Morning light and late-day/evening light both tend to appear warm, strong and angled, creating dramatic contrasts between light and shadow. There is, however, a slight difference in color temperature between these two opposite times of day.

Landscapes that contain multiple tall, thin foreground elements such as trees can often cause artists to fall into the trap of creating overly rigid edges, resulting in a painting that has the appearance of stiff “cut-out-and-pasted” subject matter.

An enormous amount of light is illuminated from the sky during daylight hours, sometimes even on cloudy days. Artists often fall into the trap of painting only colors we initially perceive about the sky or see in a photograph, which never fully captures the intense light. But learning how to understand color relationships in the sky can allow you to capture a much more dramatic sense of light above the landscape.

Greenery in the landscape tends to pose a challenge to many artists, especially during summer months in certain locations where green foliage is prominent. A strong understanding of color temperature will allow you to more effectively create color variety and drama, and capture a genuine effect of light and shadow on the landscape, while still allowing green foliage to appear green to the viewer.

Since water can be highly reflective in the landscape, it often appears like a mirror, reflecting what’s above it or at the water’s edge. But disturbances that cause movement on the water’s surface can make it tricky to paint.

As with all shadows in the landscape, capturing accurate values for shadows in a snow scene can be challenging, especially when working from reference photos. Since there are additional reflective qualities that come into play when painting snow, important visual adjustments must be made in order to create a genuine sense of light and shadow. You may find it helpful to first complete the earlier lesson on Shadows, which pertains to shadows in a mostly green landscape, as it covers many basic principles about shadows in general, and technical tips on adjusting reference photos.

Shadows in the landscape are best observed outside on location, where you can see values more accurately. But when working in the studio from photos, which significantly darken shadow values, there are some helpful tools and general concepts to be learned for various landscape situations.

Rocks provide an ideal painting subject for the landscape artist, offering a plethora of textures and multifaceted surfaces for capturing a variety of light and shadow effects. Plus, they can be almost any shape or size, without appearing unnatural, allowing the artist to shape them as needed to accommodate a strong composition.

Setting up shapes and edges for trees in the landscape can vary depending on the type of tree and the season. This particular lesson will focus on deciduous trees with full “summertime” leaf foliage. Edges for this type of tree are handled differently than a leafless tree, or sparsely foliated tree, or certain pine trees (covered in separate lessons).

Learning to “key” your values enables you to portray very specific lighting scenarios in the landscape. By setting up your initial value structure as high-key, low-key or middle-key, you can skew your value range to one end of the value scale or the other, or evenly disperse it throughout the value scale, depending on the desired lighting scenario. It’s an important skill that puts you in control of the light in your landscape.