How to draw · Challenge · about 45 minutes

Mountain Landscape

You need: Paper, Pencil, Eraser. Optional: A ruler for the guide lines, Colored pencils: blues, greens, gray and brown.

Thick lines: draw these now. Thin gray: already drawn. Dashed: light guides you erase later.

Finished

1. Split your paper into three bands with two light guide lines: the background at the top, the middle ground, and the foreground nearest to you.
2. Draw the nearest thing first. Make a tall, light guide triangle on the right for a big pine tree that reaches from near the top into the foreground.
3. Inside the triangle, draw the pine as five layers of branches. Each layer droops down to a point and is wider than the one above it.
4. Draw the trunk under the lowest branches, a little wider at the bottom. Then erase the guide triangle.
5. Draw two big rocks at the bottom left. Draw the front rock first, then the rock behind it, stopping where it meets the front rock.
6. Draw the far edge of the foreground: a gentle wavy line near the lower guide. Stop it at the rocks and the trunk, because they are in front.
7. Now the middle ground. Draw a hill on each side that slopes down toward the middle. Stop the lines at the foreground edge and at the tree.
8. Add small pine trees on the hills. They are much smaller than the big pine because they are farther away. Size shows distance.
9. Between the hills, draw the far shore of a lake: a nearly flat line just under the top guide. It disappears behind the hills and small pines.
10. Now the background. Draw four mountains of different heights in a row, stopping where they reach the hills, the lake or the tree.
11. Draw the tallest mountain behind them. Its sides stop where they meet the mountains in front. That is overlap: it pushes the tall peak back.
12. Far behind, draw a row of thin, light peaks. Stop wherever a nearer mountain is in front. Faraway things look pale and simple.
13. Erase the two band guide lines.
14. Draw a zigzag snow line across the top of each mountain. Taller mountains get bigger snow caps.
15. From each peak, draw a wobbly ridge line down the mountain. The ridge splits the side facing the light from the side in shadow.
16. Draw a small sun in the top left corner. The light comes from there, so every shadow in your picture will be on the right side of things.
17. Shade the right side of each ridge with light lines spaced far apart. Far mountains only get the lightest value: that is atmospheric perspective.
18. Shade the middle ground one step darker: closer lines on the shady slope of the left hill and the right half of each small pine. Add a few flat ripples on the lake.
19. Add strong details up close: a line where each rock turns away from the light, a few cracks, grass tufts and bark lines.
20. Make the foreground darkest. Cross-hatch the shady sides of the rocks and their shadows on the grass, then hatch the right half of the big pine and trunk.

Practice here

Tip: Keep guide lines light so they erase cleanly. A ruler helps for the two band lines.