Many people would be surprised by the unique charm of Chinese landscape painting, for it can not only give people the feeling of peace and gentleness, but also show the high crafts of the authors. However, the production of a good landscape can be very difficult. By acting according to some useful tips, your process would be easier.
Many people would be surprised by the unique charm of Chinese landscape painting, for it can not only give people the feeling of peace and gentleness, but also show the high crafts of the authors. However, the production of a good landscape can be very difficult. By acting according to some useful tips, your process would be easier.
Don't put everything in
You're not obliged to include everything that you see in the landscape you're painting simply because it is there in real life. Be selective; include the strong elements that characterize that particular landscape. Use the landscape as a reference, to provide you with the information you need to paint the elements, but don't slavishly follow it.
Use your imagination
If it makes for a stronger painting composition, don't hesitate to rearrange the elements in the landscape. Or take things from different landscapes and put them together in one painting.
Give the foreground preference
Don't paint the whole landscape to the same degree of detail: paint less detail in the background of the landscape than you do in the foreground. It's less important there and gives more 'authority' to what's in the foreground. The difference in detail also helps draw the viewer's eye into the main focus of the landscape painting.
It's not cheating to buy green paints
You're not 'cheating' if you buy green paints in a tube rather than mixing your own. One of the main benefits of doing this is that it means you always have instant access to particular greens. But don't limit yourself; extend the range of 'ready-made' greens by adding blue or yellow to it.
Get to know how to mix greens
When mixing a green, use the fact that green have either a blue or a yellow bias as the starting point in determining the proportions you mix. Each different blue/yellow combination will give a different green, plus the variations from the proportions of each you mix. With practice it becomes instinctive to mix the shade of green you're after. Take an afternoon to practice mixing your own greens, making a color chart to record which paints gave you what results. Also experiment mixing with two blues and two yellows; and mixing blue or yellow to a 'ready-made' green.
Instant muted greens
Mix a little black with various yellows and you'll see that it produces a range of muted (or 'dirty') greens and khakis. (Remember to add the black to the yellow, not yellow to black; you need mix in only a little black paint to darken a yellow, but it will take a comparatively large amount of yellow paint to lighten a black.)
Do a series
Don't think that because you've painted a particular landscape once, you're now done with it. Be like the Impressionist Claude Monet and paint it again and again, in different lights, seasons, and moods. You won't get bored with the scene, but instead you start to see more in it. For example, the way a tree's shadow tracks around it through the day, and how the different the light of the harsh midday sun is to that of sunrise and sunset.