Tag: editing

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Stop copying in your landscape painting

Lynda Mussen is a regular for this workshop, and her painting is better every year.

Overlooking the Mt. Desert Narrows of Frenchman’s Bay (as we have been this week at my Schoodic workshop), the temptation is to simply copy what’s in front of us. That’s understandable. The scene is sublime, the birds are warbling, the ocean rolls ceaselessly towards us. Surely Nature is in charge of what to paint.

Nope. Nature is giving us raw material, not a finished composition. What’s there is too vast to capture in any one landscape painting. (That’s why your vacation snapshots are often so disappointing, by the way.) We must edit and compose ruthlessly, or our viewers will be left starved of the feeling of the place.

When I teach plein air workshops, students often ask whether they can change something. They’re tentative about moving a tree, eliminating a line of spruces or shifting Cadillac Mountain a little to the left. This is especially true of new painters.

Frank Costantino did this wonderful sketch of Cynthia while she was painting.

A quick note on weekly classes before we get into it

Claim your spot in Painting Nocturnes, Tuesday evenings or Painting Water, Monday evenings. Both are 6-9 PM, starting the week of August 17, 2026, and they’re filling up.

I upload videos of these online classes and you have access to them for as long as there’s YouTube. That means you can review them if you need a refresher or have to cut out early.

There are two answers to this question.

  • Even people intimately familiar with the place won’t notice the edits in your landscape painting. They react to the sense of place, not the details.
  • The sun is going to rearrange everything in your composition anyway, so why worry about moving a tree?

The landscape is not static. Shadows march across fields. Clouds drift overhead. Tide rises. Wind whistles. Boats glide through your carefully composed picture. The color temperature changes as the day winds through its courses.

Even photography isn’t objective. Every camera lens has a different focal length and field of view, and is set for different apertures and exposures. This changes how the camera records a scene as much as the painter’s eye does.

Karolina almost finished with her painting of the rock faces of Schoodic.

Your job is to organize visual chaos into something coherent.

How you organize your landscape painting is far more important than whether you’ve placed the rocks in exactly the same place that Nature did. You’ll hold the viewer’s eye when he or she can move naturally through the picture. That depends on the value structure, whether the color relationships feel convincing and whether the painting captures the experience of standing there. I’ve written extensively on the science behind this, starting here and here.

How do we do that?

Sometimes that means simplifying, sometimes it means exaggerating, sometimes it means leaving things out altogether.

The great landscape painters have always edited reality. The Impressionists used optical mixing to simulate the real glitter of light. The Hudson River School rearranged mountains and rivers to strengthen composition and make their point about America’s destiny. Even painstakingly realistic landscape painters like Rackstraw Downes are constantly deciding what deserves attention and what doesn’t.

Frank and Aaron, hard at work.

Is this dishonest?

Of course not. It’s the very essence of painting.

Imagine reading a novel that recorded every conversation, every meal, every minute of every day exactly as it happened. That’s À la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust, and it’s excruciatingly dull. Writers edit to reveal meaning, and painters should do exactly the same thing.

Instead of asking, “How do I paint what I see?” ask what attracted you to this scene in the first place. That’s the painting; everything else is just border work.

Once painters stop trying to copy every leaf and stone their work becomes more believable. The painting has structure, intention and a clear visual hierarchy that viewers can enter into.

Your job is to interpret the landscape, not copy it.

Online classes start again soon!

I have one workshop already scheduled for 2027! Reserve your spot:

Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:

Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painters

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Painter, you are not a journalist (I hope)

Marshes along the Ottawa River, Plaisance, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard. For more information, click on image.

“Is it okay to leave out the…?” is a question I hear often.

Many landscape painters approach scenes like journalists. They try to report what they see. Every tree is accounted for, every ripple on the water acknowledged, every color matched as faithfully as possible. It feels responsible. It feels honest. It also feels boring as hell.

I’ve worked as a journalist and I know that reporting is far from passive. It requires cultivation of sources, incisive questioning and a quick mind. But painters can’t assume the reportorial pose. There’s a difference between a news story and a narrative. One is factual and one is poetic.

A scene is raw material, not a conclusion. A painting is an allusion, and sometimes an illusion. It’s far closer to a novel than a news story.

I’ve written this blog three times a week for many years. When I was younger, I could write poetically, but I’ve trained that out of myself in favor of concise accuracy. I frequently regret that and hope I never do it in my painting.

The Pine Tree State, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard. For more information, click on image.

From seeing everything to choosing something

Good painting composers decide what matters and what doesn’t. They decide where the viewer looks first, and where their eye rests next. They decide how light is organized, how values are grouped and how color is bent to serve the structure. None of that is accidental, and none of it is guaranteed by the subject in front of you. That’s especially true in plein air, where the subject flickers and changes. If you’re merely trying to report what you see, you’re doomed to failure. The scene in front of you could change completely in the next fifteen minutes.

When you’re stuck in reporting mode, your paintings can end up with competing focal points, values that are true but not compelling and boring edges. All of that might be faithful to what you see but unconvincing as a painting.

A good painter can make a persuasive painting from any scene or subject. Sadly, the opposite is also true. It’s quite possible to make a terrible painting from the most wonderful scene or subject. I speak from experience here.

The Vineyard, oil on linen, 30X40. For more information, click on image.

Authors edit, ruthlessly

Painting teachers teach an exercise from John Carlson’s Theory of Angles and Consequent Values. It involves knocking the scene into four values. Inevitably, someone will assume that if four values are good, eight are better. Well, actually, three are better. Yes, value is a continuous band between dark and light, but the human mind craves patterns. That starts with simplification. When we drop meaningless, fine distinctions we oddly strengthen our painting.

Color is another area where factual reporting is counterproductive. Instead, think in terms of relationships. Warm plays against cool; saturated against neutral—all while being aware of color harmonies. Accuracy should be secondary to cohesion.

Eastern Manitoba River, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard. For more information, click on image.

You’re not just making it up

This doesn’t mean you abandon observation. Quite the opposite. The first step in painting is to realize what compels you about the scene or idea. That requires a lot of seeing and thinking. Observe carefully but use information selectively. You’re not copying the scene; you’re interpreting it.

One practical way to break the reporting habit is to set constraints. Make a value sketch before you start. Identify clear focal points and commit to them. These decisions force you to prioritize.

In the end, a successful painting isn’t a record of what was there. It’s a record of what you thought and felt about it.

Registration is now open for the following Zoom classes:

Painting Water (almost full)
Monday evenings, 6-9 PM
June 1, 8, 15

Water is often the most mesmerizing part of a landscape—the way it holds the light, mirrors the sky, and breathes life into a static scene. Click to sign up.

Painting Clouds
Monday evenings, 6-9 PM
June 22, 29, July 6

If you’ve ever picked out shapes in the clouds as they drifted by, this class is for you. This short, 3-week session is a great opportunity to give weekly Zoom classes a try. Learn more.

From Field Sketch to Final Studio Work
Tuesday evenings, 6-9 PM
June 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, July 7

This 6-week course is designed to help you breathe life into those “unfinished” sketches littering your studio. Learn more.

Online classes start again soon!

I have one workshop already scheduled for 2027! Reserve your spot:

Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:

Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painters

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Put down the red pen

Ravening Wolves, oil on canvas, 24X30, $3,478.00 framed includes shipping in continental US.

On Wednesday, I wrote, “Not creating is a safe position from which to operate. Your talent is inviolable, protected, a seed not open to criticism… That gives you the latitude to criticize other creators, as you are protected from criticism yourself.”

That relationship between nonachievement and criticism is famous in art schools, where bitchiness itself is often raised to a fine art. This video was a one-hit wonder but it captures the experience.

The Logging Truck, 16X20, oil on canvas, $2029 framed, shipping included in the continental US.

The best painters I know are also the most generous critics. They’re courteous and supportive of even the most tentative of efforts. They understand how murky and undeveloped radical new ideas can be, and they’re as curious as anyone as to how they will turn out.

“Put down the red pen,” is an editing maxim (from when writers used pens). It means that the editor should read through a piece first, with an open mind, before starting to make corrections. By coming at a piece flourishing your metaphorical red pen, you’re inclined to start rewriting the piece as you would have written it. That leaves no room for the writer’s own voice or goals.

The same is true with painting. We need to first step back and look and think. When we intervene too forcefully at the beginning, we supersede the artist’s ideas, style and voice. We take on the responsibility for refinement without asking whether that’s helpful or not. ‘I know better than you’ becomes our primary message. That might feel good (temporarily) to the critic, but it can be paralyzing to the painter.

Hostile input shuts us down

There’s plenty of science to tell us that the brain just shuts off at the first hint of stress. Comments that are perceived as personal attacks can set off a cascade of chemical events that weaken our impulse control or paralyze us with anxiety. We’ve all seen the Gary Larson cartoon (above) about what dogs hear when we yell at them. The same is particularly true of teenagers, and to a lesser degree, everyone else.

At my age, I don’t need to be diplomatic, but I do need to be kind. That’s not a moral imperative; I just want my students to hear me. One important way forward is to divorce feelings from criticism. I dislike comments that start with, “I feel…” What you feel about the artist’s use of line, color, shape and form is immaterial. What matters is what you think about those things.

Wreck of the SS Ethie, oil on canvas, 18X24, $2318 framed.

Objectivity is our goal

Here is a framework for objective criticism. These aren’t my ideas; they’re standard criteria for design. Obviously, there’s room in critique for the subjective, since art is ultimately a personal expression. However, these questions can also be framed in non-inflammatory ways. “Does this evoke a response in you,” is a very different question from, “is this painting boring?”

It’s far healthier to learn to apply these standards of criticism to your own paintings than to cast around for approval from your peers (although we’ve all done it). Learning to critique your own work as you go will save you a lot of flailing around.

Online classes start again soon!

I have one workshop already scheduled for 2027! Reserve your spot:

Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:

Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painters