Saturday Night Painting

I painted this 8x10 Saturday night. My usual Saturday nights are consumed with study time for Sunday School at my church. Yeah, I know...some of you preachers will say, "Don't wait until Saturday to do your study!" But, I'm not one of those fortunate enough to be able to study as a full time job. So, my study takes place in my spare time. This past Saturday night, I was able to enjoy some painting time since Evang. Michael Grant would be teaching for me on Sunday.

This painting was painted from a photograph of somewhere in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, NC. Can you believe I never touched a tube of black paint in this scene? All the darks are painted with ultramarine blue and burnt umber. These tones were saved for my foreground while mostly cool colors were used in the background to give some atmospheric perspective. When painting scenes in the woods, it's hard to get any kind of perspective unless you use atmospheric perspective.

What is atmospheric perspective? In a nutshell, it's using color and value to give the illusion distance. The farther away something is, the cooler and lighter the color. The closer it is, the warmer and possibly darker the color. I say "possibly" because not every tree's natural color is dark brown or black.