Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/106

LANDSCAPE PAINTING to appreciate the essential bigness of things. This is particularly true of out-door nature. The sun is a great leveller. It flattens all masses, the lights as well as the shadows. An out-door picture-motive is complicated indeed if it cannot be divided into four or five dominant values. If these are understood, and painted with sympathetic truth, it is astonishing how little detail it requires to complete the picture—the trunk of a tree, a few scattered leaves, the curve of a road, and the trick is turned. Always leave something to the imagination of the beholder. A picture is often complete long before you suspect it.

There is probably no better way of training the eye to simplicity of vision, than studying moonlight, for in moonlight effects, the broad masses alone are visible, and the shadows lie all over the picture in one big soft value. [74]