The Landscape Painter's Workbook

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SHAPE INTERPRETATION

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 observe—every color, shape, and detail—is 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 ...