A Discussion On Backgrounds In Paintings By Goodnight-Melbourne On DeviantArt

A Discussion On Backgrounds In PaintingsJan 21, 201515 min read

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Add to FavouritesCommentBy Goodnight-MelbourneWatchPublished: Jan 21, 2015 107 Favourites17 Comments43.3K Views7 groups Traditional Art Week Background is called the matrix of a painting. Something that holds the foreground or main subject to our focus. Even though, we often neglect this stepping stone. And this element should be discussed separately because this the principle step that even comes before the composition sometimes. If you have nothing to hold it, what fate becomes of your precious creation? Before we analyze the elements of a background, we must understand what is background actually.Background is not a solid object or patch of colour which you must put behind your painting to support it. No. Background is the space that surrounds your painting. It is the only way with which your painting relates to the surrounding at the very first place. It is where your sight is tricked into distance.While we are talking about backgrounds, we should introduce the terms of positive and negative spaces. Positive space is simply the thing you are painting, where negative space is the space between the object and the rest of the scene. In an example, if you are painting a jug - the jug itself is a positive space, where the part of the wall that is being seen through the hole of jug's handle is negative space, which is a sole part of the background. Negative space is what shapes the object in focus, i.e. foreground object. But that does not mean background is negative space and vice versa. Background a is a bigger thing. Negative space is a part of it. Better said, a working hand.Negative Space Negative space gives a shape to your object. Think like, the space around the object is another object which you painted, resulting in the shaping of a hole in middle which you will fill with paints. If there is no background, you can not shape your object.You may think that if you just paint an object and introduce no background, where is the need of it? Well, you are drawing/painting on a surface which has a single colour, mostly white. Now your drawing on that surface can be simply explained as repainting the hole we mentioned before - the negative space and the hole it created has the same colour - so you can not distinguish them and hence you simply defined the edges with lines and recoloured, having the impression that there were never any background! It may sound brain-melting, but that is how it really is. Notice how the background is shaping the foreground. I mentioned in previous articles, there is no lines in reality. We use lines to define the edges - edges that are created at the point of two matters meeting or overlapping. The matter in the back gives the shape to the matter in the front. If they are indistinguishable for hues, lights or anything, then we introduce lines to define them. So you see, that no foreground can exist alone without a background.Back to the painting on a white background - is a plain bad choice. Specially for amateurs. Skilled and professional artists who has a clear and vast sense of contrasts and spaces, can paint on any surface. Not only you are making the background boring by a single patch of colour, also pushing your object into the background like the white is engulfing it instead of shaping it.Same with using other colours plain as background. They are boring as well, just they do not engulf your foreground. Also unrealistic and if put randomly, then a perfect painting destroyer. If we think and imagine - can an object have lights all over it equally, unless it is itself is emitting light? No, right? Same with the backgrounds. How can they be defined with just one patch of colour without any shades or values? There are differences of backgrounds, but for the sake of understanding, we can think it as the wall behind your object. If you use a one-sourced light, the wall will have its own shadowy and lightened part. Establishing that difference of light will only bring forth your foreground more prominently and with a sense of reality. So it is worth enough.The wall is a sole part of background in this particular painting. But it got its share of lights and shades. That's very important, because background is not just a supporting element. It's a missing piece of the puzzle. Without it, the painting will not be completed. Notice the light works in the background The importance of backgrounds can be realized very well while painting still lives. Because there we paint it as its simplest form - as another object. (This is the part where artists talk about 'the big picture'. Considering the entire subject as an object instead of putting details to individual things.). There we have not much visual trickery to imitate depth, not much gathering of many objects, and thus not much colours to confuse ourselves. Hence the wall behind the still life object is a perfect example of simple background.However, there is non-negligible space between the wall and the object but that as not as vast as in a landscape, and can be established easily. Now, what is our priority? The foreground of course. The background is the only way to shape it. So if we need to draw focus on the foreground, we need to work on the thing that shaped it. If you paint your background and foreground with same hue, there will be no contrast, hence no focus and no interest. You need to choose your background colour very wisely, analyzing what possibly can bring forth your prioritized object. It is like wearing the proper tie. For example, a neutral hue an define the the shape of your object in foreground very well because there is nothing to clash with. A light neutral for a darker background, or a dark neutral for a lighter background. The second one is the most practiced approach, as because dark tones defines things prominently without reflecting lights.[value studies]Darker background for lighter objects and lighter background for darker objects.To bring variety, one may choose the complementary colours to create a High contrast and draw focus that way. For example, a cerulean blue vases infront of a lemony yellow wall would come forward striking! Cerulean blue, Prussian blue, Phthalo blue and their kinds are stronger than yellow. One may use a stronger yellow for background like a Cadmium yellow or a darker yellow-earth like Yellow Ochre, but those strong blues will overpower them anyways - just using so much strong yellow will cause unnecessary disturbance in the painting. If you are painting fro real life, you need to organize your setup wisely, considering the object and the wall and the light etc. Similarly, a pale but contrasting background brings forth the darker and stronger foreground. As example : red foreground on a pale blue background.Here the entire light blue sky, which acts as the background and also complementary colour, supports the dark red foreground to just pop out! Some artists establish a highly decorated backgrounds with drapes and etc and place a simpler objects in foreground. Thus such objects creates an effect like isolated contrast. The viewer's eyes will go on the simpler object in a background with overly decorated items - creating a successful paintings. Another example that comes in my mind at once is Karen Budan's 'Reflections of Red'. I don't know any source form where I can copy the link of the work legally, so I can not show the example. Just Google it. It is a silverware in font of a decorated drape. Now, for landscapes or wherever the depth of space is too vast: where the background is established to to trick our sights into thinking of distance, the rules of background are different, slightly. In such case, the establishment of the background depends on the following elements -

• Perspective
• Hue
• Value
• Intensity of colour
• Placement of objects

Because these elements define depth. The background in an open space is like a missing piece of jigsaw puzzle. It has no exact position to be exact, but it must fit to your foreground to give it the complete look.Perspective: We have talked a lot about perspectives and there are a great deal of tutorials on deviantART to clear you the idea of perspective. So there is nothing new to tell about perspective. Only I must say, that you must treat perspective as a wire-frame model; and you need to put elements on it create depth. Along a perspective can not invoke the feeling of life, in this case realism.Hue: The distant objects often reflects as a different colour specially if the objects are white in real. Best example is a mountain. Mountains' tops are mostly snow covered and thus white. From a great distance, the lights reflects almost totally on a white surface and as that reflected light passes through various layers in our surround atmosphere, some parts of the lights are absorbed in those layers by dust particles, gas particles etc. At the end, the wavelength of the reflected light reaches our eyes, we see that colour that bears that wavelength. Mostly it is blue, because blue light scatters most than any other wavelengths of lights. That is why we see the sky blue and that is why we don't see the Sun blue! (Sun is the prime source of light at day time. Its blue lights scatter far away before reaching our eyes, where only red and yellow reaches our sight. Due to the scattering, the particles in air reflects it all around - for the reason we see the sky blue).Here we must talk about the various colours of the sky because when you see upward from the horizon, you will see the sky changing colours from dark red to red to yellow to slight greenish to blue and purple and darker and darker above that (because of the absence of dust particles above troposphere). Establishing these colours correctly will give the distant feeling of the sky like a dome that is covering us.Also the foreground should be warm coloured and as the distance increases, the background should be colder and colder in hues' temperature. Cooler hues give the feeling of distance.Values: The values decreases to light as far as the scene goes. The objects gets paler and paler until you can't see anything else anymore. By making the distant objects lighter in value will succeed you in creating the illusion of depth.Intensity: This one is similar to values. The nearest object will be more darker in tone, more saturated in hue; but as the distance grows, they tends to 'fade away', and thus the colour intensity decreases. Saturated and secondary colours degrades to less saturated hues and in primary colours.The Hue+value+Intensity creates a very real like imitation of depth and distance. The application of these three together is called Aerial Perspective. The Bridge At Narni, 1826, Jean-Baptiste Camille CorotExamples of Aerial perspective.[Artists' attribution is in embded html acronym tag.]Placement of objects: To depict depth, you must do some overlapping in the distant objects. This is actually depicting the narrow vision. Also the objects should be less and less detailed and textures as far as it goes than the nearer ones.And for the weight, if the scene is considered a 3D box, the bigger and heavier object will be far from the centre and the smaller will be closer to the centre, have the impression of exact opposite. i.e. Bigger will look smaller and smaller will look bigger, because sitting in foreground. The bigger is the object the more it should be overlapped by other objects and sit farthest. This does not only creates the sense of weight, but also the sense of distance. #Clouds While painting landscapes, most of the beginners paint all the clouds in same values and hues. Not only the clouds look flat, but they also look like they are floating in a same surface or layer marching one behind another. But in reality, the clouds are scattered here and there in the sky, going further away in distance. They are never on same surface. The funny thing with clouds is that, to define these depth and distances in clouds, all the above mentioned rules flip upside down. The rules are opposite for clouds. They gets darker and darker as far they go and lighter as near they come. Also the hues change intensity as they go further in distance. But the clouds that are so near you like they are almost above your eyes and thus missing the cone of your sight, will be darker again. This makes the clouds near about in the middle to be lightest.Famous painter John Constable was a master in cloud studies. He made numerous paintings to study the clouds.Harwich Lighthouse, 1820, John ConstableMatch the diagram with the painting above. Cloud Studies by John Constable

One last thing:

Detailing is a thing that clashes with background rules a lot. 'Normally', the background should have less details, but the artist can keep a great deal of details and also make the background contrasting with the foreground with proper placing of elements, and lights. 'Las Meninas' by Diego Velázquez is one of the most important paintings in Western art history. It shows how much details an artist can put while still having every other elements of composition precisely.Las Meninas, 1656, Diego Velázquez So treat the background with respect. It is the matrix of your painting. The womb where your painting may grow. Take care of it before everything and all will be well.Until Next Time.Happy painting. A Walkthrough in Monochrome PaintingsBasics Of Still Life PaintingA Discussion On Backgrounds In PaintingsA Brief Discussion About Tonal ContrastWhat Ruins A Painting?Beware of Green!A Brief Discussion On Limited PalettePainting With A Knife! (The Theory)---------------If you have found the articles helpful, head over to my Facebook page and show your appreciation.Thank you. traditionalartarticlebackgroundcloudsdiscussionpaintingperspectivetraditionalarttutorialprojecteducate © 2015 - 2026 Goodnight-MelbourneComments17anonymous's avatarJoin the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log InstephenshawartApr 12, 2016Hi, would you mind sharing in this in the landscape painting group? really helpfulReplyLoad moreJoin the world's largest art community. We use cookies to remember your site settings and preferences, as detailed in our Privacy Policy.Log InJoinorContinue with Google