Landscape Painting

Among the various hobbies one may pursue, painting, especially landscape painting; I believe is the most refreshing, the most exciting one. When you look at the paintings rendered by a master like Ravi Varma, Rembrandt, or Renoir, you might feel that this is a feat that calls for extensive training, relentless perseverance, and above all, super human talent. Well, for that matter, to excel in anything calls for all of these traits and perhaps, if you are of the mindset to admit it, at least a modicum of providential grace. Yet, the thrills of painting are open to anyone who cares to will. Just buy the colors and start painting; you are certain to end up painting something…someone. And if you want to improve fast, train yourself to love this earth, to admire her beauty.

Let your heart run out into the endless fields of paddy like a truant little child and your mind go chasing it, like its mother. Let it run up those barren hills that are hazily silhouetted against the sketchy horizons of the dusk, let it fly after the mustering of storks hurrying home across the indignant twilight skies of June, let it stop short and wonder at the invincibility and the wild beauty of the mighty banyan trees that have braved the ruthless fury of many a hurricanes and tempests, and let it be fascinated by the creases that form on the country belle’s skirt when a wayward gust of wind swirls it up around her and plasters it to her. That’s how you start. Before long, your mind becomes a camera that clicks every piece of beauty it comes across.

When you need to travel by train, travel in a non-air-conditioned coach so that you get to see the beauty of the landscape the lucky train chugs through. Watch the men and the women sowing and reaping; those far-off little children celebrating life; the forms of animals that would seem as significant or as insignificant as the people themselves; the clouds of different shapes and sizes in their domineering, nonchalant gait; and when it begins to get dark…the huge palm trees that seem like vaguely visible specters in the moonlight. Believe that they are actually yakshis and celestial beings standing out and drying their luscious tresses in the moonlight…believe that they are actually sirens who would ensnare lonely wayfarers with their meretricious charms…believe that the deserted landscape you are passing through will on certain nights be lit by mysterious fairy lamps…that the wistful midnight serenade of a solitary gandharva by her window will make a young woman in that distant hut a somnambulist following him to some forlorn magic world. If rationale and reason were all that were there, won’t life, won’t this earth and our existence become as clinical, bland, and matter-of-fact as an equation in thermodynamics? And then, my dear friend, won’t our lives, our travails, our aspirations, our pains, our joys, our sorrows, our hopes, our dreams, our deaths, be all ends in themselves with no subtle or noble purpose governing them? Yes, our lives are as enigmatic a phenomenon as are our advent, our departure. You can see a thousand paintings in a single journey…countless in your journey along the shores of time.

Imagine that the window of the train is a canvass and the sights you see through it, the paintings on it. Don’t you see that with a larger area of the sky inside that canvass, the expanse of land covered is larger with lesser of details, and with a lesser area of the sky, the expanse of land covered is lesser with more of details? Don’t you see that the intensity of contrasts and colors decrease with distance? That some clouds are without any blending with the sky? That those distant, colorfully clothed people in the fields make the fields seem alive? That those lazy buffaloes wallowing in the slush hardly have any distinguishable shape? (Yet, what makes you feel, impresses, that they are buffaloes?). Yes, Sisley learnt nature's dispositions; Vermeer borrowed her charms; and Pissarro perpetuated her moods. Click your mind’s camera. You may not get back many of the takes when you begin to paint, but you certainly will, at least a few.

Poster colors constitute a good medium to start with. They are not very expensive, are readily amenable to mixing and blending, and give a finish quite close to that of oil colors unless unduly thinned. Besides, they are suitable for mixed media paintings; especially they go well with smatterings of acrylic. And more than sticking to any professional guideline stick to the objective of capturing the beauty of nature as completely as you can. Professional guidelines are, after all just tested tricks to make things easier for you in achieving this objective. And this is true not just for painting, but for any form of art. I know persons who sing like angels, but have not learnt music—thanks to circumstances.

The delights of pursuing any art are virtually unlimited. It refreshes your mind, invigorates your spirit, and boosts your self esteem. And by painting landscapes, you might be indirectly contributing to the cause of preserving nature by drawing the attention of some people to the pristine splendor of nature—people who are so preoccupied with their own lives that they fail to notice how good this earth is.

V K Rajan