Science reveals the principles and dynamic processes of nature: a simplified, ideal model of nature. This model - those natural principles of dynamic, iterative, or generative creativity uncovered by Science - can then also serve as a model for invention, art, and fiction, informed by myriad imperfect observed detail, and shaped through the idiosyncratic lens of the individual. 

Leonardo never painted a mere landscape, one with a frame around it.

–Christopher Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape

Here’s Leonardo Da Vinci’s sketch of the Roman waterfalls in Umbria. Forensic technology has lately revealed that he drew it in stages, with details of the rock layers added later in a different ink. I love this – drawing as a recording of learning, adding layers of understanding as we go.

Infrared scanning found this on the back side of one of Leonardo’s landscape sketches.  Palimpsest drawing, a process like the geology (the process, not the picturesque rock formation) that is its subject.

Observe and study nature.. Inquire into the hidden and powerful workings of the earth.

–Willibald Pirckheimer, 1517

(Wayne Thiebaud’s Colma Ridge, 1967-68)

We may intellectually understand that landscape is more than a piece of scenery - it is a complex set of relationships, based in ecology, carrying out multiple overlapping sets of functions, that change over time. It has agency. But how can we represent it and record it that way? What kind of pictures can convey the  complex, dynamic nature of landscape?

What I’ve found so far is mostly about BODIES and SYSTEMS, rather than perspectival space (and how the light falls at a particular moment -  leave that to architects and the photographers).  And it is the expression of this set of RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN BODIES, WITHIN A SYSTEM, and sometimes relationships between an overlapping constellation of systems, that really make a good landscape picture, not just singular entities by themselves, and not the postcard/snapshot of space going out to the horizon or where ever.

1. An engaging system of landscape, metaphor, and body

Here is a Tibetan painting which revolves around the giant seated figure of the Shakyamuni Buddha, and depicts scenes from his former lives, with themes of compassion, forgiveness, and wisdom, set among a landscape of plains, rivers, mountains and ravines.

The approach is systematic and consistent. The number of types of things in the painting, and the palette, is limited. There is little variation in size within one type, adding to the sense of systemic consistency.

From the scaling, palette, central positioning, and radiant attitude we might guess that the seated figure and the landscape are one and the same thing.

The painting invites the viewer to both examine closely and “read” the multiplicity of stories, and also to feel a psychic connection with the large vibrant figure, which floats calmly in full frontal confrontation with the viewer.

The Banquet of SeungWangMo, 18thc, detail

2. The landscape as a collection of systems, each with its own set of internal relationships.

A Korean screen painting from the late 18th century depicts the arrival of various immortals at the peach banquet given by the Queen Mother of the West. The painting is also drawn with a system, of smooth, controlled lines, in the happy palette of late spring. Here the lines form different groups of complex or curling patterns, which lend dynamism throughout the composition. 

This painting is also not about depicting a moment, of freezing forms or masses in light, but more about creating an overall effect, which is built up from small patterns outward. That overall effect is of a living thing, more dynamic and more timeless, because it is not a single-viewpoint image or a snapshot moment, frozen in time. The artist has organised the landscape into related systems of fog, vegetation, people and rocks, in a complex, harmonious, joyful interaction.

3. Conveying the landscape through a collection of bodies.

Many artists have used a technique of conveying unbounded landscape space by drawing a number of bodies to inhabit that landscape. The bodies reveal the landscape in at least two ways: by interacting with each other, and diminishing in size toward the horizon, giving a sense of perspective across the ground plane. 

Pieter Bruegel the Elder uses this technique with a lot of imagination and specificity. One painting in particular, “Luilekkerland” (“Land of Plenty”), 1567, is interesting because of the unusual sense of place and motion it conveys, using little more than 3 prostrate bodies and some pies.

KG Wood also uses this technique in the “Animate Creation” series of etchings he made in 1885. How can we sense the air in a drawing, unless it is filled with mayflies?

4. Conveying the landscape through contrasting dramas

There is a large screen with an ink painting called “Drunken Li Bo” by Soga Shohaku (1730-81). There’s an orchestration of opposite and balanced relationships between different elements of the picture: Very fluid brush strokes convey a densely twisted pine and the hardened, surly face of one of Li Bo’s retainers; the rowdy group of figures at the right is set off by the silent, empty landscape on the left. 

Can human emotion and drama be part of the natural system? At least, they can activate our reading of it. Blissful Li Bo, his kinship with the leaning pine, the amusement or frustration of his entourage, these emotions playing off each other read as a sort of dynamic network. And physically, the smaller figures in their awkward struggle to heft up the fat and swooning Li Bo, visually resonate with the large tree and landforms directly behind them. The collective effect of all these relationships (maybe because we see emotions reacting to each other) is to make the landscape seem more dynamic. Emotions also heavily influence our sense of time, and therefore process.

5. Invisible forces

Gravity, wind, and tide are some of the invisible forces that enliven, connect and shape the landscape over time. Hokusai was able to depict the invisible wonderfully and unpretensiously – People crossing a suspension bridge weigh it down and depend on its tethers in the dramatic topography. The ocean tide pulls a fisherman’s lines straight and taut from his hand.  Papers fly from the hands of travellers through a windblown marsh. Could the invisible forces be shown in a systematic way rather than through individual incidents? A fourth invisible force: microbial life.

6. Up to their elbows.. hands and feet convey tactile relationships

A very simple but effective method of making a landscape more than merely pictorial is to emphasize the tactile aspects of the landscape rather than the visual. Show hands and feet of people touching or immersed in landscape elements. 

“Landscape with Pan and Syrinx” 

Michetti’s “Shepherdess” 

Millet’s or Van Gogh’s “Noonday Rest” - we feel the weight of the bodies crushing the straw, making changes to the movable landscape materials. 

In Van Gogh’s work the brushstrokes themselves are a system, similar to the landscape of the immortals arriving to the Queen Mother of the West’s banquet, again allowing the landscape to be perceived as a collection of systems, each with its own set of internal relationships. 

In these preindustrial examples, the systems all seem to harmonise with each other. What drawing depicts the violence of agriculture on the land? What picture shows the awkwardness of recent disturbance to an ecosystem, and the knitting together of recovery?

For modern landscapes we may have multiple systems that obviously ignore each other, clash, or compete.

Part Two. Engaging the Body in Space

The other important part of any drawing is the body of the viewer, or the proposed occupier of the landscape, whether in imagination in “pure” art or in reality as in a landscape architecture proposal. Where is this person and what are they doing?

We know that if they are really going to interactively experience the landscape, this person is on the ground, and we know that this person is in a body. This is the basis of their physical relationship with the landscape; so it is also the hinge point of any design for that landscape. 

Chinese martial art offers a very well developed set of knowledge regarding successful manipulation of the body in space, and their possible translations to engaging the body in landscape depiction.

1. Know your location and orientation in the landscape, and know your opponent’s.

Know where your viewer is in relation to your picture, and where your inhabitant is in relation to your landscape. This has to do with creating specific relationships between the inhabitant and landscape elements.

2. Operate with a balance of relaxation and force

There must be areas of tightly controlled focus in the drawing, balanced with large areas that are vaguer. That is how we perceive the landscape in real life.

3. Understand lines of force and direction

Which way is the inhabitant going to move? How are the landscape elements connected to each other? This should match the eye-direction of the person looking at your picture.

4. Maintain a relationship to your vertical axis

Remember either the vertical axis or the horizon or both. Of these two, the vertical axis is actually more important.

5. There are moments of flying

Don’t be afraid to include a sense of daring, danger, or the impossible. 

6. Meet your opponent head on and make eye contact

Really take a stand on where your viewer is in relation to your picture, and where your inhabitant is in relation to your landscape. Make a really large picture, relate it to the architecture of the room you’re in.

7. Master basic movements to construct more complex sequences

Have good control of individual lines, and be able to make them do what you want them to do. Use repetition of something simple as a device.

8. Practice, practice, practice, listen to your coach, and practice more

Draw, draw, study, draw, craft your final pictures with care, mindfulness, and effort.

Finally, if you take the person own their terms, in reality the self does not think of itself as finite, although they are in a finite body. So we also end up with the need for large numbers of multiples or metaphysical drawings, as explored in part one.

Part Three. Depicting systems

Modern landscape elements such as security cameras, traffic signs and signals, or waste collection items have not been invented for their picturesqueness in 3D space. They are part of a system based on functional needs and algorithmic thinking. As such, they likely won’t look good if depicted in natural light and perspective, as we see them in our day to day. The true beauty of modern systems is in the intelligence of their functioning and the complexity of their systems. They are best represented through diagrams and algorithmic flow charts, which is how they were conceived.