Whatever the subject of a painting, each viewed landscape is grist to the painter's mill. Good picture recognition and appreciation is, by its very nature contentious for there are no final words of judgement nor can there be any. It is largely a matter of consensus by art critics or the personal opinion of the individual concerned. To be good, a painting need not be large, beautiful, over-detailed, multi-coloured or have more than one centre of interest. Pictures should be 'easy on the eye', restful and composed.

It is a deceptive convention by which a panorama, viewed or invented, is portrayed as a realistic impression upon a small white sheet of flat paper. Realistic in the sense that although some items can be moved or omitted to improve the composition, natural appearance is still maintained rather than an exact photographic copy. There is not opposition in the scene as viewed and the ideal picture you may wish to produce.

Logically, a landscape painting cannot be produced with total realism. The brush must at once satisfy the depth of vision and at the same time imitate the varied colours and tones of natural landscape in conditions of reflected light. For a satisfactory result, paint an impression of a landscape as it looks at any given few seconds of time before the eye can record details. The secret is to record a quick impression of the view rather than what is known to exist by close scrutiny and reasoning. Paint appearances, not known facts. Our eyes tend to focus on one subject as the centre of interest, neglected to a certain extent the surrounding soft-edged areas without details, yet relevant to the complete outlook.

For the beginner, the most difficult problem can be the portrayal of the ground.. The flat or undulating surface should be lightly drawn and painted as it recedes in distance. Upright objects, rising vertically from the ground are less troublesome. Trees, mountains and architecture correspond in practice with the upright planes on which, in theory, one is drawing. Fields, roads and rivers are apt to be a problem. The bias of vision may cause objects in landscape to appear as if they were sloping upwards on the sheet of paper to a false high vanishing point. One of the causes of failure is starting the foreground too close to the viewer's eye instead of a good distance ahead. In this way, figures or drawn objects are much of a size without enormous disproportion. Children often draw people walking on the bottom edge of the paper.