Among the most defining qualities of the landscape is atmosphere—a magical veil of varying color and density that alters our perception of the world. Green poplars are bathed in a fiery orange of sunset … color and form dissolve behind a dense fog … and distant hills give way to blue and violet hues. These are all effects of the “envelope of light”.
The Impressionists first used the term to describe not just the effect of sunlight on form, but how the very color and density of the atmosphere between the viewer and the form could unify the light. One doesn’t have to be an Impressionist to appreciate atmosphere and the “envelope” as one of the key conveyers of the illusion of light.
Three principles govern the envelope of light in a painting:
• analogous harmony
• reduced tonal range
• atmospheric perspective
Analogous harmony: unifying the light
One of the most powerful strategies for unifying light is analogous harmony. Analogous harmony describes the relatedness or compatibility of colors adjacent to each other on the color wheel. Red and orange, for example, are as familial as any two colors can be and, therefore, innately harmonious.
Analogous harmony is one type of harmony. Many colors can form a pleasing arrangement that we might call harmonious, but not all harmonies necessarily unify the color of the light. However, since landscape begs for a unified light, analogous harmony should definitely be included in the landscape painter’s toolbox of color strategies.
The degree to which an analogous set of colors asserts a unified light can be expressed this way: the more closely knit the analogous harmony, the more unified the light appears.
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| Analogous harmony December, Mitchell Albala, oil on panel, 12 x 16. This painting creates a closely knit red-orange-yellow analogy, infusing the painting with a dense, warm light. This painting also demonstrates that analogous relationships do not have to be absolutely strict to still be effective. Colors outside the analogy can be introduced without breaking down the harmony. In this case, I added small touches of phtahlo blue and green in the sky and water. Even the green shares much of the yellow present in the rest of the painting. |
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| Analogous harmony Orcas Squall, Mitchell Albala, oil on panel, 20 x 16.5, 2006. To capture the unified light so present in cloudscapes, I used a fairly controlled analogous harmony, staying in the blue green family. The blue of the sky is tied to the blue-green cloud mass becasue of the blue component they share. The blue that gives way to turquoise at the bottom has a strong yellow component, a hue that is present in large amounts in the cloud mass. Even the dull purple in the lower left corner, semingly the most disparate color in the set, contains a blue component |
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Mitchell Albala, Cascade Dusk, oil on canvas, 20 x 38, 2000.
If the colors within an analogous scheme are extremely close, then the maximum colored light is achieved. Cascade Dusk is essentially a one-hue analogy—blue. As a result, there is a palpable sense that everything in the wooded hillside is drenched in a blue light. Color changes are achieved largely with value differences and temperature shifts. The foreground snow is warmer than in blues in the distant trees. Only one color expands the analogy, the pale warm orange-green on the forward boughs of the trees.
