“Tactile Perspective” in Landscape Painting: Using Paint Texture to Help Suggest Depth

One of the many things landscape painters strive for is a sense of space. They want to convey some measure of the depth and grandeur experienced in the natural world. Of course, canvas and paper are flat, but one way painters defy that flatness and suggest an illusion of depth is with perspective. There are three types of artistic perspective: atmospheric perspective, linear perspective, and a third type that many painters are not as familiar with, tactile perspective.

Before we explore this special type of perspective, let’s have a quick review of atmospheric and linear perspective.

Atmospheric Perspective

Atmospheric perspective (also called aerial perspective) works with color and value. As forms recede farther into the distance, value contrasts are reduced and there is a noticeable shift toward blue and/or violet. Details soften and colors become lighter. Because atmospheric perspective is such a recognizable effect, when we use it in our paintings, it is an extremely reliable way to suggest depth and space.

Linear Perspective

Nothing defies the flatness of the picture plane and conveys an illusion of depth more directly than linear perspective. As lines converge toward a vanishing point in the distance, they create the illusion of movement back into space. The eye, following these diagonals, is drawn through the window that frames our composition. In Pathway to the Canal, the diagonals and lines of perspective in the lower right are so steep that they are nearly vertical. On the left side, there is a sharp diagonal that pulls our eye back toward the vanishing point, which In this piece, lies at the top in the small body of water.

Tactile Perspective

Both painters and art lovers revel in the texture of paint. Paint texture, which may range from slight to full impasto, is an inescapable attribute of painting, as much a part of the painting process as color or composition. Tactile perspective works with this passion for mark-making, with the addition of a specific goal: it uses variations in the texture of the paint to help suggest near and far, to support the illusion of depth within the flat, two-dimensional surface of our painting.

It should be noted that tactile perspective is not a requirement of representational painting. There are many wonderful paintings in which the texture of the paint is very smooth, with little to no texture at all. And there are many paintings that use a great deal of texture, equally loaded across the entire surface. These approaches have their own visual appeal, but they are not the same thing as tactile perspective. Tactile perspective specifically uses the texture of the paint to support the viewer’s perception of space. 

Bold and expressive brushwork characterizes all of Nagy’s work. In Gray Gravity, the amount of texture varies from foreground to background. We see the most texture in the rocks and the crest of the waterfall. The two large gray rocks in the mid-ground have less texture, and the gray sky in the background has the least texture of all. Nagy’s brushwork sets up a graduated range of textures, helping to imply a sense of near and far. 

See more of Tibory Nagy’s work at his website.

In Citadel, there are three different levels of texture. The most texture is assigned to the area I wanted to bring forward, the sunlit portion of the hilltown. The shadow side of the hilltown, on the right, gets some texture, but not as much as the part in sunlight. And finally, the distant hills and sky, farthest from the viewer, get the least texture of all.

For a full analysis of the painting process in Citadel, see the video Going for the Glow: Bagnoregio Painting with Full Studio Process.

Tactile Perspective, a Painterly Convention

Tactile perspective differs from atmospheric and linear perspective in one significant way. Atmospheric and linear perspective work in our paintings as they do in real life. Colors and values really do get lighter and bluer as they recede into space. Roads or railroad tracks really do track back into space along lines of perspective. Tactile perspective, however, doesn’t have a visual correlate in nature. We don’t actually see thick brushstrokes in foreground grasses or globs of paint on the rocks. Tactile perspective is strictly a painterly convention. Rocks have a different texture than leaves, and leaves have a different texture than clouds, but tactile perspective is not about replicating the textures of the natural world. It’s about using the tactility of the paint as a visual cue to support the illusion of depth.

Tactile Perspective and Edges

Tactile perspective works hand in hand with edges. Like tactile perspective, edges can also be an effective tool in spatial mapping. A sharp, hard edge heightens focus and makes the form to which it is attached appear to come forward. A softer, fuzzier edge has the opposite effect. In each of the works featured in this post, edges work alongside the paint texture. Edges are sharper in the foreground and softer in the background. 

For more on “Edges,” see page 150 in Landscape Painting: Essential Concepts and Techniques for Plein Air and Studio Practice.

If you are a painter who likes and enjoys using paint, as most do, then tactile perspective is a technique worth exploring. Not only does it support the suggestion of space and depth, it also adds more variation to the paint surface, which makes the painting more interesting overall.

See more examples at my Tactile Perspective Pinterest board.

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A note on terminology: Although tactile perspective is a widely used technique, the term itself is not. If you do a Google search on “tactile perspective,” you won’t find specific references to it, at least not in the way I am describing it in this post. You may find references to tactile perception or discussions of “tactility” in general, but not with the words “tactile” and “perspective” paired together. I am not sure when I first heard the term; I suspect it was in college. The term was apt, and it stuck. I have yet to find a better descriptor.