For those of you who have followed the blogs on Geometric Perspective and the Atmospheric Perspective , just read along. For others who are not familiar with the previous blogs, my advise is to review them first.

As spring descended on Edmonton, during my walk along the Whitemud road, I stopped by the Ramsay point lookout and peered across the never ending vista of West Edmonton across the winding North Saskatchewan river. The lookout is perched several meters above the river providing a view of the Oleskiw plains that stretches for miles.

This view is what paintings are made of. I snapped a few photographs of the land mass. (fig 1)

Figure 1 North Saskatchewan River surrounding the Oleskiw plains

While admiring the view and making a mental note of how I was going to paint the scene, turning my gaze a bit to the left,I noticed the sky above the adjoining Terwillegar park. Nature had provided me with a perfect composition of the clouds in the sky that created a stunning “S” shaped composition (fig 2). This cloud formation, If married to the land mass in fig 1, would result in a terrific painting. A few more picture of the clouds and I headed home all excited.

Figure 2 Clouds Over The Terwillegar Park.

At home, with the magic of image manipulation software, the computer and the photographs, I managed to cut out the sky from fig 1 and substitute the sky from fig 2 , coming up with a composite image.

Sky cut off from figure 1

Sky of figure 2 , “married” to land mass of figure 1

This combination gives a tremendous sense of depth to the picture. The shapes and the sizes of the clouds getting smaller in size, decreased in contrast and detail as they extend from the zenith to the horizon creates an illusion of depth (geometric perspective). The colour of the sky altering from deep blue to turquoise and then to vary pale blue from the zenith to the horizon also augments the sense of distance (atmospheric perspective). All I now had to do was provide some atmospheric perspective to the land mass by making the far edge of the land mass have less contrast, make the edges of the objects fuzzy and the colours less vibrant. I also decided to use my artistic licence to eliminate the buildings at the far edge.

The finished painting “Sky Over Terwillegar Park”

See The Painting On The Website

In summary, the principles of both the geometric and atmospheric perspectives have beed utilized to provided sense of depth or distance and a three dimension look to a two dimensional image. Hope you enjoyed it.

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