How to Use Color Paint to Add Depth and Width
With a simple paintbrush and a few well-chosen colors, a skilled artist can turn a flat canvas into a virtual portal, revealing a world as three-dimensional in appearance as the actual world around you. By establishing directional light and shadows relative to the light source, objects take on a three-dimensional quality. Likewise, objects that recede into the distance become softer and less saturated in color than objects in the foreground. In this way, color is used to establish a sense of depth and breadth.
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Things You'll Need
- Set of acrylic paints
- Paintbrushes (small, medium, and large)
- Glass jar with water
- Palette
- Canvas board or stretched canvas
- Easel (optional)
Instructions
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1
Dip your medium-sized paintbrush in grass-green paint, then paint a horizontal line across the bottom third of the canvas, from the left to the right. The line should curve upward toward the middle and then bend back down at the sides.
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2
Paint the canvas that falls below the line you painted in step 1 with grass-green paint. You have just painted a rolling hill.
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3
Clean your medium-sized paintbrush, then dip it in dark green paint. Paint a tall, green triangle on your canvas, just above the green rolling hill. This is the body of a pine tree.
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4
Dip your small paintbrush in brown paint and paint a brown rectangle protruding from the bottom of the triangle, centered below the triangle. This is the trunk of the pine tree.
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5
Dip your medium-sized paintbrush in white and mix the white paint into the grass-green paint. Dip the same paintbrush in light blue paint. Pick up only a small amount of light blue paint, and mix the blue paint with the new, lighter shade of grass green. This will create a softer, mistier shade of grass-green.
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6
Place the paintbrush with the misty shade of grass-green onto the canvas just above the top center of the rolling hill. Paint a misty grass-green line that rises in the background and curves to the left or right and runs off the canvas. You are painting the line of a hill that rises in the background. You are using a misty grass-green paint because objects become murky and less bright as they recede into the distance.
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7
Paint the area beneath the line you just painted, filling it in until you reach the darker green of the hill in front of it.
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8
Dip your large paintbrush in blue paint, then apply the blue paint in horizontal strokes from left to right starting at the top of the painting. As you move downward, gradually mix white paint with the blue of the sky so that the sky becomes lighter as it moves toward the horizon.
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9
Dip the medium-sized paintbrush in a little yellow and a little white, then mix the two colors on your brush into some of the dark green paint you used for the pine tree. Apply the lighter green paint to the side of the pine tree that faces your light-source--whereever you imagine that light source to be. Use short, downward strokes along the contours of the tree to suggest the texture of pine needles.
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10
Clean the medium-sized paintbrush, then dip it in dark blue (picking up only a little paint on the brush) and mix it into the remaining dark green paint. This will create a darker green to be used for shadows on the tree opposite the light source. Apply the darker green paint to the side of the pine tree that faces away from your light source. Use short downward strokes along the contours of the tree to suggest the texture of pine needles.
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11
Paint a circle of the same dark green paint on the ground, to the side of the tree opposite the light source. For example, if the light source is on the right, the circle will be on the ground beneath the tree, and to the left slightly.
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Tips & Warnings
The scene painted in these steps is only an example of the way that depth and width are established with the use of color. The same rules--that light and shadow establish the breadth and girth of an object, while saturation of colors establish distance--can be applied to any painting at any time.
