Landscape painting may not appear to be a giant in today's [contemporary] art world, but it still has a very prominant place in the majority of our population. It speaks to the very existence of (wo)mankind in relation to nature, and how important that relationship is. The awe that is aroused by looking at something beautiful (that is not sexual or overly religious) may categorically be named the study of aesthetics - and I dig that!

However, my love for painting still lies in the works of Daniel Buren and Katharina Grosse. The point of reference for me to landscape painting is heavily influenced by the work of the late Professor Denis Dutton - attending his lectures during my undergrads studies was one of my faviourt things to do. I often wonder with the advance in nuroscience now how can this area of study be further developed? The obvious links between Evolutionary Psychology and Simon Sinek's Start With Why movement may suggest the reason of being to be aesthetics - or at least, it is for me.



Due to popular demand, I held a Landscape Painting workshop hoping to 'correct' some 'bad habits.' They were:

1. Having no knowledge of the type of media/medium that they are using;
2. Focusing too much on the pencil drawing;
3. Not mixing paint and not applying the science of colour theory.

1 #badhabit:  Having no knowledge of the type of media/medium that they are using.
A lot of children (and adults) grow up painting at school without ever knowing what they have been using to paint with. Partly encouraged by capitalism, 'art' has become a cheap commodity. Partly enabled by the advance of technology, acrylic paint was invented in the 20th century and had been adopted widely at schools for its quick-drying, non-toxic nature.

As with any type of paint, the make-up is majority pigment with binding medium, and it requires some sort of solvent to turn it into a paint-able mass. Long story short, acrylic paint is made up in the lab with man-made pigment through chemical reaction, and the binding medium is plastic glue. Ah, the glorious acrylic paint! Did you know you have been painting with plastic (the true arts-plastiques)? Yeah, and that's why it is cheap(er). Mind you - of course there are a range of different qualities, and it is based on the pigment particles in the acrylic. I have 'downgraded' from professional artist paint, to artist student paint, to student paint, to just-give-me-the-cheapest-possible paint. It really depends on the type of project you are doing.



In the Landscape Painting workshop, a minimum of student grade acrylic paint is recommended. I aim to deliver this in the true acrylic fashion, that is, using the paint like watercolour as well as oil paint. What it also means is that it does not matter what support we paint on, as we are literally 'painting on plastic.'


2 #badhabit:  Focusing too much on the pencil drawing.
So, since we are painting on plastic, the goal really should be covering the whole surface with plastic paint. To build up the landscape in the simplest sense is to just quickly draw two horizontal lines across the paper. with the lower one being the horizon, and the higher one being the hilltop. Then just apply an overall layer of yellow wash on the entire page.

Why yellow? In an Impressionist sense the landscape is saturated with sunlight, and yellow is the colour used for tint. Since the paper is already white, what you want is to set an under-tone so whatever colour goes on up blends with it.

So why not just apply a layer of white wash? Acrylic white is actually a lot more opaque than other coloured paint. If you start your painting with a white wash then all the colours blended on top will turn milky.


Painting landscape in this way ensures that the overall picture looks complete(-ish) at any point you decide to stop - there is no 'white space' making the work look obviously un-finished.



3 #badhabit: Not mixing paint and not applying the science of colour theory.
Since acrylic paint dries quickly, you can start layering paint as soon as the yellow wash has been applied. Good practice is to only use the three primary colours plus black and white when you work - this way, you are required to mix colours instead of just using them right out of the tube. And that is another reason why the quality of the paint matters: cheaper paints use more white and binding medium to build up the volume, so the particles are binded more without much flexibility to mix with other pigments.



Staying true to my power of three theory, there really shouldn't be more than three colours on the painting, as a general rule. It is essential for young learners to refer to artist models to build up the eye for colour schemes. In the Landscape Painting workshop where time was limited, I just made sure that the learners used the wet-onto-wet technique, so that whatever was applied blended with what was underneath. As a result the paintings did not appear 'primary' and the colours showed some tonal difference due to blending.


Then it gets to a point where you need to just stop and leave it to dry in order to apply finer details. And that is when you leave it and come back to revisit another time.

It is worth mentioning that I would only recommend using a round pointy brush when you start to build on the details. All the processes to build up layers should be completed using a flat brush, or a filbert.