Painting a Landscape is Difficult
I love everything about the painting process when it comes to a still-life. Landscape, on the other hand, I find more challenging. Wanting to improve my landscape painting skills, I travelled to the coast hoping to break routine and gather new reference material. I packed a small watercolour palette for painting en plein air, convinced it would be the ideal medium for capturing shifting skies and ocean mist. I planned to come back refreshed, inspired, and ready to translate the scenery.
Watercolour has always been a medium that I return to, whether it’s for pet and human portraits or just to move colour around on paper. It has the ability to flow freely, creating unexpected blooms of colour, and to be controlled more tightly for fine detail. I was certain it would be the best medium for this project.
After many days of exploring beaches, I returned to the studio. I reviewed my photos, chose my favourites, and unpacked my watercolour paints. I watched a few tutorials as a refresher and jumped right into the painting process. I was convinced the misty atmosphere of my reference photos would translate beautifully in watercolour. Instead, after several unsuccessful attempts to capture the ocean’s softness, I started questioning my intent altogether. My mind has a way of quietly interrogating my abilities as an artist, and this was definitely one of those moments. Frustrated, I eventually pulled out my pastels. At the very least, they offered a tactile familiarity through their layered application of colour. Even then, the first few paintings were still a struggle.
I’m used to lining up pretty things in a blacked-out Staples box while adjusting a selfie light to manipulate soft shadows. I then take photos of the setup and edit them before drawing out the rough sketch on sanded paper. I have honed a system for painting the still-life that has proven to be successful. Strong highlights, deep shadows, expressive mark-making, and plenty of drama. The method may not be easy, but it's familiar, and it works. So why did landscape painting feel so difficult?
Normally, when I use pastel, I start by laying down a thin underpainting over the pencil sketch. I decided to practise small and work my way up in size using a similar technique with these landscapes. To simplify the overwhelming amount of visual information, I began reducing the scene into abstract value shapes rather than recognizable objects. Orange marked the darkest passages, yellow the lightest. Trees became masses. Shorelines became directional shapes. The painting only began to work once I stopped trying to paint things literally.
While working through the paintings, it occurred to me that landscape painting rewards interpretation more than observation. Still life allows the artist to control light, composition, and atmosphere from the beginning. Landscape painting is different. The artist must negotiate with distance, weather, shifting light, and space itself to create something believable. It relies less on certainty and more on instinct. After all, it’s not easy to convincingly paint ambiguity.
Unlike still life painting, where objects are carefully arranged before the first mark is made, landscape painting requires the artist to impose order onto visual chaos. Trees overlap awkwardly, shorelines compete for attention, and atmospheric conditions flatten form. Successful landscapes depend as much on editing as observing.
A still life requires us to paint objects. A landscape invites us to paint atmosphere. What makes landscape painting so difficult is that atmosphere can never be fully controlled. It shifts with weather, distance, light, and memory. Perhaps that is why successful landscapes feel so rewarding when they finally begin to work. We are no longer simply describing land, trees, or water, but creating the illusion of space on a two-dimensional surface, allowing the viewer, if only for a moment, to feel as though they could step directly into the scene.
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