Landscape and Nature Study
Domain 7: Landscape and Nature Study
This domain tests outdoor observation, depth cues and colour response in nature. Questions may ask you to explain atmospheric perspective, compose a landscape, or analyse how light changes across a day.
Composition and depth
Place the horizon deliberately - low for a big sky, high for foreground detail - and avoid a centred division. Use foreground, middle ground and background with overlap. Establish a focal area, often off-centre. A notan study reduces the scene to three values before colour. Atmospheric perspective makes distant forms lighter, cooler, lower in contrast and less detailed; nearby forms are darker, warmer and sharper.
Nature's structures
Trees have tapered trunks, branching that thins outward and leaf masses grouped into light and shadow, not individual leaves. Clouds have lit tops and shaded bases. Water reflects the sky and nearby objects; reflections are darker and broken by ripples. Grass and foliage need varied marks, not a single repeated stroke. Colour temperature shifts: sunlight warms highlights, shadows cool; distant greens lean blue-grey.
Worked example
Paint a tree in midday light. Block the trunk with a taper, add three branch groups, then mass foliage as a large shape with a lit top-right and a cool shadow side. Place a cast shadow on the ground opposite the sun. Reasoning: the tree reads as a volume first; leaf detail is added only at the focal edge.
Traps
Do not use one tube green everywhere; do not detail distant trees; do not ignore reflection colour; do not let the horizon cut the picture in half.