Aerial perspective creates a sense of distance and depth. As objects recede into the background, they appear higher, smaller, simpler and often more blue. Clouds also most often follow the rules of aerial perspective, with the clouds farthest from you closest to the horizon and smaller than those up close.
Aerial perspective most often is seen in natural landscapes as opposed to the perspective of the linear environments of cities and towns. There are few straight lines in nature (though rivers, streams and roads do follow the basic linear perspective). Use a combination of both linear and aerial perspectives to make your landscapes ring true.
Arches hot-pressed watercolor paper
blue, brown and ochre hues of your choice
black wax-based colored pencil, tissues
This little sketch is from one of my favorite resource photos of the end of a small road where my friend Alice lived. To begin, use a wax-based colored pencil in black to explore the values and the basic composition and to consider how to handle the problems of perspective.
Lay in the preliminary colors in the sky and background trees, keeping these areas simple and more blue with distance. Paint the sky and the farthest hills partially wet-into-wet, mixing in the lid or a small palette just as you would a normal watercolor wash. Blot out the light clouds with a tissue.
Where the landforms overlap in the distance, leave one row pale and simple. Add more detail to the next rank of hills, including some green fields. In actuality, the broad Missouri River nestles between those two planes, though it is too far away to see. Begin to lay in the color for the bare winter fields, using a variety of warm ochres and browns, and add the first linear shapes in the muddy gravel road.
Here, add the rough pencil marks that stand in for the bare forest to the left of the road. Pay attention to perspective here, too, in your handling of color and in how closely or simply you apply the pencil to the more distant rank of trees. Add the distant evergreens and the bare winter trees beyond the field on the right. Use your cooler colors in the farthest landforms.
ALICE’S ROAD
Watercolor pencil on Arches hot-pressed watercolor paper
7" × 10" (18cm × 25cm)
Blend the woods and add the shapes of the leafless trees within the larger shape, making the closer tree darker and more detailed than the ones a bit farther from the viewer. Use a number of things to suggest the receding distance—the blue hills, the narrowing road, the simpler trees on the middle ground hills, the increasingly simple shapes of the weeds in the ditch to the right as they recede into the background, the fence posts that become smaller and higher and the muddy lines in the gravel road. I couldn’t resist adding the turkey vulture that hovered over the field, looking for sustenance.