But in landscape you are more than likely to be almost helpless at first. There is so much all around you, and so little saliency, that it is hard to say where to begin and where to leave off. Practice in still life will help you somewhat, but still things in nature are seldom arranged with that centralization which makes a subject easy to see. Even the simplicity which is sometimes obvious is, when you come to paint it, only the more difficult to handle because of its simplicity. The simplicity which you should look for to make your selection of a subject easy is not the lack of something to draw, but the definiteness of some marked object or effect. What is good as a "view" is apt to be the reverse of suitable for a picture. You want something tangible, and you do not want too much or too little of it. A long line of hill with a broad field beneath it, for instance, is simple enough, but what is there for you to take hold of? In an ordinary light it is only a few broad planes of value and color without an accent object to emphasize or centre on. It can be painted, of course, and can be made a beautiful picture, but it is a subject for a master, not for a student. But suppose there were a tree or a group of trees in the field; suppose a mass of cloud obscured the sky, and a ray of sunlight fell on and around the tree through a rift in the clouds. Or suppose the opposite of this. Suppose all was in broad light, and the tree was strongly lighted on one side, on the other shadowed, and that it threw a mass of shadow below and to one side of it. Immediately there is something which you can take hold of and make your picture around. The field and hill alone will make a study of distance and middle distance and foreground, but it would not make an effective sketch. The two effects I have supposed give the possibility for a sketch at once, and what suggests a sketch suggests a picture.
This central object or effect which I have supposed also clears up the matter of the placing of your subject on the canvas. With merely the hill and plain you might cut it off anywhere, a mile or two one side or the other would make little or no difference to your picture. But the tree and the effect of light decide the thing for you. The tree and the lighting are the central idea of the picture. Very well, then, make them large enough on your canvas to be of that importance. Then what is around them is only so much more as the canvas will hold, and you will place the tree where, having the proper proportionate size, it will also "compose well" and make the canvas balance, being neither in the middle exactly nor too much to one side.
Here are two photographs taken in the same field and of the same view, with the camera pointed in the same direction in both. One shows the lack of saliency, although the tree is there. In the other the camera was simply carried forward a hundred yards or so, until the tree became large enough to be of importance in the composition. The placing is simply a better position with reference to the tree in this case.
Centralize.—Now, as you go about looking for things to sketch, look always for some central object or effect. If you find that what seems very beautiful will not give you anything definite and graspable,—some contrast of form, or light and shade, or color,—don't attempt it. The thing is beautiful, and has doubtless a picture in it, but not for you. You are learning how to look for and to find a subject, and you must begin with what is readily sketched, without too much subtlety either of form or color or value.
Placing.—Having found your subject with something definite in it, you must place it on your canvas so that it "tells." It will not do to put it in haphazard, letting any part of it come anywhere as it happens. You will not be satisfied with the effect of this. The object of a picture is to make visible something which you wish to call attention to; to show something that seems to you worth looking at. Then you must arrange it so that that particular something is sure to be seen whether anything else is seen or not. This is the first thing to be thought of in placing your subject. Where is it to come on the canvas? How much room is it to take up? If it is too large, there is not enough surrounding it to make an interesting whole. If it is to be emphasized, it must have something to be emphasized with reference to. On the other hand, if it is too small, its very size makes it insignificant.
Landscape Photo. No. 1.
If it is a landscape, decide first the proportions of land and sky,—where your horizon line will come. Then, having drawn that line, make three or four lines which will give the mass of the main effect or object—a barn, a tree, a slope of hill, or whatever it be, get merely its simplest suggestion of outline. These two things will show you, on considering their relation to each other and to the rest of the canvas, about what its emphasis will be. If it isn't right, rub it out and do it again, a little larger or smaller, a little more to one side or the other, higher or lower, as you find needed. When you have done this to your satisfaction, you have done the first important thing.