What do you think makes a good landscape painting?

Question

What do you think should go into it? Architecture? trees? disasters? streams, planes? What do you think makes a good landscape painting?

I know as an artist, it's my own interpretation of what a good painting is. That's not why I posed this question. I want to know YOUR and other people's ideas of what an interesting landscape painting looks like.

Answer 1

To be honest, landscapes are not my favorite. I am more into the figure. However, landscape paintings that I have found interesting were often abstract. They used color, line, and form to give you a sense of landscape. They evoked a feeling of open and expansive space. They had a sense of vastness eventhough they were only two dimensional. The West Coast landscape artists (like Richard Diebenkorn) are probably my favorite.

Answer 2

A landscape paint is by definition an outside view with vegetation. Even if you have buildings or other human made fixtures a landscape paint will need the natural elements. Anyway a good paint will require a good composition. When I think on landscape paints I see a vast exterior with none or limited human elements. I love the paints of Monet especially the ones of the countryside.

Answer 3

I like everything from Constable to van Gogh. Most of all, I like Monet. It's the way you want to be there in the painting when you look at it, like in the Bridge at Argenteuil, you just want to wade in the water. So I like water of some sort--either the ocean or a lake and trees.

I don't like monsters or disasters hanging in my dining room, but I don't want a bowl of fruit either, unless it's Cezanne. A little mystery is nice--like the monks in Caspar David Friedrich's Cloister Graveyard in the Snow. The old dead trees dwarf the monks so that you don't even see them at first glance.

Paintings should never be hung in your home just because the colors match your sofa. I want a painting to make me feel calm when I look at it. I often wonder at the genius that can create such beauty.

If you're a painter, paint what you feel as best you can. That way, I don't think you can ever go wrong.

Answer 4

I don't believe it's really what is in the landscape that matters. It's more the feeling you get when you look at it, "can you image yourself there", does it have depbt? It can be of mountains or a dessert, done in any style. Kind of like a person looking at you with a blank stare or the same person looking at you with feeling in there eyes. Some paintings remind you beauty, some loneliness, romance....
If a painting doesn't spark any type of feeling when you look at it, .it's not worth much.
If your painting something. Think of what feeling your wanting to bring out, then what surroundings would enhance those feelings.

Answer 5

I think that the subject does not matter as long as it is a good painting. What I mean is it has to have a strong composition, with appropriate color and a punchline. There must be a reason why the painting exists, is it the strong light at sunset or the green of summer grass or the blue of the water. Every thing in the painting has to describe that thing.
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Answer 6

I like a variation of visual textures. Or rolling hills that lead the eye off to some other space. Or something that I would want to step into and go for a walk. Bright colors. Trees with autumn foilage. Things like that.

Answer 7

I like the human element to be obvious in a landscape painting(ie. bridges, buildings, people, etc...) but I prefer them to be secondary.

I like it when artists show humans interacting with nature or obvious signs of them having been there (bridges, etc...).

No planes or cars though, for me they ruin a landscape painting.

Answer 8

what's most important is your own interpretation of the landscape, as well as conveying your feelings within the painting.

Answer 9

all of them together forming a concept of art and scenery