#Good Composition

For the longest time I didn’t really understand what a focal point was, and my landscape paintings always felt a little off because of it. Once I learned this simple trick, everything started making way more sense. Go back and look at your last painting and try to find where the lightest light touches the darkest dark. If you can spot it right away, that’s usually your focal point. If you can’t, or if it happens in more than one spot, that’s probably why the painting feels scattered. Creating one clear area of strong contrast and organizing everything else around it is one of the easiest ways to improve your composition. If you want to learn more simple composition tips like this, I made a free Composition Coaching Guide that walks you through it step by step. Comment composition43 and I’ll send it to you.

Stop wasting your time painting landscapes when you have not learned composition yet. I know this because I made that mistake for years. I kept painting landscape after landscape, wondering why they never fully worked, and the truth is it had nothing to do with my colors or my brushwork. It was all composition. Learning composition was honestly confusing and frustrating, which is exactly why I created my Composition Coaching Guide. I wanted to simplify the process so my students can start building eye pleasing, intentional compositions right away. And the best part is it is completely free. If you want me to send it to you, just comment Landscape below and I will DM you the link. #oilpainting #landscapepainting #arttips #beginnerartist #paintcoach

I was completely stuck with landscape painting for the longest time. No matter how hard I tried, nothing ever seemed to work. What finally changed everything for me was realizing that landscape painting is a translation process, not a copying process. Unlike a still life or a classroom setup where you try to replicate exactly what you see, landscapes require interpretation. You have to decide what matters and translate what is in front of you into a painting that actually works. Once that clicked for me, everything started to fall into place. The very first thing that changed was my approach to composition. Composition is the first real hurdle in landscape painting, and I know how confusing and overwhelming it can feel. That is exactly why I created my free composition coaching guide to break composition down into something you can actually understand and apply to your very next painting. If you want the guide, it is completely free. Just comment composition43 below and I will DM you the link. #landscapepainting #oilpainting #learnpainting #compositiontips #paintcoachstudio

Stop trying to paint your landscapes exactly the way they look in your photos. That was my biggest problem for a long time. I treated landscape painting like it was a copying exercise, and no matter how accurate I tried to be, the paintings never quite worked. What finally changed everything for me was realizing that landscape painting is a translation process, not a copying process. You have to interpret what is in front of you and shape it into something that actually works as a painting. In this painting, I changed quite a bit from the original photo to make the scene stronger. A famous landscape painter once said that God did not create perfect compositions in nature for lousy artists. Meaning it is our job as painters to compose the scene so it translates well onto the canvas. Once that idea clicked for me, everything started to fall into place and landscape painting became far less confusing. If you want to see how I approached this painting and many others, you can find this one inside PaintCoach Studio under the name Delta Lake. You can try PaintCoach Studio free for seven days. Just comment studio43 below and I will DM you the link. #landscapepainting #oilpainting #learnpainting #compositiontips #paintcoachstudio

Stop thinking about what you should add to your landscape and start thinking about what you should leave out. The more I paint, the more I realize that so much of landscape painting is about omission. For a long time, I heard painters say this and did not fully understand what they meant. What finally made it click for me was realizing that every painting needs a clear focus. You have to decide what the painting is actually about. Once you know that, everything else in the scene only exists to support it. I like to think of it like a movie. The main character gets the attention. The background characters are there to support the story, not compete with it. In this painting, the house was the star, which meant the ocean played a much smaller role and the rocks on the beach did not need individual detail. They were only there to serve the main idea. Thinking this way makes composition feel clearer and less overwhelming. If you want to learn more about this approach, you can inside PaintCoach Studio. Comment studio43 below and I will DM you the link. #landscapepainting #oilpainting #learnpainting #compositiontips #paintcoachstudio

Nothing in a strong landscape painting is random, especially when it comes to composition. Every shape, light area, and focal point is placed intentionally to guide the viewer’s eye through the painting. In this piece, I made the bright shop one large light mass on one side of the canvas and balanced it with a smaller light area from the car on the road. This big and small relationship creates dynamic balance and keeps the composition visually engaging. When you start thinking in terms of masses instead of isolated objects, your landscapes instantly become stronger and more purposeful. #landscapepainting #compositiontips #artisteducation #paintingprocess #learnart

Most painters jump straight into details. That is usually what gets us stuck. A great exercise is painting a tiny landscape that is only four or five inches and breaking the whole scene down into ten shapes or fewer using flat color. No details. No textures. Just simple blocks of color. This trains your eye to see paintings as clear shapes first. Sky is one shape. Trees are another. Water, land, and shadow each become simple color blocks. This is the first phase of the Paint Coach Method. Simplify, Shape, Sharpen. The exercise you are watching comes from my new course, which is currently on sale until March 22. Comment METHOD below and I will DM you the link. #oilpainting #paintingpractice #learnart #landscapepainting #arttips

If you’ve ever noticed that your landscapes turn out well when you follow a tutorial, but feel hit or miss when you paint on your own, that’s not an accident. When you follow a tutorial, you’re stepping into the instructor’s process. They’re deciding what to simplify first, what to focus on next, and when to refine. You may not see it as a method, but it’s there. And when that structure disappears, it suddenly feels harder to make good decisions on your own. I’ve seen this over and over again after teaching thousands of students. It’s rarely a talent issue. It’s usually a lack of a clear, repeatable process. That’s why I built the Paint Coach Method around three stages: simplify, shape, and sharpen. It’s a straightforward way to approach any painting, no matter the subject, so you’re not guessing your way through it. This landscape is one of the projects inside the course, and it’s currently on sale until March 22nd. Comment method and I’ll send you the link.#oilpainting #paintcoach #arteducation #learnpainting

The whole key to this is the idea that landscape painting is about translating and not copying. That means you have to change things in the scene which means you have to test out those changes. Working small like this helps me save time trying out these tests. I use oils on kraft paper in a journal I got from @adventureofpainting #oilpainting #paintcoach #arteducation #paintingprocess

One of the easiest ways to create depth in your paintings is to organize the scene into different levels of distance. Instead of thinking about individual trees, leaves, or branches, try seeing them as big shape cutouts placed back into space. When you simplify like that, atmospheric perspective becomes much easier to control. As things move farther away, colors naturally cool down and lose saturation. Yellows drop out first, then reds, leaving softer blues in the distance. The same goes for values. Foreground areas have stronger light and dark contrast, while background areas compress and become softer. Photos often lie by showing distant shadows just as dark as the foreground. If you follow that, your painting flattens. Think in layers of distance, big shapes, cooler color, and lower contrast to make your landscapes feel real. #PaintingTips #LandscapePainting #ArtEducation #LearnToPaint #AtmosphericPerspective

Not every oil painting comes together easily. Landscape painting — especially with oils — is a slow and layered process. Colors shift, compositions change, and sometimes a painting takes several attempts before it starts to feel right. There are moments in the studio when I step back, look at the canvas, and seriously consider starting over. But that’s also part of learning and growing as a painter. As I continue exploring oil painting and landscape art, I’m realizing that the pieces that challenge me the most often teach me the most about color, light, and composition. Every painting is part of the process — and part of the journey of becoming a better landscape painter. Oil Painting, Landscape Painting, Oil Painter, Painting Process, Artist Studio, Landscape Artist, Fine Art Painting, Painter Life, Contemporary Landscape, Travel Inspired Art, Studio Artist, Art In Progress, Creative Process, Original Oil Painting, Fine Artist, Textured Painting, Painter Journey, Learning To Paint, Emerging Artist, Oil paint On Canvas

When I started landscape painting I read books, studied masters, sketched and watched countless videos. From this the biggest things I learnt, that helped me accelerate my progress were: 1. Values really matter 2. Details really DON’T matter When I started, I thought that adding detail would take my paintings from okay to great but that simply wasn’t true, because I didn’t have the foundations. Having an understanding of values and simplifying shapes sets up the paintings direction. So here’s some tips! * Value is how light or dark a colour is. Keying your values in with quick value studies helps make sure a painting reads well. * Generally speaking the sky is the lightest, flat plains (e.g. the ground) are the mid tones and vertical/angled plains (hills, trees) are darkest. * Most of the time the darkest darks and the lightest lights are in the foreground. * A tree can be a daunting thing to paint, with all the leaves and ridges in the bark- but, it can be made so much easier by simplifying it into larger shapes. * Using large shapes to block in aspects of your painting and seeing if it reads clearly gives you a great understanding of whether a composition is going to work or not. * Adding detail will never save a painting, neither will exact colours. If your values and shapes are right it will be clear what your subject is. You could paint a mostly green/grey scene with only purple, yellow and white and it still make sense. (Take a look at my profile to see my reel painting a study of a waterfall with these colours) I hope this all makes sense and you find this helpful. Any questions or further advice drop it in the comments! :) - #art#landscapepainting#mountains#travel#hiking