Urban landscape composition: turning a panoramic sketch into a painting

Abstract

The modern landscape painter oftentimes finds himself slavishly tied to nature, its motifs. Yet, finding tailor-made exemplary landscape compositions in nature appears to be a challenge of its own. Thus, enlargement of landscape sketches to the size of a painting, a rather prevalent technique, seems to be nothing but a blind alley. The optimal solution, however, is to produce a paradigmatic natural motif sketch and convert it into a painting, by designing a proper composition and portraying the state of nature that allows, better than others, to reveal the intended artistic image. In order to create such an image, the artist must change the natural motif, adding some elements or removing others, thereby transforming the landscape ensemble into a harmonious whole.

Remarkably, research rooted in the theory of landscape composition has so far largely neglected the principles and methods of composing panoramic urban landscapes. Meanwhile, a consummate arrangement of a city panorama is undoubtedly among the hardest tasks to perform. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to address the challenging endeavor in question: it describes the process of creating a large-scale landscape painting, made in multi-layer watercolor using a life sketch. Particular attention is paid, among others, to the development of the image, selection of the optimal composition and its center, adjustment of the perspective, space depth, portrayal of foreground elements, rhythm organization, choice of a suitable state of nature, as well as apt color scheme.