This book is terrible. It doesn't have much text in it, but what there is is awful. This book is filled mostly with emotional and philosophical ramblings instead of useful and practical information that teaches you to paint landscapes. The author says painting must be learned by practice and can't be taught. Then why did he write a book? Carlson's own paintings and drawings are of poor quality. They are crude and sloppy. I don't think such a poor artist is worth learning from. I wouldn't want to paint as poorly as he did. This is a stupidly written, uninformative book, a waste of money. There must be MUCH better books than this one about landscape painting. I was terribly misled by the other reviews of this book!