Painting on Location with Perspective
by Donald A. Jusko

Aerial and Four Point Lineal Perspective on Location
(en plein air)


This is me or you lining up a painting to an image sixty degrees wide on the horizon line.
The horizon line is your eye level. Directly above our canvas support is the bottom of our painting  image.
Painting a 60 degree image.

Aerial perspective on Concentric Rings
You are in the center.

Aerial perspective on Concentric Rings

I like to think of Ring#5 as a mile out, That's easy to remember, Ring#7 is actually a mile in distance away from you. The important thing is changing pigment color for your shadows and highlight colors again after one mile's distance. The distance between the ten concentric rings really starts to increase from there out. These are the values on a clear day at noon.

Ring 1, is about 10 yards (9.14 m) distance from you, you should first notice a value difference here, find some objects to mark this distance. Many objects in a row are nice. Within this first ring are the darkest dark shadows, not to be repeated again in any other ring. Magenta and Green make the darkest neutral shadows in the foreground.

Ring 2, 15 to 25 yards (13.70 to 22.86 m) away from you. The darkest shadows may be an ultramarine blue and burnt umber mix depending on the time of day.

Ring 3, is 25 to 55 yards (22.86 - 50.29 m) away from you. These color changes are obvious when you pick your colors at these distances.

Ring#4. Here starts the addition of a minimal portion of the split analogious Green and Purple color mixed 1:1.
Ring#5 is a little less than one mile in distance from you. The shadow and highlight colors are getting tints lighter with the added purple and green mix which makes a bluish distance color.
Ring#6, Ultramarine blue is added to the analogous purple and green mix.
Ring#7 is one mile out there.
Ring#8 is 20 to 50 miles away from you, there is not much color change between 20 and 50 miles.
Ring#9 The tint of ultramarine blue changes to cobalt blue.
Ring#10, is very far away, more than one hundred miles and the mountain colors are very close to the sky color.

The Aerial Palette for 10 Concentric Rings.
THIS CHART SHOWS 10 COLOR PROGRESSIONS OF LOCAL AND SHADOW COLORS
FROM THE FOREGROUND TO THE BACKGROUND AND SKY, PLUS WHITE.

Aerial Perspective Palette

Aerial Perspective Palette, hue to dark

All Ring 1 foreground noonday shadow colors change from a
Magenta-Green to Purple-Green shadow in the middle ground.
Change colors to a tint of Ult.Blue for the background.
Nine A/M morning shadows are a neutral dark mix of
Bt.Umber and Ult.Blue.

 
 

Click here for this palette 
and a color-in picture to download 
in a new window.

4 Point Lineal Perspective

The horizon line is 25 miles out at sea if you are 6-foot tall standing at sea level,  it's 200 miles out if you're on a 10,000 foot high mountain.
The pictures blue line is the horizon line around you in three 60 degree chunks.
The center section is the only undistorted section of the three.  It can be seen with both eyes at the same time.
This section should be the maximum and normal width of your landscape support.  The dimensions of this support would vary depending on how far away the support is away from you.
Each eye is aimed 30 degrees off center, each eye sees 120 degrees. The full visible horizon in front of you, including all of your peripheral vision of both eyes is 180 degrees.   For top accuracy use only one eye and keep your head in the same place and only use that center 60 degrees of overlapped vision.

 


I made another example drawing of the same bar tool


Here is the straight horizon line used in conjunction with the surrounding concentric ring horizon line. 

See how hard it is to relate the 90 degree angle of a box turned at this angle on a straight horizon, the straight horizon line would have to be a very long gentle curve.  It's simple on a concentric circle horizon line and the Horizon Bar Tool.


Every square object has a right and left vanishing point 90 degrees apart on the horizon line. This puts one of the vanishing points 30° out of any normal 60° painting.



90 degrees on the horizon line


90 degrees on the horizon line


The box is where your feet are, the horizon line is where your eye level is.


 

The Perspective of Water Reflections link

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edu., art: Paint anything in front of you with accurate colors. Use a new, different, color wheel and palette that matches the light and shadows with pigments.
 


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