Thomas Schaller shares his approach to creating the illusion of depth and dimensionality in landscape paintings.
Click here to see this email on the web |  | Tuesday, December 6th, 2022 | | Secrets to Establishing Perspective and Depth | By Thomas Schaller | Share this article:     | I've been enthralled by drawing in perspective since I was about 6 years old, so I guess it's second nature to me. But I don't think that absolutely accurately drawn perspective in a work is either necessary or even desirable. In fact, works that are too precise can look forced, stiff, and mechanical.
|  | "Central Park — NYC" (watercolor, 14 x 20 in.)
| Perspective is just a tool that the painter can use if it helps tell the story at hand. All you really need to remember is that since you are drawing on a flat sheet of two-dimensional paper, perspective is just an illusion of the third dimension — depth. From there, it's common sense. If you consider two things of equal size, the one farther away will tend to look smaller than the one more near. And things that are at a distance tend to look less distinct than those that are closer to us. It can all become far more complex of course, but it really doesn't need to.
|  | "Piazza della Rotunda — Rome" (watercolor, 15 x 15 in.)
| — advertisement — |  | In my classes I teach that there are two primary ways of establishing perspective in a painting — the mathematical way of setting lines and vanishing points, and the more expressive and communicative way of layering three basic values. If areas of light, dark, and mid-tone are composed effectively, the illusion of depth and dimensionality appears almost as if by magic.
|  | Value sketch and finished painting, "Cathedral of San Martino – Lucca, Italy," (watercolor, 20 x 14 in.)
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Join Thomas Schaller this Thursday (December 8) at 2 p.m. EST for a special live conversation about Accessing Your Imagination and other great advice. | — advertisement — |  | A Round Trip to Appalachia | By Kelly Kane | "I started this piece alongside my painting buddy Spencer Meagher at Georgia's Amicalola Falls State Park during the 2022 Olmsted Plein Air Invitational," says Jeff Williams. "An 8 1/2-mile approach trail runs from the park to Springer Mountain, the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. It was Easter Sunday, so the crowds around the falls got pretty big, and I only finished the painting about half way before we had to move on. |  | "Amicalola Falls" (watercolor, 10 x 8 in.)
| "In late September I returned to the Appalachian Mountains, abound with creeks and rivers to paint in the shade, for the Bath County Plein Air Festival in westernVirginia. Working from reference photos, I finished Amicalola Falls just prior to the event, and it made the journey east with me."
|  | JEFF WILLIAMS (seated next to Spencer Meagher above) makes his home in Stillwater, Oklahoma, but travels frequently to participate in plein air events. | — advertisement — |  | | |
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