"Bucklerburn" 10.5 x 17" Oil on Linen by Richard Robinson
Resource photo of Bucklerburn River in Glenorchy, New Zealand.
Bring your scene to life with backlighting and a powerful glowing light effect.
The French (and expensive galleries) call this effect ‘Contre-jour’ lighting, or "against the light," which creates a striking and dramatic effect in landscape painting by positioning the primary light source behind the subject.
This backlighting technique results in several distinct visual characteristics:
Silhouettes and Strong Contrast The subject appears as a dark shape against a luminous background, often losing midtone details while retaining a crisp or softened edge, depending on atmospheric conditions.
Glowing Highlights The brightest areas often occur along the edges of objects, where light wraps around or diffuses through translucent elements like foliage, mist, or water.
Atmospheric Depth Backlighting enhances a sense of depth as distant elements become hazy and warm-toned due to the scattering of light, while foreground elements remain in shadow.
Color Shift and Muted Foreground Shadows in the foreground can take on cool or unexpected hues as they reflect ambient light, while the backlit sky often appears warmer and more vibrant.
Lens Effects and Diffusion Depending on moisture or dust in the air, contre-jour lighting can introduce a halo effect, sunbursts, or soft diffusion, lending a dreamy or ethereal quality to the scene.
For painters, contre-jour compositions demand careful value control to balance the high contrast, ensuring that the dark areas retain subtle variation and the brightest areas don’t become overly harsh. It’s a powerful tool for creating mood, mystery, and drama in a landscape.
I'll take you step by step through this whole process.
This demo for beginner to advanced painters is in oils but it's fine for acrylics too.
In just over 2 hours and you'll have a beautiful mountain river painting. Enjoy!
Just 5 steps
I’ll guide you all the way.
Designing for success
Nature doesn't always present herself in perfect compositions for painters, but this one's pretty close. I've enhanced the trees, shifted the mountains and simplified the stream for an easier lead-in. Having variety and all of your shapes is the key.
The base coat
Starting with a purplish grey we just add more and more pink as we get closer to the sun on the right. A little yellow is added at the extreme right as well. Then as we add the snow in shadow we add more pink to it as it moves to the right so that it too is part of that light effect.
The lights
Next we add the lights over the top of the base coat, making sure that all of the colours are a little lighter than that base coat and that they all have more and more pink added to them as we approach the sun. This is where you will really benefit from having mixed those first layer colours methodically and in an orderly fashion, left them on your pallete. We can then use those colours to work from to mix the colours for the lights.
The foreground
As we add the foreground colours we are careful to not make them too dark, like in the photo, and to add more colour into them in order to create a more colourful, light filled painting. We also need to make the colours here more warm and light on the right hand side and slightly cooler and darker on the left-hand side. This gives the effect of the warm light spilling across the whole scene, but being stronger on the right.
Finishing touches
A little thicker paint with more texture is employed in the foreground to help create the illusion of detail and to add depth by contrasting with the smoother background paint. A few crisp details are then added with a fine brush. And Voila!
I'll take you step by step through this whole rich process and you can choose which parts you'd like to try out in your own work.
“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
—Walt Disney
Enjoy!
Learn About
How to change the light in your scene
Techniques for expressive brushwork
Designing for success
The 4 step oil painting process
Tips for acrylics
Lots more!
Student Critiques
Mountain river, oil, canvas, 40 cm x 60 cm Artist: Elena Sokolova
Beautiful work, Elena. You’ve managed that gradual transition to warmer stronger light across the whole painting and managed to keep your brushwork expressive and bold at the same time. We can really sense the warmth in that light effect which was the whole point of this painting.
Just two things I’d like you to look at. The value of the greens on the mountains could be a little lighter and also more greyed. Lighter so that all the greens there are consistently lighter than the blue grey base layer, which is intended to be the darkest dark there. Greyer so that the mountain sits further back in the scene and doesn’t argue with the foreground greens.
Next just have a look at the sharp shapes you’ve made along the river’s edge and in the white water there. You’ve oversimplified those shapes and it looks less natural because of that. Always avoid our tendency to oversimplify and make patterns. Great job!
"Bucklerburn" Oils on canvas 10 1/2" x 17" Artist: Fay Thomson
Nice one, Fay! Those poplars are really glowing with light, a nice colour contrast against the slightly more purple mountains.
Note that if you’d used slightly lighter warmer greys in the darkest darks of the smaller trees in the mid ground they too would have more of a warmer glow about them. By using the same darkest dark there as in the foreground darks you’ve shortened that space between the foreground and the mid ground.
Nice organic brushwork in those areas. Also nice building of form in the mountains, particularly in the snow. Some of those darker greens are darker than the blue grey base colour and that needs to be avoided as that colour blue grey should be the darkest value in the mountains.
Bucklerburn Oil on Oil Paper
Artist: Geoffrey Geeson
Wow that's an interesting take on this, Geoffrey. With all that high value contrast and sharply defined form it's got a gaphic feel to it that's still organic. A beautiful cohesive style! Nicely done.
Bucklerburn - 11 x 16 Oil on Linen Canvas Pad. I enjoyed the "Disney" horse story!
Artist: Louise Villegas
Hi Louise, thanks I'm glad you liked the horse story - I think we can all do with a little more disney. I can see you've got a decent helping of it too. Vibrant colours and simplified forms here are creating a happy vibe and storybook feel. You've even got the sparkles in the water! Nice.
Hey just one thing I'd caution is to get that horizon line really straight and horizontal, oh and avoid repeating shapes like the rocks in the foreground which makes it look like it's man-made. Let your horse have adventures in wild places. :-)
Bucklerburn 9x12 Oil on canvas
Artist: Stephanie Tompkins
Hey Stephanie, you've really got a nice glowing effect happening with those big trees and I like the curvey characters you've given them. You've got big strong shapes going with enough details in their edges to avoid them being oversimplified, but within those spaces the painting will benefit from more detail, more variety. Give the viewer more information to look at and it will keep their interest for long, provide more value. That's all, happy painting!
Bucklerburn Oil on canvas
Artist: Nancy Newton
Hey Nancy that's really interesting what you've done there. :-) (No I don't mean that in a funny way). When I viewed that from a distance I thought 'Oh that's interesting!' because it looks like you've divided the mountains into 3 separate colour zones from blue to green to pink, which is weird, but interesting!
Zooming in larger I can see that it's born from the struggle to create that gradation from left to right towards the sun and it didn't quite work out, mainly because the central green area is too dark.
So, yes that could do with another attempt to get that skill nailed down, but meanwhile, on the other side of town, the foreground is great! Strong brushwork, bold contrast and interesting shapes. Nice!
Acrylic painting at "Bucklerburn" in Glenorchy, NZ
Artist: Eric Hillmer
Nice one, Eric, full of your lively style once again. Very vibrant colour in this one and interesting organic shapes. Love that energetic brushwork. You did make a glowing light effect too.
The price you pay for that punchy colour in the mountains and the strong darks back there unfiltered by atmosphere is a loss of depth in the painting. The same can be said for the dark trunks in the trees, which, however are interesting graphic counterpoints to the larger brushwork around it. So again, it's all about what you want to achieve in your painting and the choices you make to get you there.
Congratulations and thanks to everyone who entered a painting into the monthly workshop. Great work!
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