Beginning painters who tackle landscapes in the full bloom of summer often wind up with masses of green topped with other masses of green.
The subtleties of painting a summer landscape takes a discerning eye to pull out the variety of colors that lurk within a never-ending green expanse.
If you’re one of those challenged souls, try a fall landscape. There’s no subtlety with Mother Nature’s fall foliage.
As an added bonus, you may never need to touch a tube of green paint.
Fall Colors
The range of fall colors is widely varied and ranges mainly in the warm tones. From pale, straw-yellow to deep burgundy and the brightest orange imaginable, there’s lots of colors to add punch, definition and a sense of depth and realism to any landscape.
Strong fall colors can be overpowering and some landscapes are so spectacularly vivid, they look unnatural. You may wish to tone down the wow factor for a more natural, believable painting.
If you’re all about intense colors, go wild with your palette. No one will ever accuse you of being a timid painter.
Choosing Your Palette
There’s a temptation to use every bright tube of paint on your autumn palette. Yes, you’ll find a huge variety of colors in nature, but Mother Nature has had eons of experience putting them together in an appealing way.
If you use a wide variety of paints, you may have a problem with unity in your painting. It’s much easier to develop a cohesive palette using a small number of pigments and mixing the basics to achieve a wide color range.
A limited palette makes it easier to create a unified composition that flows and doesn’t jar the senses. If you’re more experienced with color theory and blending color, you may be successful in using a broad range of hues, but this does take practice and a discerning eye.
Stick with just a few basics to begin your palette. Choose a warm yellow, a warm red like Cadmium Red Medium, and a cool red like Alizarin Crimson. Add a bronzy color like Burnt Sienna. Yellow Ochre and Burnt Umber are also good choices to round out your foliage colors. Add a blue or two and you’re good to go.
If you’re a watercolorist, there’s no need to add white. If you’re working in oils or acrylics, you will want to keep a tube of white available.
Many artists shun pure black, as it tends to be a dead color. You’ll be able to achieve rich, velvety darks by blending Burnt Umber and Ultramarine Blue. Other black shades can be mixed by using Alizarin Crimson and Viridian Green or Vandyke Brown and Prussian Blue.
So, if you’re not happy with your current spring or summer-time landscapes, give a fall composition a try. You’ll have fun with all the potential colors, and you won’t be bogged down trying to delineate trees, bushes and fields with different tones of green.
