not to do, because no two landscapes are alike.
Recipes will do nothing in helping you to paint. But there is the
general principle which you may follow, and I try to keep it before
you even at the risk of over-repetition. In no kind of picture can you
drag in unimportant things simply because they exist in nature. In
landscape more than elsewhere, because you cannot arrange it, but must
select in the actual presence of everything, you must learn to
concentrate on the things which mean most, and to refuse to recognize
those which will not lend themselves to the central idea.

=Selection.=--When you select your subject, or "_motif_," as the
French call it, select it for something definite. There is always
something which makes you think this particular view will make a good
picture. State to yourself what it is that you see in it, not in
detail, but in the general. Is it the general color effect of the
whole, or a contrast? Is it a sense of largeness and space, or a
beautiful combination of line in the track of a road, or row of trees,
or a river? Perhaps it is the mass and majesty of a mountain or a
group of trees. Something definite or definable catches you--else you
had better not do it at all; and what that something is you must know
quite precisely, or you will not have a well-understood picture.

When you have distinctly in your mind what you want to paint it for,
then see that the composition is so placed on your canvas that that
characteristic is the main thing in evidence. With this done it is a
very easy thing to concentrate on that characteristic, and to leave
out whatever tends to break it up or distract from it. This is the
only way you can simplify your subject. First by a distinct conception
of _what_ you paint it for, then by so much analysis of the whole
field of vision as will show you what does and what does not help in
the expression of it.

=Detail.=--Much detail in landscape is never good painting. Whether
big or little, your canvas must express something larger and more
important than detail. Give detail when it is needed to express
character or to avoid slovenliness. Give as much detail _where the
emphasis lies_ as will insure the completeness of representation--not
a touch more.

=Structure.=--Have your foreground details well understood in drawing
and value. This does not require the drawing of leaf and twig, but it
does require _structure_. Everything requires structure. _Structure is
fund