In studying Chinese painting, I learned a variety of things associated with the act of painting from nature. Things like Bone-means or chi. The thing that impressed  me the most was the notion of having the landscape be a given.  Then you could concentrate on that which made the artist unique. It seemed so contrary to Western thinking, to say that the artist mattered more than the subject. What particularly interested me was the idea that the artist brought out the landscape from the inside, an inner landscape.