Landscape Painting

Landscape painting has been a choice among famous artists as well as among students and less well known artists for centuries. Many artists today creating landscape paintings work directly from nature, but others work from photographs when doing landscape painting.
In centuries past artists worked in the out-of-doors painting at the scene to create landscape paintings. The landscape painting of such artists as Monet and Van Gogh, representative of the Impressionist and post-impressionist periods, is evidenced in museums around the world.

The landscape painting of Van Gogh often depicted fields in blazing sunlight. One of the most famous landscape paintings of Monet, by contrast, is that of a snow scene. Artists of the past braved extreme weather during their landscape painting. Today artists can, if they choose work comfortably indoors from photographs or quick sketches made on site.

One reason why landscape painting is a popular genre is the variety of forms, colors and compositions to be found in nature. A single scene, painted at dawn, noon and evening, can create a number of lovely landscape paintings. Landscape painting can of course include
structures, animals and humans, challenging the artist beyond the creation of a simple landscape painting. Many early landscape artists included people, sometimes clothed, sometimes nude, in bucolic settings which sometimes also included animals.

Executing landscape paintings with watercolor can be effective particularly when wishing to show transparency of light. Landscape painting done with watercolor can be sharpened by the use of pen and ink to delineate or accent certain areas.

While early artists did landscape painting primarily with oil paints, today many artists choose to work with acrylics. This quick-drying medium has the advantage of hastening completion of a landscape painting under specific conditions. Because acrylics are water soluble they can be used in landscape painting either to create a fairly transparent effect or a landscape painting rich with texture.

A beginning artist, if choosing to concentrate on landscape painting might do well to begin with a very simple composition…perhaps a little shed and two or three trees. There are numerous books instructing the beginner in landscape painting, offering simple compositions to copy and experiment in creating a minimal landscape painting. As the student progresses he or she can move on to greater complexity in landscape painting.

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