Dark Woods, Edge Contrast, and Drawing on Glass
Why forest trees read dark, how white and black sharpen at borders, and the glass-pane method
The page explains why woods appear dark — their lower parts see no sky, and wild trees such as oak, beech, fir, cypress and pine are darker than olives and fruit trees — and how a thin veil of luminous air over a dark summit makes it read as a beautiful blue. It restates the edge-contrast rule, marked c and d: white looks most candid nearest black, and black darkest nearest white. It then opens Leonardo's practical method for the perspective of colors: fix a glass and your eye, draw a distant tree on the glass, and repeat at hundred-braccia intervals. Text only, headed PARTE.
On this page
Wild forest trees are darker than fruit trees
Wild plants of the woods are darker in themselves than domestic ones, and oaks, beeches, firs, cypresses and pines are much darker than olives and other fruit trees. Woods show their shrubs from below because their lower parts, strong and tall, see no sky and so stay dark.
Edge contrast of white and black (c, d)
Marked c and d, the rule states that the part of white nearest the boundary of black appears most candid, growing less white the farther it lies from the dark; and the part of black nearest the white appears most dark, growing less dark the farther it lies from the white.
Drawing distant trees on a fixed glass pane
To practice the perspective by which colors vary and fade, take things set in the countryside every hundred braccia. Fix a glass and your eye, draw the first tree on the glass in its shape, then move it sideways until the real tree almost meets your drawing.