In reality, both background and foreground objects in a scene have hard edges on their contours. The background objects won’t get any softer, no matter how far away they are. We never give this any thought because the brain has its own mechanism of determining that something is further back in comparison to another object. The field depth is never questioned. Three-dimensional perception in reality is never compromised.
However, if you paint those contours exactly as they are in reality (with hard edges), this can result in flat, hard edges all over the painting and a scene that looks two-dimensional. The trick here is to convey a three-dimensional scene on a two-dimensional surface.
Blurring edges, also known as softening edges, is an efficient method you can use to fool the viewer’s brain into seeing background objects as further away, creating depth and the illusion of three dimensions in a painting.
Another advantage of softening edges is that it simulates the eye’s peripheral vision, as well as detracting viewers from getting “stuck” in certain areas of a paintings.
Remember—the secret is to paint the way the eye anatomically sees, not how the reference photo looks!
The blurred edges in the furthest plane convey the illusion of depth. As a general recommendation, blur as many edges as you can in backgrounds, especially if they appear behind buildings.
In this piece, I decided that adding too many bulrushes in the foreground would be distracting, so I just indicated a few as visual pointers.
In reality, you could easily distinguish which parts of a tree recede and which parts are closer to you. As soon as a photo is taken, however, the three-dimensional perception is nullified because all the foliage ends up looking hard edged. If painted this way, the foliage will look pasted on. Instead, render trees like portraits, softening edges of leaves and branches the same way you would do when painting hair at the back of a subject’s head.
Can you distinguish the different planes of those trees? Truthfully, the tree on the left is in front of the other trees, separated by at least fifty yards. If you just paint what you see, you will lose field depth.
Because of the play of soft edges vs. hard edges, the tree looks round and you can tell which parts are closer to you. This is referred to as lost-and-found edges. The foliage against the sky has soft edges as well as hard edges. The soft areas convey the leaves in that cluster are more distant, while the harder edged leaves indicate they are closer.
Avoid unnecessary branches that are too distracting, especially at the top of trees. Your viewers are supposed to look in the middle area without feeling somebody is waving at them from another part of the painting. This helps to agree with the out-of-focus peripheral portion of the eye. The tree on the right has just enough tree trunks to avoid a “cotton ball” aspect.
The hard-edged tree conveys the idea it is closer than the soft-edged tree, which is situated in a more distant plane. Wet-on-wet watercolor application allows for great edge diffusion.
The back wall has fewer grooves than the front portion. The roof tiles are reduced at the far top corner. (The naked eye would not see all the tiles at the same time.) The indentations in the adobe bricks become less distinct higher up.
Pros of Plein Air Painting
Cons of Plein Air Painting
Making people, animals and other landscape subjects appear as though they are moving in a painting and not just posing can be one of the greatest challenges for beginning artists. How do you create the illusion that water is falling, or that a horse is trotting?
Try this experiment: Wave your hand in front of your face. Do you see that the crevices at the back of your hand are no longer noticeable? The same concept applies for creating the look of motion in a painting.
For example, when a photo is taken of falling water, the shutter stays open for a fraction of a second. This ends up “freezing” the water, making it appear it is suspended in midair. However, the brain does not take still photos, so water would never appear this way. It would be blurred. If an artist copied a waterfall exactly from a photo, then the viewer would sense something isn’t right.
The best way to convey a sense of movement is to blur things like moving water so they lose definition. Likewise, smudge the legs of animals and people that are in motion. In the latter case, don’t add any facial features and place the subjects well within the middle ground. Merge the bottom part of their figures into the wet paint more than the rest of the body. Just allow for a silhouette of the legs. Create the “V” shape of distant birds, then smudge their forms.
The camera shutter opened and closed in a fraction of a second. The water appears frozen in time. This is not a natural way we see water moving.