Art brings nature indoors

Taking a walk to enjoy nature is a great way to relax and lower stress. But if you can't get outside that much or the weather is too bad to do it, then think about how a landscape on your wall can bring you there year-round!

Capturing the complexity of a landscape

Field and trees in a nearby park.

Landscapes are never frozen in time the way a still life is. Nature is changing from one moment to the next, and somehow that has to be put across to the viewer. 

Besides, outdoors is a lot more complicated than indoors. Only God can make a tree and all that, and so much more is going on all at once in the great outdoors that I don't believe you can freeze a moment and have it seem anything like the reality of nature. 

A change of style to suit the landscape

So I work rather more loosely, using chalks, usually NuPastels, and trying to avoid patches of pure color. Pure color can be the dramatic highlight of a still life: think of the white reflections on a bottle or a blotch of bright red on an apple. Yet there doesn't seem to be anything resembling pure color outdoors. Usually something looks like a familiar color but if you look closely it is really a zillion colors combined that give the illusion, at first glance, of one color.