Transcripts
1. Introduction to the Class: [MUSIC] Hello, I'm Anne Kerr. I'm a professional
artist and a teacher. Welcome to my art studio. I've been teaching painting
and drawing for many, many years and I see the same two mistakes being
made over and over again, particularly in
landscape painting. In this class, I
will show you what these mistakes are and what
you can do about them. If we haven't met before, let me very quickly tell you something about myself
and my teaching. I work in many different
painting mediums, including pastel,
watercolor, ink, and oils. I've exhibited my work
in several countries, I've run painting holidays, radio programs, and had my
own picture framing company. I've written several e-books
on working with pastels, and I'm a regular contributor to art magazines and journals. I love to teach the
real basic techniques of painting and
drawing as I find so many people have
never been told some of the really essential
basic concepts. They rush too quickly into
producing a lovely picture without really understanding how that picture has been achieved. In this class, I
want to show you two mistakes that
many people make. They are mistakes
that if corrected, will immediately
move the quality of our work to a higher level. The two mistakes
we are going to be looking at are firstly, aerial perspective,
together with tonal values and how they are directly related when
it comes to our work. Secondly, I will show you the mistake that
people often make with aerial perspective
when they paint skies in the landscape painting. Although this class is
primarily aimed at beginners, it'll also act as a
gentle reminder of why some of our paintings just don't work when we expect them to. Your project at the end of
the class will be to produce a very simple little
painting that clearly demonstrates the concepts that we will have learned
in the class. However, as you don't yet
know what those concepts are, it makes much more sense
to give you the details of the project at the end of the class and not at this point. So that's what I shall do. Learning to paint and draw is no different to learning
any other skill. So if ever you
feel that it's too hard and things are not
just working out for you, always remember my motto, there is an artist in everyone. So, come with me and we'll explore
these things together. Are you ready? [MUSIC]
2. Aerial Perspective, What is it?: [MUSIC] I said in the introduction
that we will look at two mistakes that
many people make. The first mistake we're going to look at
is all to do with aerial or as it's sometimes called
atmospheric perspective. You might say, "What
on earth is that?" Well, let me explain that to
you in very simple terms. When we stand and
look at something between us and the
object we're looking at, maybe it's a range of hills, there are lots of little
particles in the atmosphere. Now these particles are
things like water droplets, bits of dust, bits of pollutant, and also scattered light rays. The light rays that gets
scattered are the blues and the violets because they have
the shortest wavelength. All these things floating
around in the atmosphere are causing a haze between us
and what we're looking at. But here in a landscape picture, you can see it quite clearly. Can you see that the middle
distance on the background, the bright colors that you've got in the
foreground are lost. Because this is
what's happening. All the particles between
us and what we're looking at are floating
around in the atmosphere. The further the distance between us and the
thing we're looking at, the more particles there
will be and therefore, the more indistinct the thing
in the distance will be. Something that's a
little closer to us, is a little more detailed and
then we've go less detail, less detail, and even less
detail in the background. The colors become cooler
and they become bluer. I'll put all these things up on the screen so you can refer
to them as we go along. If you look at the colors
in the foreground here where you've got strong greens and you've got bright greens, these trees are exactly the same as the trees
that are over here. If I got in my car and I drove around the headland
and I walked up to those trees that are
there they would look exactly like these trees. But because of all the
atmospheric pollutants and all the blue broken up light waves that are floating around in
the atmosphere, we lose all the lovely
intense color and we lose the strong edges
and we just have a blur. Just about make out
the trees there. But that's certainly not green like the ones in front of us. Would also notice that
the tonal values, which is the difference
between lights and darks. Here in the foreground, you've got really darks against lights, very strong contrast. But here the contrast
between the darks and the lights is actually very blurred and it's
not very strong. In fact, in the far distance, the contrast between
the lights and the darks is very weak. You can just about make out
the darks and the lights, but nothing like the strength between the darks and the
lights in the foreground. Before moving on, may I
suggest you go outside, find a place where you can
see things far away in the distance and look for the five aspects that
we listed namely, less detail, colors
appearing cooler, edges are softer,
shapes appear blurred, and the tonal contrast
or less obvious. In the next lesson, we'll see how all these concepts can affect our paintings. [MUSIC]
3. How These Concepts Affect our Paintings: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we'll look at the five
things we listed in the previous lesson
and see how they directly affect our paintings. You might think, well,
that's all very well. If we've got this
picture in front of us, all we've got to do is
copy it and we'll get it right. Yes, you will. But this is where
people make mistakes. If they have a
picture like this, now remember, the camera is
not always our best friend. What the camera does is the camera will put
everything into focus. Everything here is
in great detail. That's not how we see the world. If we're concentrating
on this tree, everything else around becomes
blurred to our vision, all we can see is
colored shapes. If we're looking at that tree, we certainly wouldn't see
all these leaves over here. If we were looking at
those leaves over there, this tree becomes a blur. So the mistake people make, when they want to paint
something like this is, as we did in this one, we just copied what we saw and
it worked out really well. But if we do the same
thing with this, and we copy exactly what we see, our painting is going
to be very flat. What do I mean by flat? It's going to have no
depth and distance. Well you might say, well, there isn't much depth
and distance there, that's quite close to you. But this is where we need
a bit of artistic license. Because to make a painting
look exciting and interesting, we need depth and distance. We need to introduce into this picture some of the things that are up
there on the screen. We need to introduce some cooler colors
in the background. We need to introduce some strong contrasts
in the foreground and weaker contrasts in the
middle distance and the far distance to give
our painting some depth. Now, I haven't actually painted
this particular picture. I just don't have time to
do that at the moment, but I have got a picture
here that I did a long time ago that's very similar. It's got trees and it's
got background and a path. Let's have a look at this
one to see what I've done. Now in this one, the photograph for this one
was very similar to this. Everything was green. The green in the background was exactly the same as the
green in the foreground. The contrast of the trees and the rocks was exactly the
same all over the painting. But what I did was, I made my background
trees very cool in color. In fact, these, you
can hardly see those. They're a sort of
a bluish color. As they come forward, I introduced a little
bit of cool green. Then as I came forward again, I introduced the strong, rich, intense colors with big contrast
between light and dark. Strong colors here
with big contrasts. But away in the distance, I reduce the contrast, I make the edges
light and fuzzy, and I make the colors cool. That makes the picture work. Had I copied exactly
what was on here, my painting would
be very flat and it wouldn't have any depth
or distance to it. Sometimes when you're
painting a picture, if you've got depth and distance already in your picture,
then you're fine. You can just copy it. But if you haven't got depth
and distance like this one, you need to invent it. You need to bring in some of those things that are
up on the screen. You don't necessarily have
to bring in all of them, but you need to bring
in a few of them to give your painting
some interest. Now because I only wanted
to do a restricted palette. What I've done with this one is I haven't introduced
any cool colors, which is one of the
things up on the screen. I haven't introduced cool
colors in the background, but I have introduced
everything else that's there. I've got soft edges, the tree trunks in the
background are very blurred, there's no detail
in them whatsoever. The tonal contrast
between the trees in the background and
the surrounding foliage, there's very little in the
way of contrast there. But here, look at the strong
contrast in the foreground. Look at the strong contrast here for the leaves
in the foreground. Look at the strong
contrast here, but not in the background. Apart from introducing
cool, greeny, bluey colors in the background, I have brought in everything else that's
up there on the screen. That's given my painting
some life and some interest, it's given it some depth. You don't have to bring in every one of the things
we've talked about, but as long as you
include most of them, your painting will work. We've discovered that there are five things to take into account
when painting a picture. Those things up there on the screen are the five
things we talked about. In the distance, things
appear smaller with less detail, colors
appear cooler, edges are softer,
shapes appear blurred, and tonal contrasts lessened. Now let's take one of those concepts and
look at it in detail. This concept is number 5, all about total contrasts or
tonal values, if you prefer. They mean the same thing. I'll see you in the next lesson. [MUSIC]
4. How to Get Your Tonal Values Right: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we will see how tonal
values can directly affect our work in order to
show depth and distance. Here's the painting. Yes, I know it does look dull
and boring, doesn't it? It's not exactly my best work. I did it this way deliberately. Now, what's missing
in this painting is what we call tonal values. Now tonal values are just another way of
saying lights and darks. Here is the color
that's being used in this particular painting,
just one color. These are all the
different tonal values of that particular color, right the way from
very dark up to light. Now if I had used all those different shades
within my painting, it would look much
more exciting. I did just that. There it is. Here are all
the different tonal values. Because I've used all of these tonal values in
this picture, it works. You've got very
soft muted colors in the background with
a little soft edges. You've got medium dark values in the middle ground and then you've got the strong contrast of the dark against the
light in the foreground. As long as you get
your tonal values correct in your paintings, whatever color scheme you
choose will work for you. Now when people rush into painting a whole painting with all the colors
in their box, they're so concentrating
on getting the features of the landscape
right and matching up colors and that sort
that they forget about their tonal values
or more likely, nobody has ever told them. Because it is the most
important thing in any painting or any drawing, is to get those lights against darks and those darks
against lights. Before you do a painting. What you really ought to do
is a little thumbnail sketch. Put your darks in, put your lights in, and then when you come
to do the painting, you're not going to
make any mistakes. Now this picture with
its strong tonal values, I could do that in any color
I liked and it would work. I played around on the
computer and look. I've produced it in green. I've done it in red, I've done it in blue and
every one of those work. I've never seen a landscape that color and I have never
seen a landscape that color, but because the tonal
values are right, the pictures will work. Going back to this one, I could use almost any color
scheme I like in there. Not just one color
like I did on here, but I could use lots
of colors in here. Providing I've got these
tonal values correct, the colors are not
that important. Your picture will
still work but get your tonal values in and you can almost use any
color you want to. We can now see how vitally
important tonal values are to show depth and distance so
the top paintings don't look flat
and uninteresting. In the next lesson, we'll look at how we can plan our paintings to make these
tonal values work for us. [MUSIC]
5. Planning Your Painting: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I want to explain that
when we plan a painting, we need to take into account which bits of the
painting we want to stand out and which bits are less important as far as tonal
values are concerned. Don't leave these
things to luck, they need to be
planned ahead of time. Planning a painting
is so important. To demonstrate the
planning process, I've done two little
mountain watercolors that I would like to show you. Because I wanted to
explain where you've got a dark shade against a
light shade or tone, if you like, it stands out. Here you've got light against
dark and it stands out. Dark against light,
it stands out. Light against dark,
it stands out. But where you've got all
the tones roughly the same, then they look flatter. They don't look so exciting, but that might be
what you want in that particular area
of the picture. But if you don't use those lights and darks
to your advantage, then your painting will
end up looking like this. Now what I wanted to do, I wanted to change the
backgrounds of these paintings over, so that you can see how it changes the whole
effect of the painting. Rather than chopping up
my little watercolors, what I did was I printed
them off on the computer, there they are, and
then I printed two more and I chopped those up. There's the second
version and there is the third version, or the second version of
that I should say. Now I'm going to change the
backgrounds of these two over and you can see how it
totally alters the picture. Feels like I'm
doing a card trick. Choose a card, any card, and the magic will appear. Well, maybe the
magic will appear. There we go. It completely
changes the picture. Can you see here where we've got dark against a light background, this really stands forward. But here where you've got the dark against the
dark background, you don't notice it very much. Likewise over here
where you've got the dark of the mountain
against the light of the sky. Here you've got the dark
of the mountain against a fairly dark sky and it just
doesn't show up as well. In areas where you don't
want huge contrasts, then you use roughly
the same tonal values. You would use roughly
the same in the middle. You wouldn't have the
big contrast between the light and the dark because the big contrast
between the light and the dark is where you
get your wow factor, light against dark and
dark against light. Hopefully, that's explained the absolute importance of getting these tonal values
correct in your paintings. Now that we realize the
importance of planning our pictures so that the
tonal values can work for us, in the next lesson, I want to show you
two easy ways to check that we've actually got
our tonal values correct. [MUSIC]
6. Checking Your Tonal Values: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I will show you two
easy ways to check that your tonal values are correct
when planning a painting. Planning a painting
is so important. What can we do to get
these values right? Well, if you wanted to
paint a picture like that, what you could do is put it onto the computer and print off a black and
white version of it. Then this black
and white version will give you all your
different tonal values, your darks, your mediums,
and your lights. Makes life so much easier
than trying to work it out from a full-color picture. This is where people go wrong. They look at the colors and they forget all about the tones. Something else that you can do is if you've got lots of
little photographs at home, little holiday pictures
or landscape photographs, something like that,
get hold of them. Take a piece of paper and just divide it
up into maybe four and then mix up a dark color
from your paintbox and mix it up into three or
four different values. Just the one color, mind you, just the one color. Then have a go at doing those little pictures
but the important thing is you only spend five minutes
on each of the pictures. Five minutes. It's just a little sketch and because you've had to
use only one color, you can choose the color. It doesn't have to be brown. You will find that you are
actually forced to use all those different
shades and it's a wonderful way of practicing
your tonal values. Do that time and
time and time again. Use a different color next time, maybe a deep blue or maybe Payne's gray or something like that but only one color. Five minutes on each picture and it won't be long
before you will be able to produce a
picture with all of the correct tones without
even thinking about it. We now know that the first of the two mistakes that
many people make when painting or drawing a
picture is not paying attention to the aerial
perspective or the tonal values, especially the details and
colors in the distance. In the next lesson, I'll show you the second
mistake that people make, which is all to do with aerial perspective when it
comes to painting the sky. [MUSIC]
7. Aerial Perspective in the Sky: [MUSIC] In this lesson I want to show you the
second mistake that people make in connection with
aerial perspective. It's all to do with
painting skies. Let me show you what I mean. You've painted a bit of land and you want to put in some sky. I see this happening
time and time again. I'm going to make the sky wet. [NOISE] Then I'm going to
drop in my lovely blue [NOISE] nice little blue wash going all the way
down [NOISE] There. We've got our lovely
cobalt blue sky. This is what I see people
doing over and over again. I'll take a piece of [NOISE] tissue paper and then
take out some clouds. [NOISE] Here we've got six clouds roughly the same size and almost
exactly evenly spaced. Painting and drawing is all
to do with observation. If people observe
clouds closely, they'll notice that the
clouds look like this. The clouds that
are nearest to us, which are the ones who are
directly above our head, are bigger than the ones that
are away in the distance. The clouds get smaller as
they go towards the horizon. If we ran across this field and we stood
underneath one of these clouds, it would probably look
as big as that one. But because we're looking
at it from a distance, it appears to be much
smaller than it really is. Painting clouds like
that is just not realistic because you've got no perspective here in the sky. But here you can clearly
see the perspective. Getting the perspective
wrong in the sky is such an easy mistake
to make and it can absolutely ruin
your painting. Next time you're out and about, look up at the sky
and see for yourself. Painting and drawing is
all about observation. In the next lesson,
I will give you the finer details of the
little project that I recommended and it will help to clarify all the
different concepts that we've learned in the class. [MUSIC]
8. Your project and Congratulations!: [MUSIC] Congratulations
on reaching the end of the class. I hope you can now see how vitally important it
is to pay attention to both aerial perspective and tonal values as they are
intrinsically linked. Let's quickly summarize
the main points. In the distance, things appear smaller
with less detail, colors appear cooler, edges are much softer and
shapes appear blurred, tonal contrasts or
tonal values lessen. Paintings and drawings are
all about lights and darks. A picture with only mid-tones, risks being flat and dull. Tone values create
visual interest and excitement in a painting. Now that we've discovered
the importance of aerial perspective
and tonal values, I can now give you
the finer details of the project that I've
planned for this class. Your project is to produce a very simple landscape picture using any medium you like; however, you must
only use one color. Your picture can be very simple, rather like an illustration, so that you can complete it fairly quickly, and remember, your aerial
perspective, especially if you decide to include clouds. Use good tonal values to
show depth and distance. You can either get ideas from reference photos or you could
just make something up. Then look at your painting
that's been done in one color and paint it again, but this time, use as
many colors as you like. Next, compare your two pictures. Does your colored picture
show as much depth and distance as the one
done in only one color? A good way to check this
would be to use a camera or a computer and turn both of your pictures to
black and white. This will clearly show if
you've got things right. Consider uploading your
work to the project section of this class so we can all
share what you've created. The easiest way would be to
put all four little pictures, the two in color and the
two in black and white, onto one sheet before
you upload them. It will also be interesting
to hear your comments about any mistakes you
may have made when painting your picture
in full color. Did you get your
tonal values correct? Or were you distracted
by the colors? I'm really looking forward
to seeing your projects. [MUSIC] I hope this class
has been helpful for you, and I look forward to
seeing you again very soon. In the meantime, always
remember my motto, everybody. There is an artist in everyone. Goodbye for now. [MUSIC]
Anne Kerr, "There's an artist in everyone"
