People who are learning to paint often assume that they should paint a person or a face to start with, as it is a lot smaller and more focused than something like a landscape. However they don’t realize how difficult it is to get a natural pose and facial expression on the person you are painting, and if you don’t get it right (like most don’t) then you end up with something resembling a bad actor or an alien!
Your best bet is to get some landscape tutorial books and then work on creating some simple landscapes. You don’t have to paint anything wonderful at first, just put in the sky and some hills with grass on, then start to build features onto that and experiment as you go. Landscapes use rich colors, and they are easy to recognize too, so even a basic painting can be beautiful, which will really help to motivate you as you are learning and give you work to show off to family and friends.
Working with a landscape also gives you lots of opportunity to work with depth, a concept most painters struggle with. As you have features in the foreground like maybe a gate or tree, and other features like a house in the background, then you can work on getting those proportions right to simulate the distance between them. Plus you get to work with light and shading if you want to, you can make the area under the tree shaded and have light shading the hills. This means you will never get bored with painting landscapes! You will learn something new every time you try one.
