"Atmosphere is an incredibly important element when taking on the job of painting landscapes. Atmosphere is not just the way the sky looks, but the way the surroundings appear. The sky is the vehicle for weather, and the weather affects everything it touches."Living in a part of the world where there's a lot of dramatic weather involving clouds and wind, it's not hard to see "atmosphere". But even in sunny locations, there's atmosphere. That stark intensity to the light, the glare of the sun that bleaches out color.
-- Lee Hammond, Big Book of Acrylic Painting page 58
Turner was great at painting atmosphere, both in oils and watercolor. Van Gogh, too, in a very different style.
• Book Review: Biography
• Turner Paintings in the Tate Britain Gallery
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Comments
That is what I have tried to suggest in my last painting I am going to submit just now about the “three colors”! The ambitious goal was to create the atmosphere thanks to cohence of tones of the whole painting through the limited palette, particularly, the atmosphere of the whole foreground (from the upper to the lower and from the left to the right sides of the canvas) that is to say …”just under all the flat surface of the canvas and so to try to suggest an atmospheric perspective instead of geometric one! If I have succeded? that ’s another story!