Mitchell Albala - The Landscape Painters Workbook: Essential Studies in Shape, Composition, and Color (For Artists)

Mitchell Albala, Study, Grassers Lagoon in Gold, oil on gold gesso ground, 8" 8" | 20.5 20.5 cm

We all want to be motivated and inspired. These feelings are the fuel that keeps our creative engines humming. But to make real progress on our creative path, to improve our skill level, we also need practices and principles that are understandable and can be readily applied. Thats why I have written this book and why I have made each lesson and exercise as practical and realizable as possible.

I have adopted the practices I promote, and as a result, Im a better problem solver and a better painter. It really works! I have asked the same questions you are asking now, about shape, composition, and color. This book contains the answers Ive found. It is my sincere hope that if you apply these lessons and do the exercises, achieving your goals in painting will become easier, faster, and more enjoyable.

MITCHELL ALBALA

One of the recurring themes throughout this book is that landscape painting is an art of interpretation. Our goal is not to reproduce what we see exactly as we see it. Rather, all we observeevery color, shape, and detailis filtered through an interpretive lens. The painting we produce may resemble a landscape, but is now a painting, a unique interpretation of the world in its own visual language. This process of translation is never more demanding than when trying to interpret the landscape at its most fundamental level: shape.

Nature is terribly complex. It has innumerable shapes, from the minute to the monumental, and in its raw, unedited state, can seem quite overwhelming. The key to translating all this into a painting is not to capture every bit of it but to reduce it into a simpler set of shapes and masses. This is the landscape painters first and most important task. Remarkably, this reductionist approach doesnt detract from the overall impressionit enhances the painting, making it more comprehensible to the viewer.

Hester Berry, Bosley Mere
Oil on board, 12" 8" | 30.5 21.5 cm

A landscape painters first and most important task is to reduce natures vastness and complexity into clearer, more visually concise shapes. Each of Berrys expressive brushstrokes is a distinct shape, defined from adjacent strokes through value and color differences.

When we observe the natural world, in all its depth and breadth, we are able to apprehend its many values and colors, and all its parts and pieces, with no thought at all. Trying to paint that subject, however, requires us to look through a different visual lens. To convert such an overwhelming amount of information into the language of painting, we must begin to see the subject in simpler terms.

Every painting, even a complicated one, has a foundation that is built upon simplified shapes. Yet, this isnt necessarily what we see first. We are distracted by a sea of details, colors, and narrative content. To simplify, we have to see through all the layers of complexity and busyness. We have to interpret and extrapolate.

Our goal isnt to include everything we see, but to know what to leave out. One of the most satisfying ah-ha! moments a painter can experience is when they discover that a simplified picture structure captures the essence of a subject more effectively than small parts and details.