How To Paint a Landscape

Leave all of your brushes at home except for a single filbert brush. As you progress in landscapes, add and experiment with other brushes.

Bring lots of water and rags.

In the middle of the day, go set up your easel In a comfortable location that has a good view.

Using the pencil, sketch your painting on your sketch pad. Make only very rough shapes — triangles, arcs, blobs —to give it a general look and feel.

When you’re happy with the composition, it’s time to work out the values, or lightness and darkness. On a scale of 1 to 10, choose a key object with a middle value.

Eye your composition, or structure. What’s lighter than the object you chose? What’s darker? What’s in between and by how much?

Using that value as your key, begin choosing values for all of the other objects in your composition.

Once you’re done, turn to the canvas and select a color for the key object.

Paint the rough shape of your key object.

Choose an object touching your key object. Choose a color and assign it a middle value. Paint its rough shape. Stick to the middle values, avoiding highlights and shadows at this stage.

Keep working around your composition until you’ve blocked off the whole piece.

Step back and look at your composition. Does it feel right?

Now go back in to your piece and begin assigning and painting colors with more accurate values for ever-smaller shapes around the piece. Your contrast will begin to develop.

Add in your shadows in. Generally, you’ll want a cooler color. Avoid pure black.

Finally, add the highlights. These will be something in the family of the color of your light source, but avoid pure white.

When you’re satisfied with your painting, sign the front, and, when it’s dry, use a marker on the back to identify the title, place, and date.