Advancing with Watercolor Problems and Solutions: Creating Depth

Venice Italy - 2019

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“The Market Place, Venice”

Problem: Creating the illusion of depthCreating the illusion of depth in a painting is one of the fundamental things we do in

the visual arts. It is all based on illusion as we are working on a two dimensional surface trying to express the qualities of three dimensions, this is very often coupled with an expression of atmosphere. However, we have several tools at our disposal and the skillful artist uses these tools to enable the illusion of three dimensions. Many of the decisions are determined by the scene that the artist is re-creating but here are a few general guidelines that apply to working in an urban area or landscape.

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Perspective for artists

Perspective was first seen in the 14th century when an artist began to effectively portray buildings receding along lines of perspective into the distance. It has remained a valuable tool to those working in the field of architecture engineering and of course the visual arts. An understanding of a couple of concepts is helpful in getting started with perspective but beyond this short presentation there is a wealth of information available to anyone with a computer. One of the concepts that’s important for creating convincing perspective is the horizon line. You’ve heard me talk about this before as a means of understanding your relationship to the landscape. The next line is our eye level. Typically on flat ground our eye level is just above the horizon line. This helps us align elements in buildings such as windows, rooftops, awnings ect. See illustration 2 both of these lines are presumed -most often they are not visible - The second concept that is important in creating lines of recession is the concept of a vanishing point- this is a point - not visible but presumed - at which all lines converge in the far distance. It is used to plot the angle of any one line. See diagram 2 below. The understanding of these two ideas are all the painter needs to create an effective use of perspective in their buildings, once the concepts are put into practice is much easier to spot them in the natural world. The term perspective for artists simply means that we execute perspective by hand and I without any tools. And we estimate angles rather than Calculate them.

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This is a rough sketch of my motif done with the intent to show you - in perhaps an exaggerated form - how the painter works with perspective.

None of these lines are drawn with a ruler which should be immediately noticeable...I feel this contributes to the quality of the piece rather than detracts from it.

The view is unusual in that we are looking down on our scene from the Guglie Bridge. This changes the typical view dramatically. The same guidelines are useful however in getting our bearings in the scene.

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The basic ideas of horizon line (red), eye level (blue), and vanishing points (green) will be used to understand the receding buildings and marketplace.

The BIG difference in this view, is our line of sight or eye level is much higher than if we are standing on level ground - our line of sight is almost level with the second story windows.

Let’s understand the building to the left and how our line of sight and the right most vanishing point help us to describe the receding building.

This ines in red describe the lines that the rooftops and windows lie on - the lines in green

are the lines that the awnings and road lie on- notice 2 important things they become steeper as they rise above our line of sight. Also as they move below our line of sight...these imagined lines create the receding feeling of a building moving back in the picture.

Hard and soft edges

As objects receded to the distance some transformations happen, one that asks us to think on watercolor technique is that the edges of objects become softer. This occurs because of the distortion given to any object existing in the atmosphere. Since this atmosphere contains some moisture in it the edges of the object are softened as they recede. If it is very hazy and humid the exaggeration is exaggerated. We achieve soft edges in watercolor by working with the paper while still wet. it’s not an easy technique but very effective in creating soft receding edges

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Repeated shape

Shapes which are repeated in nature diminish in size as they recede into the distance... notice how the widows, awnings, and figures shrink as they move towards the horizon - this is what I mean by shapes diminishing as they reseed to the distance. Perspective is coupled with this idea to help align receding objects on buildings.

With figures this becomes important to portray your relationship to the figures. In today’s scene we are observing from an altitude,, The height of the bridge. In essence we are looking down onto the scene and our eye level is quite high. See the diagram

In this case figures diminish as they move back into the painting and they rise as well-this is different than if we were standing on level ground where figures would remain at the same height but would diminish in size

Warm and cool

Color to has properties that cause warm Hughes to feel as though they are coming forward, where is cool are used tend to receive-when use together you can create a strong fact in your painting by balancing and contradicting warm colors.

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Another useful idea is showing how repeated shapes dinminish in size as they move back in the picture

Windows - redAwnings - BluePeople - pink recede as they move away

into the picture.

Additional ThoughtsThough we can understand perspective through lines and points our painting is created

through Washes and brush strokes. These strokes and washes trump accuracy and we still endeavor to create our painting with lively brush work and a painterly quality no mater what we are painting. A well painted building will always look more alive than a overly accurate building...

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