In my oil painting class I start students with a few exercises to get used to the medium. I then launch them into a few paintings of different subjects to give them broad experience at blending, color, composition, and other basic principles. I suggest a landscape as one of these first paintings, and I've included some examples of them here. You can see a wide variety of styles, skill levels, and gestures. Hopefully this encourages people to dive in no matter how "good" they think they are in the beginning.