CREATING A DISTANT LOOKING BACKGROUND

FROM THIS: 

TO THIS:

The first photo is one taken by artist Bonnie Sitter, from Paint My Photo. The challenge was to create a distant background that still reflects all the beautiful fall colors.

I have to admit that I drew this picture loosely and quickly. Not sure if you can see the sketch that well, but I placed the barn first where I wanted it; then I sketched the large shapes of foreground and background--the hill in front of the barn; the grassy area in front of the hill; the valley line; the tree line of the closer trees behind the barn; and then some areas of the distance.

To do the distant background, you need to follow the rules of aerial perspective.

Objects in the distance are:

1. cooler in color  2. more muted or neutralized in color 3. have less detail 4. are not as hard edged

First I wet the background, damp but not puddly. I chose sap green, lemon yellow; burnt orange; and violet to mute the yellows.  I first put in the yellows, then dropped some oranges in. When I was happy with the yellows, I dropped in greens that had been  muted with some violet. Even the yellows have a tiny bit of violet to mute the color just a tad.

You want the paper to be wet enough to keep the paint flowing, but dry enough that it isl more controlled.

I let all that dry before taking the next step. I wet the entire midground that is just behind the barn. I did the same procedure as before, but my paint is more concentrated and has no blue or purple added. I again began with yellows, then oranges, getting those patterns in first. Then I began to drop in greens. The green is a combination of Hookers and apatite genuine. Dry it.

Next I painted the valley behind the barn. It's a pretty flat neutral color, so I used a combination of yellow ochre and green.

I painted in the hill in front of the barn with stronger yellow ochre and some greens. Then I painted the barn itself. I just used neutral tint. I applied it under the eaves and used a stiff flat brush to pull it down, dry brush method, to make the boards appear. In areas that got too wet, I scratched in verticle lines with a credit card.

 I painted in the door and some small barn details. Then I worked on the trees around the barn and some foreground trees on the hill.

 

 I was completely unhappy with the mushy mess in the foreground. So I brushed in some grasses and put more detail in the trees in the foreground. I spattered some darks in foreground trees and barn. Then I carefully spattered some white gouache mixed with ochre over the grasses, using a toothbrush for finer spatter. 

I felt like I lost some of the yellows in the background, so I added some on the right and behind the barn roof. I added a little dark shadow underneath the windows and behind the little tree on the right of the barn to make it stand out a bit. 

Looking at it again, I may have to add more dark greens in the background, but I'm pretty happy with it as is.  And my main intent was to create a muted background that still looked like colorful trees, so I think I accomplished that.