The Artist's Road Painting the World's Beautiful Places

The Trout Stream                                  Oil                                  John F. Carlson

    One of the clearest ways for artists to understand and simplify the complexity of a landscape was explained by John F. Carlson in his book originally published in 1929, Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting. It remains an excellent and lucid guide for contemporary plein air landscape artists. We refer to it often and use it as a critical tool in teaching our own students.

    Carlson wrote, “In landscape painting the thing that is of importance to artistic expression is the ‘landscape sense,’ a sense that makes us feel the weight of the mountain, feel the float of a cloud, feel the rhythmic reach of a tree, the hardness of a stone.”

    It can be a difficult proposition to experience the sense of the landscape and to then translate that sense into a painting. Part of this translation involves the ability to simplify the landscape into its essences. Seeing in terms of shapes and colors and suppressing our learned need to identify in words what we are seeing is an important first step in breaking down the landscape into manageable elements. The “squint” technique is one of the best for seeing the masses of different values in the landscape, but something more is needed if we are to paint them reliably. That something more is Carlson's simple system of values.

The Big Four

    It is helpful to understand some important and consistent principles that inform the values in a landscape. An understanding of what Carlson calls “the four prime planes of the landscape” will help the artist to be authentic to the scene he or she is experiencing and ultimately to be able to add his or her artistry to a painting beyond what may be literally seen in the landscape. (There are, of course, variations and exceptions to these principles, but they hold true most generally and by understanding the principles, it becomes easier to understand the variations and exceptions as well.)

Carlson's Four Prime Value Planes

    It’s a simple theory, but one that forms a strong foundation beneath any landscape painting - the arch of the sky is the plane from which the source of light is coming. That light is most directly hitting the flat plane of the ground below it.
Objects which stand vertically (such as trees) are receiving the least direct light from above. And those objects with slanting planes (mountains, etc.) are receiving more light than the direct verticals and less than the horizontals. The less light an object receives, the darker it will be in value. Using this theory, Carlson simplifies the landscape into four distinct values: light, dark, half-light and half-dark.

    One of the best ways to put the theory to practice is to do a monochromatic value study, using only one color in four distinct values. This exercise teaches the eye to “see” in values and provides an informative under-painting that can be used for later adding color. Matching the value of each color to the value established in the monochromatic study further educates the eye.

  1. The source of light, the sky, is almost always the lightest value, even under overcast conditions, but keep in mind that a clear blue sky will tend to be darker in value than an overcast sky. Why? Because, as Carlson explains, the light coming from a clear sky is fully shining through to the landscape, as though the sky is a big piece of clear glass. On an overcast day, some of the light is trapped within the clouds, like light shining through frosted glass, thereby creating a lighter value than the blue of a clear-day sky.

  2. The second lightest, or half-light plane will be the horizontal plane, the ground.
Because it is lying flat to the light, it is receiving the most light of all the landscape features.  (Remember that this is a simplification of the landscape and that there are often modulations within the planes.) There may also be many different elements in this plane, of many different colors, but each of these colors will still be principally in the “half-light” range, receiving more light than the vertical and slanted plane elements. Mistakes are often made by beginners in painting ground plane details too darkly.

  3. Next is the half-dark slanting plane, receiving less light than the flat ground but more light than the vertical elements. This plane includes hills and low mountains. Again, the variety of angles within a hillside or low mountain will receive different amounts of light, but the general theory will hold true. Because of the mass of these elements of the landscape, the artist will need to take into account the “local color” of the hills or mountains. A deep forested hillside will be darker in value than a light, stone mountain. This is also an area in which distance will affect value and the further away the mountains are in the composition, the lighter their value will become, as they recede in the mist of the atmosphere.

  4. The darkest value will be in the directly vertical elements, for example, the trees. There may be many highlights and shadows within these elements, but they will be within a range distinct to the dark values of this plane.

    This is a clear way of simplifying and understanding the masses of the landscape. With this understanding well in hand, it becomes a pleasure to add the variations, gradations and local color to each area. It also holds us to seeing the essences of the elements of the landscape first, avoiding becoming mired in too much detail.

              
        Evening Road               Oil                          JH              Fall in the Moraine           Oil                      JH

   Carlson's ideal four-plane value system is an essential tool for all plein air painters to understand, but the world rarely fits the ideal, in our experience. When that happens, we must be able to bend the rules a bit in our understanding of the actual values in front of us. The first step is to be able to actually recognize those values. To help with this, the second most essential tool for any painter's toolbox should be a viewfinder!

The ViewCatcher view finder

   This simple indispensable device makes quick work of sorting out the values and making accurate comparisons of these value planes. It also helps in analyzing the slight variations in value within the same plane, and keeps you from getting off track. Without a viewfinder of some sort, the task can be very much more difficult.

    Here are some of the most common variations and exceptions to Carlson’s principles:

    Light hits the landscape at a much lower angle at sunrise and sunset. We also found this to be true even in the height of daylight at more northern latitudes where the sun is never truly directly overhead. This can bring the brightest light to bear on surfaces that are not directly flat, but more angled to meet the light.

    The local color of man-made objects, such as houses, may make them be brighter on their vertical plane than the landscape would be.

    The bright light foliage of early spring and the brilliant golden foliage of autumn may pick up light and trump the light of the flat ground plane.

                
        Cottonwoods III              WC                      JH                  New Snow                Oil                           JH

          

          Snow Shadows II                WC               JH                  Inner Light                   WC                    JH

    Snow creates the unusual condition of sometimes making the ground lighter than the sky. It can be exciting and challenging to paint snow paintings with this unique reversal.

    Shadows are particularly challenging. A shadow cast from a vertical element onto the horizontal plane will usually be lighter than the vertical element casting it. This counter-intuitive happening is because the shadow is exposed to the cool reflected light from the sky. The shadow is also being cast on the local color of the flat plane. The closer the shadow is to the object casting it, the less influence the cool reflected light will have on it and it will become warmer and darker.

    The atmosphere also plays a role in the changing colors of the landscape as it recedes into the distance, adding a bluer cast and lighter value the further the distance is. There are other atmospheric effects to consider when looking around for good subject material. One of our favorites is fog or mist as it begins to rise and burn away in the morning light. This effect is most common in early fall or spring, when cool nights give way to warm days. These misty veils capture light like a gauzy curtain and raise the local value of the landscape, especially the normally dark verticals. The obscuring mists create a sense of mystery as they also add depth to a landscape. We especially enjoy the nice color/value contrasts between the warm and cool portions of the light as the sunbeams stream through the overhead branches of large trees.

      

        Meadow Walk IV                oil                  JH              Meadow Walk                oil                         JH                                                        

Then there is the night.

   Nocturnes are nothing short of a joy to paint, and we strongly urge those who have not given this a try to do so without delay. Nothing sharpens up our value perception like painting at night, and the big secret is that It is not difficult! At night, there are far fewer values to cope with and details are reduced to simple masses. The entire picture is usually restricted to a few low-key tones, and contrary to what one might imagine, there are rich colors in those darks! I rarely use much black except to tone, or reduce the chroma of another color.  The real trick is to develop lovely color variations within our darks and use those slight value changes to create depth of field.

      
      Moon Walk                 Pastel                  JH               Moonlight, January           Pastel              JH

    Once these simple concepts are mastered, the artist can begin to enjoy the vast differences in the same landscape during different lighting conditions. On a bright and cloudless day, the contrast between the four values of light, half-light, dark and half-dark will be great. On a gray or misty day, there will be much less variance between the four values. With practice, you will not only develop a discerning and sensitive eye for subtle value changes, but also increase the speed with which you can hit the right color and value each time. Technical things that once were a struggle become intuitive, and once that happens, the real joy of painting will open up to you.

    We highly recommend Carlson’s Guide for further study. The principles he discusses remain as clear and relevant today as they did in 1929.

About John F. Carlson

   From Wikipedia:  John Fabian Carlson was born in Kolsebo in Västervik Municipality, Kalmar County, in Småland, Sweden. The Carlson family immigrated to the United States in 1884, making their home in Buffalo, New York. Carlson attended evening art classes at the Art Students League of Buffalo, New York. There Carlson received instruction from Lucius Wolcott Hitchcock (1868-1942), a former pupil at the Académie Colarossi in Paris and the Art Students League of New York. Carlson won a scholarship in 1903 or 1904 to study with Lovell Birge Harrison at the Byrdcliffe Colony in Woodstock, New York.

   Carlson began exhibiting work in such national shows as the annual of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1905. From this period on, he maintained an active exhibition schedule and submitted works in a variety of media, though with particular success in watercolor and oil. In 1906, the Art Students League Summer School awarded Carlson his third scholarship to study Landscape painting. Carlson became a specialist in winter scenes and received an appointment as assistant director of Woodstock in 1908. In 1911, he won his first important award at the Swedish-American Exhibition in Chicago and when he was elected to Associate membership of the National Academy of Design. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed by the Art Students League to the directorship of the Woodstock School of Landscape Painting. In 1912, the Salmagundi Club presented him with the Vezin Prize for watercolors, as well as the first Isidor Prize. In the following year, Carlson won a silver medal from the Washington Society of Artists.

  Carlson won a silver medal at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition of 1915. He was presented with the Carnegie Prize and the Altman First Prize by the National Academy of Design in 1918, and, in the following year, he resigned his position as director of Woodstock School of Landscape Painting. In 1920, Carlson began teaching during the summer months at the Broadmoor Art Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Carlson founded the John F. Carlson School of Landscape Painting at Woodstock in 1922. Three years later, the artist was elected a full member of the National Academy of Design.

   In 1929, Carlson published an instructional book entitled Elementary Principles of Landscape Paintings. The book was reprinted in 1953, 1958, 1970 and 1973. More recent editions have been titled Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting.