“We’ll stop here”, called my ski instructor and boy was I glad to hear those words. After two hours of focused skiing, whizzing here, whizzing there, committing to the downhill ski and such like, my brain was numb and my legs were reduced to a quivering jellied mass!

“It’s important to stop and look at the mountains”, Franz said. “Enjoy the view. You’re in a beautiful place”.

And indeed we were. From the upper slopes of the Snowy Mountains one can see forever.

The lyrics of the jazz standard; “On a Clear Day” bubbled up to my consciousness. 

“On a clear day rise and look around you….etc.  

A trip to the mountains would be a valuable experience for any artist. The concept of colour perspective becomes very obvious when faced with the grand panoramas of the Snowy Mountains. Any season is good but probably a misty Spring-morning is best to demonstrate the principles of colour perspective because the air is laden with moisture and denser.    

Objects further away appear less colourful than those close to you. That is because your eyes are seeing them through a larger mass of atmosphere.  So when painting landscapes for example it’s important to cut down on the colour intensity for objects further away to give your painting a feeling of “depth”. This is known as “colour perspective”.  

A simple but effective exercise to demonstrate colour perspective is to draw in some mountain outlines as in the illustration, mix four

identical colours (say bluey-green) on your palette and then add a small amount of white to the second, a bit more to the third and even more white to the fourth.

Then paint in the closest mountain with the pure colour, the second with the second mixture, the third with the third and the fourth and most distant mountain with the mixture containing the most added white. 

Hey presto! Colour perspective.  

And speaking of white, watch out for the next ART ZONE when I ask some local artists about how they paint snow.   

ART ZONE can be seen in colour by visiting www.pauldion.com  “Articles and News.”