How Light Moves Through A Landscape

If you are a landscape painter then one of the primary things you will be concerned about is showing how the light is moving through the scene. Trying to capture this light in your painting is a goal artists have sought since landscape painting began.

There are many aspects of understanding how light moves through a landscape and in the soon to be published course “The Definitive Guide To Landscape Painting” we will be exploring the topic of light in a lot more detail.

In this episode of Art Studio Chat though we starting at the very beginning with an understanding of light effects the different elements within a landscape scene.

First thing to understand is that the sky is the source of light in a landscape. So when you are designing your painting you will need to be thinking of the sky as one of your lightest values in a painting. Too many beginner painters paint the sky to dark which pushes all of the other values to go darker.

The next thing to understand is that in a landscape there are essentially three different planes on each element.

There are flat planes like a field for instance, or the back of a cow. There are planes on a slant like the side of a mountain. And there are vertical planes like a tree.

Generally a flat plane is a lighter value than a plane on a slant. The darkest values are usually the vertical planes.

If you keep these principles in mind and look at each element in a landscape and ask yourself what sort of plane it is, and therefore where does it fit on the values scale, then your landscape paintings will start to improve right away.

Watch the video above for more insight.