Painters often use warm colours such as red, orange and yellow to bring things forward, and cool blues and greens to push them back. The trick copies what we see in nature, where distant hills look paler and bluer, and it creates depth on a flat surface.

Art technique

The story behind the card

The natural effect is called aerial or atmospheric perspective: the air between us and a distant object scatters blue light into our view, so faraway things lose contrast and shift towards blue. Roman wall painters already used it, as landscapes preserved at Pompeii show, and Leonardo da Vinci wrote about it and painted it into the misty blue landscape behind the Mona Lisa. In his Theory of Colours, published in 1810, the German writer Goethe described blue as a colour that seems to draw away from us, and yellow and red as lively colours that seem to advance. There is also an optical reason, called chromostereopsis: the lens of the eye focuses red and blue light slightly differently, so red shapes often seem to float in front of blue ones.

Türkçe oku

Ressamlar kırmızı, turuncu, sarı gibi sıcak renklerle nesneleri öne çeker; mavi ve yeşil gibi soğuk renklerle geriye iter. Bu yöntem doğadan gelir: Uzaktaki tepeler bize daha soluk ve mavimsi görünür. Böylece düz bir yüzeyde derinlik duygusu yaratılır.

Doğadaki bu etkiye hava perspektifi ya da renk perspektifi denir: Bizimle uzaktaki bir nesne arasındaki hava mavi ışığı saçar; bu yüzden uzaktaki şeyler netliğini yitirir ve maviye çalar. Romalı duvar ressamları bu etkiyi zaten kullanıyordu; Pompeii'de günümüze ulaşan manzara resimleri bunu gösterir. Leonardo da Vinci de onu yazılarında anlattı ve Mona Lisa'nın arkasındaki puslu, mavimsi manzarada uyguladı. Alman yazar Goethe, 1810'da yayımlanan Renk Kuramı'nda maviyi bizden uzaklaşıyormuş gibi görünen, sarı ile kırmızıyı ise canlı ve öne çıkan renkler olarak tanımladı. İşin bir de gözle ilgili yanı var: Göz merceği kırmızı ve mavi ışığı biraz farklı odaklar; bu yüzden kırmızı şekiller çoğu zaman mavilerin önünde duruyormuş gibi görünür. Bu yanılsamaya kromostereopsis denir.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Aerial perspective

Get the mobile app About our cards

Next card in the archiveThe English word 'decimate', now used to mean 'destroy most of', comes from a rare Roman army punishment: a unit found guilty of cowardice or mutiny drew lots, and one soldier in every ten was put to death by his comrades. The Latin decimus means 'tenth'.Read next →

Painters often use warm colours such as red, orange and yellow to bring things forward, and cool blues and greens to push them back. The trick copies what we see in nature, where distant hills look paler and bluer, and it creates depth on a flat surface.

The story behind the card

Sources and further reading

More on this subject

In 1723 Bach became director of music for the main churches of Leipzig. The job meant a cantata, a piece for choir, soloists and orchestra, for nearly 60 Sundays and feast days a year. In his first year he composed most of them new, week after week, alongside some reworked earlier pieces.

Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican between 1508 and 1512 standing on a tall wooden scaffold with his head tilted back, not lying down as is often imagined. The ceiling, about 35 by 14 metres, holds more than 300 figures.

In true fresco, the painter brushes pigment mixed only with water onto fresh, wet lime plaster. As the plaster dries, it reacts with the air and binds the colour into the wall itself, which is why frescoes can last for centuries.

Chiaroscuro, Italian for “light-dark”, is the use of strong contrast between light and shadow in a picture. Shading from light to dark makes figures look rounded and solid, and a bright patch set against darkness draws the eye and adds drama.

Negative space is the empty area around and between the subjects of an image. Artists and designers treat it as part of the composition: it gives the eye somewhere to rest, sharpens outlines and can even form hidden shapes of its own.