How to Paint Landscapes: Depth, Layers and Tutorials

Painting a landscape looks intimidating at first, because there is so much in it. Mountains, trees, sky, water, mist — and all of it is supposed to feel three-dimensional too.

The good news: landscapes are one of the most forgiving subjects there is, because nobody can measure whether the tree is standing in the right place. There are no proportions that have to be correct, as there are in a portrait. What a landscape needs instead is depth — and that comes from a few clear principles.

The Three Layers: Foreground, Middle Ground, Background

The single most important tool for a convincing landscape is dividing it into three layers.

The background is the lightest, the lowest in contrast and the softest. Mountains on the horizon are almost never dark, but pale and bluish.
The middle ground usually carries the actual subject and has medium contrast.
The foreground is the darkest, the most detailed and the highest in contrast.

If you take only one thing from this article, take this: the further away something is, the lighter, bluer and softer it becomes. This is called aerial perspective, and it convinces the eye more reliably than any perfectly constructed perspective.

Where the Horizon Line Belongs

A common beginner’s mistake is putting the horizon line in the middle of the picture. That splits the image into two equal halves and makes it static.

Put it in the upper or lower third instead, depending on what your story is. A dramatic cloudy sky needs plenty of room at the top, a meadow of flowers plenty at the bottom. There is more on this in the articles on composition and the golden ratio.

Colour in a Landscape

The second classic stumbling block is too many colours, and colours that are too saturated. Real landscapes consist mostly of muted tones — grey-green, blue-grey, a warm ochre.

A good trick is to limit yourself to three to five colours and mix everything else from them. That keeps the painting coherent. How to get a lot out of a few colours is covered in the articles on the colour wheel and on mixing watercolors.

Tutorials for Your Landscape

Each of the following guides walks you through one subject step by step. You can use them on their own or combine them into a landscape of your own.

Mountains

Mountains are the quickest route to depth in a picture, because aerial perspective almost takes care of itself on them. To the tutorial

Misty Forest

Mist is aerial perspective in its most visible form — and it forgives an enormous amount. To the tutorial

Trees

A single tree can carry a whole picture, as long as its silhouette is right. To the tutorial

Northern Lights

A landscape where the sky plays the lead and the ground is nothing but silhouette. To the tutorial

Cherry Blossom Tree

A tree with colour — and good practice for loose, dabbing textures. To the tutorial

Plants

For the foreground: leaves and plants give a landscape both depth and a frame. To the tutorial

A Simple Exercise to Start With

Take a small format, about postcard size, and paint in three tonal values only — light, medium, dark. No detail, no colour.

Lay in the lightest layer first (the sky and the distant mountains), then the middle ground, then the darkest foreground. After ten minutes you will have a landscape that reads as three-dimensional without your having finished a single tree.

That is exactly how you see that depth is a question of tonal values and not of detail. If you feel unsure here, the article on light and shadow will help.

Landscapes by Season

A landscape changes with the season mostly through colour temperature: spring is cool and light, summer saturated and high in contrast, autumn warm, winter almost colourless and blue.

For spring there is already a collection of ideas and tutorials.

And Then Take It Outside

Once you feel confident enough, take your pad outdoors. Working on location is less comfortable, but you learn more about colour and light in an hour than in three hours from a photo. How to go about it is in the article on urban sketching — it works exactly the same in nature as in a city.