If you are new to landscape painting, avoid buildings and other man-made things. They are harder to paint. Your brushwork needs to be much more controlled, and you will probably need to step outside of my recommended colour palette.
Once you have done a painting or two, and are busting to include a picturesque building, follow these basic guidelines:
- One building or structure only
- Front on, or a flat view of the most interesting facade. Avoid, at least initially, having to apply perspective
- Wait for good light, preferably the warm light of evening. If the shadows are falling in an interesting way on your building, this will help to define its 3D shape without having to show the building in perspective.
:Buildings can be the main focus of your painting, or a supporting element. Let's look at some examples.
I was driving down Hokio Beach Road, and spied this wonderful old abandoned farmhouse. The light was no good, so I returned later, just as the sun was about to go down. The sun is setting to the left of the building, casting long shadows in the foreground, and nicely defining the shape of the building.
I made the house fairly small in the frame, because it was in the middle of nowhere, and under a big, evening sky. Of course that made it smaller, and quicker to paint, and I am, after all, lazy!
The viewpoint is totally front-on. Again this makes it easier to paint. I have let the shadows help define its 3D shape. Alot of artists do this, including good ones! I love the work of Grahame Sydney. Look him up.
Here is a typical New Zealand Memorial Hall. Front-on, warm light and good shadows.
This is not a building, but it is an interesting structure in Wellington Harbour. I was in my kayak and took heaps of photos of it. I chose this particular view because the composition looked best. However, I don't want to talk about composition. Too many art books devote whole chapters to it. The bottom line is, if you have a choice of different images of the same scene, just choose the one that looks best to you! Don't try to figure out why, forget the Rule of Thirds, the Golden Mean, or whatever. You like it? Paint it then.
Here is a structure - but this time we are in it. It is an observation post in a series of abandoned defensive structures around Wellington Harbour. The sunlight is slanting into the structure nicely. The strange silhouette above is a rusting steel beam. The flax was actually covering the whole scene behind, so I did a bit of virtual weeding to show my favorite hills.
Your buildings don't have to be beautiful or important.
Keep things as simple as you can. This is a small shop in Willis Street in Wellington. The signs on the verandah were time consuming to paint, and they required special (i.e. not my usual earthy) colours. The front windows were packed with many goodies, but these were in an area of deep shade, so I could simplfy them alot.
This is not a building, just a simple structure. It is a supporting element, rather than the main subject. This pier is simply just a few black and a few white lines. Note - it is not exactly painted in black, but a mixture of my two main colours - burnt umber and ultramarine blue - as are the rocks. The whole foreground is very effective as a simple silhouette.
Speaking of black, all of the paintings above, except this one, have no black in them. It is simply not needed in most landscapes.
Special Skills for Buildings and Structures
When you get around to painting man-made things, an essential skill is being able to paint straight lines. I will cover a technique called brush ruling in an up-coming post.
You will also need a little colour theory, and I will show you how to mix any colour from the subtractive primary colours. These are the extra, non earthy colours you will need to buy after your basic landscape palette of ultramarine, burnt umber, yellow ochre and raw sienna.
Sometimes a building might not be in the right place in your scene. If you can use photoshop, you can edit the scene before painting it. Move things around a little. Yes, this is cheating. Or maybe not. Some digital skills are obviously required here, which I will cover soon.
An understanding of perpective will help to cover up your cheating. This will also be covered in upcoming posts.
