Portrait vs.Landscape

I have a different notion about "general impressions" about portrait/landscape described in The Critique Handbook.  If a landscape is drawn in a landscape format, the nature looks wide (of course!) and gives us the impression it is embracing the earth, people, buildings, and nature underneath it.  Sometimes, just like I felt when I first came to the States, landscape format gives the impression of the pressure from the widely spread sky with stormy and ominous clouds. 

I am used to the portrait format when landscape is portrayed.  My parents always have/had a scrawl or two in the alcove.  Every time I visited museums, art shops, and friends' and relatives' in Japan, I enjoyed seeing scrawls and block prints in "portrait" format which shows sky much higher than landscape format.  I have had several scrawls and block prints in our house wherever we lived in the States.  Most landscapes includes tall mountains, precipices, and/or cliffs with steep roads, ocean, lakes, and/or river below them.  But I have a couple of block prints with different colors of high blue sky over a horizon.  The portrait landscape gives me feelings of awe and respect for the nature.  The sky is far above beyond our reach but it watches and protects us.  On September 11, 2011 during the 10th anniversary of 9-11.David Muir on ABC said, "we can final retake the sky," while looking at the new World Trace Center.  I do not believe human beings can even take the sky.  He might have been talking figuratively, but we cannot even take a portion of sky; instead we should appreciate what is given by the nature.

One of my favorite Hokusai drawings is "A Dragon over Mount. Fuji."  Different from Mt. Fuji described in his famous block prints, this Fuji is elongated.  A dragon, an imaginary creature who is supposed to control clouds and rain, is going up to the sky.  Very simple sumi-e (brush painting), and the sky is light brown, but I feel the movement of clouds behind the black smoke.  If this is drawn in portrait, it is not to going to give us the feelings of awe and respect to the high sky.

My conclusion is I am going to include sky with/without clouds in portrait format.