Part 3 Project 4 Perspective Exercise 3 Aerial or Atmospheric Perspective

I started out this exercise by doing a liquid watercolor and watercolor pencil sketch of the scene from our lounge window across the roofs of the surrounding buildings. On completing this sketch, I realized that the building in the background were still not light enough to get a full feeling of infinite space. I did feel, however, that the detail of the foliage did manage to draw ones attention to the foreground. Your eye tends to travel around the quadrilateral formed by the coconuts the palm in the foreground, the palm in the middle ground and the darker building in the background.

I have always marveled at the tonal variations that the Chinese literati managed to achieve in their intricate landscape paintings. Although they did not follow the Western conventions of perspective, they achieve infinitesimal landscapes using aerial perspective. “The painting combines in a wonderful way grandeur of conception, serenity of mood, sensitivity in the handling of distance through subtle grades of ink tone, and a human dimension in the delicate details of village life…” (China Online Museum, n.d.) Their use of washes of ink, using handmade, natural hair brushes to maximize the textural quality of the ink application, is truly inspirational.

Fig 1. Guo Xi. Old Trees, Level Distance ca.1080

Referring back to works of Guo Xi, such as Old Trees, Level Distance ca.1080, I spent some time experimenting with brushstrokes, particularly trying to get brushstrokes that would suggest vegetation layers and clouds (fig.1). (Xi, 1080) The Chinese literati painters tended to just suggest clouds and mist by the omission of any ink. What I found difficult that to get a soft line which was cloudlike; it seemed to help to paint with my brush on its side. However, the paintbrush absorbed more ink where it joins the staff, meaning that this area left a slightly darker ridge. I eventually tried to applying the tops of clouds with my brush upside. By doing so, the darker ridge was better placed. The funny thing was that whilst working on my final study, my paintbrush dropped onto my artwork, rolling across the page causing marks which were more wispy and cloudlike than I had managed to achieve. I then played around with this idea and eventually was able to add some faint touches into the clouds giving them a bit of form.

Photograph I took of the outer lying areas of Madrid.

In Old Trees, Level Distance ca. 1080, I saw that Guo Xi had created a general tonal description of his trees and rocks, but then he worked on top of this with a more detailed darker layer. I experimented with this in my sketchbook studies. I also tried to use my brush with only a limited amount ink on it in order to get the implied lines that literati painters often used in their interpretation of hillsides and rocky outcrops.

My final sketch in my sketchbook is of a Spanish village with its cathedral breaking the skyline (see Fig.1). Ironically, as far as I remember, I took this photograph from the Madrid Palace in the glory days of the building bubble, when Spain had a thriving building industry. The buildings under construction line the middle ground. I feel that this sketch has started to have a better sense of depth with my use of interspersing darker and lighter bands of hillside. I was able to get my cathedral to stand apart by its position in the lower left-hand corner of the composition, set apart by being the lightest building in the scene.

Sketchbook study 1

Sketchbook study of ink application

Sketchbook study of clouds

Sketchbook study of aerial perspective

To further this study, I went on to draw an A3 ink study of this same scene. I had previously discovered that my three different bottles of black ink each create a different intensity of black. So I used the more brownie-black ink in the far distant space, sky, and base color for my foreground bushes. I used the Pelican black ink for my middle ground and the darkest detail as it is a more intense, pure black.

Sketchbook study of scene

It always amazes me how different papers react to ink. So when I started working with my 180 g/m² thicker grade, I had to adjust my handling of the ink. This paper was far more absorbent than my sketchbook paper, resulting in it being harder to create the subtle transitions of one strip of hillside on top of the next. I also discovered that once I place the ink, there is no going back and blotting it to make it lighter. The ink gets absorbed and is there regardless of how you try to tweak it. This was different from my previous experience with working with wet-on-wet application techniques previously.

Once I had applied all of my layers, I had to go back and rework the cathedral in a number of different ways. I had to try to draw more attention to it by darkening the surrounding area and lightening the dome. The dome itself needed correcting, as it was too squat for a traditional orthodox cathedral dome. I did these corrections using liquid white and black watercolor on top of the original roof shape and surrounding buildings. I also lightened the balconies in the building to the left of the cathedral to prevent them from drawing your eye away from the focal point, the cathedral.

Unlike my previous landscapes studies which have at times taken a long time, this ink painting was more spontaneous and I completed it within a few hours. Previous to doing this art course, I was not in the habit of doing sketchbook studies before embarking on a work. I now see the benefit of practicing beforehand. It means that you iron out the technical issues, such as perspective, composition, the media you will use, and method of application, meaning that once you start your final study, you are freer to be expressive and enjoy responding to what the artwork actually requires to pull it together.

Final Aerial Perspective study

Works Cited

China Online Museum, n.d. Chinese Painting. [Online]
Available at: http://www.comuseum.com/painting/landscape-painting/
[Accessed 5 March 2016].

Xi, G., 1080. Old Trees, Level Distance, ca. 1080. [Art] (Metropolitan Museum of Art NY). Available at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Guo_Xi._Old_Trees,_Level_Distance,_ca._1080._Handscroll,_34,9x104,8._Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art_N-Y.jpg [Accessed 5 March 2016].