🎭Drama & Atmosphere In Art

Table of Contents

Art can take us to different places, make us feel lots of different feelings, and tell us stories that get stuck in our heads. One of the ways to achieve it is through a skillful manipulation of drama and atmosphere.

Drama draws us in and makes us feel the weight of the story. Atmosphere, on the other hand, creates a sense of place and mood.

But do you know how to implement each of these effects into your art? If not, this guide is definitely for you.

What are drama and atmosphere in art?

Let’s start by briefly defining the terms.

What is drama in art?

Drama in painting is all about creating excitement and tension. To achieve it, artists use things like strong contrasts of light and dark, dynamic compositions, and exaggerated forms to make the painting feel alive and full of energy.

Example: Judith Beheading Holofernes by Carravaggio

What is atmosphere in art?

With atmosphere, your goal is to create a mood. Atmospheric paintings can evoke a sense of peace or tranquility. It’s usually achieved with little value contrast and a skillful manipulation of hue and saturation.

Example: Impression, sunrise by Claude Monet

That’s for the theory. I think it’s relatively easy to spot the difference. When looking at Monet’s artwork, you feel the calm and serenity of the scene. On the other hand, Carraviaggio’s painting makes you feel the very strong emotions Judith must have experienced.

Of course, it’s partly because of the theme of both artworks. In the end, a revenge-driven woman cutting off a man’s head is endlessly a more intense depiction than a static water landscape. But what other factors make a painting more “drama” or “atmosphere”?

Painting for value vs painting for color

The mood of your painting depends on whether the main focus of your artwork is value or color.

It stems from an assumption that:

To access a wider range of values, we must limit the chroma in our image.
To represent a full range of color, we must limit the range of value.

It’s related to the nature of color. Extremely light and extremely dark-valued colors hold less hue identity than colors in the mid-value range.

So how to achieve value or color priority?

Value priority

HUE INTERACTION: whatever
VALUE CONTRAST: high
SATURATION: low

To paint for value, use the full range of values (from 1-2 to 9-10). The saturation in your artwork will be rather low, with more saturated accents. Value priority makes your paintings more dramatic.

Color priority

HUE INTERACTION: whatever
VALUE CONTRAST: low / medium
SATURATION: medium / high

To paint for color, keep the values in the midrange (approximately 3-7). Have the colors more saturated. Color priority makes your artwork more atmospheric.

(That’s color vs. value priority in a nutshell. If you wish to learn more about the value/color priority concept, check out these two resources:

Mitchell Albala, The Landscape Painter’s Workbook, Chapter 6: The Complete Color Strategy
Artists’ Master Series: Color and Light, Chapter Tints, Shades, and Tones

What Creates Drama & Atmosphere In Art? Table Comparison

Okay, now we know one of the ways to achieve drama or atmosphere is through painting for value or color. But there’s more to it – let’s analyze it through the table below.

What you’ll find in the table is nothing but a simplification. Remember, you don’t have (or maybe you even shouldn’t?) strictly stick to it. However, I hope it can help you better grasp the difference.

	DRAMA	ATMOSPHERE
Purpose	To create a sense of tension, excitement, or conflict	To create a sense of mood or place
Emotional impact	Evokes a range of emotions, from fear and suspense to awe and admiration	Evokes a sense of peace, tranquility, or mystery
Topic	Dramatic, story-driven scenes	Often landscapes
Composition	Dynamic	Static
Color	Don’t really care?	It’s super important!
Value	Strong value contrast & split (70:30 dark to light or vice versa)	Low value contrast
Saturation	Low	Medium / high
Light	Single source lighting (e.g. candle) Direct sunlight Golden hour	Diffused light Fog, blizzard Blue hour
For examples, google:	Chiaroscuro	Tonalism, impressionism

*In the “Light” row I listed times of the day/atmospheric conditions that favor creating dramatic or atmospheric paintings. For example, let’s suppose you create a scene with a single light source, like a candle. Since there’s only one light element and the rest of the artwork is covered in shadow, your painting automatically becomes more dramatic rather than atmospheric.