Atmospheric perspective is a technique that is tremendously useful for creating the illusion
of depth in your drawings or your paintings. Let's take a look at how atmospheric perspective
works, and why we see things this way in the world around us.
[music playing] Welcome back to Mr. New's Art Class. It's wonderful to see your smiling faces today!
In this video, I'll be showing you a timelapse of a myself painting a practice slash demonstration
of the atmospheric perspective concept. If there are other art topics that you want to
learn about, leave a comment down below. I'd love to help you grow!
At the end of this video, I'll be showing you a commissioned painting that I recently
finished, which uses this concept of atmospheric perspective. Stick around and watch the whole
video, so that you don't miss it!
The canvas you're looking at here is a practice canvas, sized at 8 by 10 inches. I've used
this canvas for several other practice sessions, and I just keep covering over it with gesso
every time I want to practice a different concept. So it already has about ten or twenty
layers of paint underneath this one...
But that's not why you're watching this video. You want to know about atmospheric perspective.
Which is what I'm practicing right here!
Atmospheric perspective refers to the way that the atmosphere diffuses light - or scatters
light - which causes distant objects to appear more gray and dull.
Take a look at this icy mountain landscape that I found on unsplash dot com. If you aren't
familiar with Unsplash, it is a website which offers high-quality photos that are free for
any use, which is super helpful for avoiding copyright problems.
You can see here that the mountains in the foreground have really bright whites as well
as really dark blacks. These areas have a high level of detail and contrast. However,
the more distant peaks in the background are more of a mid-tone gray. The highlights aren't
as bright, and the shadows aren't as dark. THIS is atmospheric perspective in action,
in the real world.
Now take a look at this lunar landscape that was taken by Apollo astronauts. You can see
that the distant craters have virtually the same level of detail as the ones closer to
us. Why don't we see atmospheric perspective on the moon? Because there isn't an atmosphere
on the moon!
Here, back on earth, we see atmospheric perspective because of the way that light interacts with
air molecules, bouncing around a lot. It's just like fog, except to a much lesser extent.
If you're looking into fog, the atmospheric perspective is amplified drastically because
there are more molecules in the air for the light to bounce off of. The same is true for
dust or for air pollution.
So back to the practice painting here... I made this practice because I had a client
request a simple silhouette cityscape, and I wanted to test out some color schemes to
see what they look like.
Notice that, for each color-themed section of this city skyline, I'm mixing up a base
color first. Then, I'm mixing both white and black - which together make gray - into that
base color. This helps make colors in the distant buildings more dull and pale. Once
I have all the colors mixed up, I paint from the background to the foreground.
As you saw from the landscape photos, this atmospheric perspective concept is something
that we don't just see in cities with tall buildings. We see it everywhere around us,
as long as there is a large distance between us and things that we're looking at. But here,
as an artist, I can exaggerate that effect in order to create an even more pronounced
illusion of depth on my flat canvas.
As promised, here is a photo of my recent commissioned painting. I normally put a much
larger amount of detail into commissioned artwork, but this client wanted something
really simple in her living room. She wanted colors that would accent the space, but she
didn't want the painting to overpower the room.
Notice how this painting uses atmospheric perspective, rather than a vanishing point,
to create the illusion of depth. To create the color for the distant buildings, I mixed
the burnt-orange color of the roadway with different amounts of the pale blue sky color.
Because blue and orange are opposites on the color wheel, they neutralize each other when
mixed. That makes the background buildings a pale, muted, brownish orange, which gives
the feeling that the city is tremendously large, and those buildings are much further
away.
I hope that you were able to learn something from me today. If you did, click the like
button to let me know. And, leave a comment below to let me know whether or not this was
helpful. I'd love to have your feedback!
If you haven't already done so, subscribe for new video content twice a week. I release
beginner art tutorials like this one every Thursday, where we talk about all sorts of
different art topics - from how to hold a pencil, to understanding color theory, and
more! And if you're more of a doodler, I release Zentangle tutorials every Sunday.
And as always, if you're trying any of these techniques and you get frustrated or have
trouble getting it to turn out just right, remember that you don't have to be THE best
- just do YOUR best.