice. The Atmosphere ...
- There might only be "foggy" effect, aka that the colours get more greyish And nothing blueish ...
- The colours sometimes get darker in the background then the foreground..(this is strange)
- The foreground is most often the most detailed part, except some images where the foreground is all black and the 2nd foreground is the most detailed part.

For me there seems to be big variations in colour and how we see it when it comes to large Environment images. Both of the images are realy sketchy, but i guess it doesnt mather to much

Many people here have good points about the effect that can be noticed.




And a new one

[D.Labruyere]

Nice work Gundersen, watch your colors though. Things are often far less bright then you would expect. Besides that I think you should look at the sharpness of the edges in the photos. All things are almost just as sharp in the later 3 of your pictures. Edges in the distance often get less sharp, untill the point you can't see where the first thing end and the other thing start.

ok.. second try, with step by step

[Agustin Poratti]

ummmmm... i've been reading the thread and i think everyone's got interesting critiques, and i agree with most of what was said, so it'd be repeating the same... let's wait for Form's input, i guess

the picture with the flower, yeah, i think that's fog.

BTW! i wanted to bring this up in work 1, but couldn't, so here it is, what i was taught some time ago to deal with simple curves and the like in perspective:

[D.Labruyere]

Hey, never thought about using it in that way augustin. that's great!


ps. these things are fun so here is another one

[rvdtor]

thanks for the comments guys

gundersen i agree with what u said about the excercise being about undertanding colors to show perspective and not to copy the image exactly.

windmaker i like how kinda abstract your paintings look they give an overall impression of the image...could u perhaps post the original pictures that you used to reference the other ones from?

blinkythemouse yea they were kinda fast and the way i drew them was i drew the foreground picture first since it was the sharpest like the flower and the rock face then added the background after...tho i noticed in the flower picture the ground is almost as sharp as the flower. tho the fog made me kinda blur everything in the background.

Augustinevery very nice video and ur explanation of the color changes with atomsphere are very true. though i must say i like your process better. how u start with everything on like one layer and u outlines your shapes, blot out colors then bring out the details for the nearer parts. i do my outlines first but then focus only on the sharp objects that are closer, then on another layer do the backgrounds. these are the ones i neglect the most as you can see on the rocks as was said.

d.labruyere really good not too much focus on details and to me you nailed the colors. how long did u spend on it?

im gonna work on some more today and post them up when i get time cause i have class in about an hour.

[Gundersen]

Great work guys! Again a good movie

D.Labruyere Thanks for crit, yeah i can see in some pictures the colour tends to get brighter then they should be. Need to learn more on how to work up an image from bottom til top. But i am getting there at least

But lets do a kind of discussion thing guys, can everyone list 5 rules of Atmospheric perspective?

- The farther away the "bluer" it gets
- Foreground has the brightest colours and the darkes colours?
- The colours get less saturated the farther into the picture you go
-
-
....