Landscape Painting by Mitchell Albala

Landscape Painting by Mitchell Albala

Every once and a while I am inspired to go outside and paint the landscape. By nature, I love the outdoors and being that I focus 90% of my time on still-life subjects, painting from life in natural light, I sometimes realize that on the most beautiful days, I spend the entire day inside!

So when this seems to be my existence for several weeks on end, I go outside and paint.

However being a “booky” kind of person, I also like to read and research a topic extensively because I believe my skills can be improved by a little bit of self propelled study… Then a good artist friend, who mainly paints en plein air recommended this book, so I snapped it up.

It is a well organized book for the beginner and intermediate artist interested in landscape. The first part of the book is dedicated to housekeeping topics like selecting your easel and palette and what medium to use when outside. There is a ton of handy advice in this section.

The chapter on Simplification and Massing is especially helpful, with good instruction and varied examples. I find it challenging to simplify the landscape, so any clear and thoughtful explanation on this topic is always welcome.

The chapter on Composition was also helpful. Being that composition is probably the single most important aspect of any piece of art, I always enjoy learning more about how I can improve my understanding of this very wide and diverse topic.