There’s no easy answer to the question, how do you paint a landscape? No more than you can tell someone the definitive way to write a novel or compose
a symphony. What we can tell you is how one accomplished landscape artist goes about his work. That person is Bill McLane of Vineyard Haven.

Let’s start with the mechanics. If you’re painting with oils (Bill’s preferred medium), you’ll need to stretch out your raw canvas on stretcher bars and then coat the canvas with gesso. The gesso fills in the canvas and provides a base for the oil paint. You let the gesso sit for a couple of days. Or, if you want, you can buy prepared canvas at an art supply store and save yourself some time and effort.

Now it’s time to choose a location. According to Bill, this is often determined by the wind. Because a strong breeze can wreak havoc with a painter, you’ll want to find a protected area.

In the winter months you’ll often find Bill painting in the lee of a barn.

Bill divides the actual creative process into two parts: the outdoors part and the indoors part; they require totally different disciplines. “When you’re outdoors painting, you’re in touch with the inspiration,” Bill says. “That’s where the passion is. It’s where you paint with your heart. Remember, you’re not taking a photograph, you’re interpreting what you see. You can’t and don’t want to replicate every blade of grass. You have to distill the image, eliminating anything that takes away from what you’re looking at. It sounds funny but you have to ask nature questions and sometimes it opens up to you.”
    
Bill also maintains that the artist has to be allowed certain liberties. “You can’t be enslaved by the image, because when all is said and done, the painting has to stand by itself. So if you have to add a tree to help the composition, go for it.”

While the act of painting outside on location might take a couple of hours, the second phase, the indoors part, can take months, sometimes years. Bill has a house full of paintings that are in various stages of completion. “I finish up all my paintings indoors, and that’s where I rely much more on technique than on impulse and inspiration. It’s the other side of the brain.”
  
So let’s review: Prepare your canvas, stay out of the wind, start painting outside, and finish up inside. Repeat that process just about every day for ten years and you just might begin to paint a little like Bill McLane.
    
And a Red Sox cap – it also helps to wear a Red Sox cap.