Fog, the Great Flattener

 

12/7/21 Maple Leaf neighborhood

If you’ve studied classical drawing as I have, you know that much of the emphasis is on depicting form realistically. It’s all about observing and using light to give the impression of three dimensions on a flat picture plane. Even when thick clouds obscure the sun, you’re supposed to squint hard and try to see whatever shadows there might be to help you describe the forms.

Simple tools for a flat day.

On foggy days, I am always struck by how flat everything looks. Fog obscures light so uniformly that everything in the far and middle distances looks two-dimensional, and even the closest parts show only slightly varying shades of mid-gray. It’s also hard to resist giving distant trees more texture. In fact, I pulled out a blending stump to take away what little texture the side of my pencil point had made.

Two years ago I sketched the same scene in the fog from a slightly different angle.