Landscape Painting Tips for Intermediates
A good landscape painting captures natural beauty.
Some landscape paintings are hyper-realistic, making people feel like they’re seeing the landscape in front of them.
Other landscape paintings are more abstract, capturing a sense of how you feel when you view a landscape.
You don’t have to be an expert to paint good landscapes. Here are some of the best landscape painting tips for beginner and intermediate painters.
Simplify the Landscape
Most landscapes are busy. You might see thousands of trees or dozens of mountaintops in front of you. Your prairie landscape might be covered in millions of blades of grass. A cityscape could have hundreds of skyscrapers.
That’s why we recommend simplifying the scene. Don’t get caught up in the detail. Don’t stress about replicating each and every detail from the landscape. Give the illusion of numerous items. Create a more abstract background instead of a hyper-realistic background.
Create Focus Points on the Most Important Areas
To simplify your painting, create focus points on the most important areas.
Emphasize the right areas of your painting. Think of the things you want to focus on — like the tallest mountain of the range — then bring that focus point to life.
Tips for highlighting a focus point in a landscape painting include:
* Use more delicate brushwork on that area compared to the rest of the painting
* Use brighter or more saturated colors
* Use colors or values to create a sharp contrast between the focus point and the rest of the painting
* Use crisper brushwork or palette knives to highlight the area
With these simple strategies, you can draw a viewer’s attention to the right part of the painting.
Without a focus point, people don’t know where to focus on your painting. It looks busy and cluttered. By highlighting the right area of your landscape — like the most spectacular or detailed mountain in the range — you create an effective landscape painting.
Understand Basic Value Distribution with Landscape Painting
When painting landscapes, value distribution is important. Value distribution tells the reader which parts of the painting correspond to which parts of the landscape.
Good value distribution separates good and bad painters. It clarifies the scene for viewers, helping the scene make sense in the brain.
Value is more important than color for creating a painting. While color is important, the relative value of those colors plays a bigger role.
When painting landscapes, go from lightest to darkest:
Sky: The lightest shape in the painting should represent the sky.
Horizontal: The second lightest should be any flat or horizontal surface in the painting, as this surface reflects the sky.
Slanted and Diagonal: Inclined, slanted, and diagonal surfaces should be slightly darker, like slopes and roofs.
Vertical Elements: Upright elements should be the darkest, because they don’t reflect the sky.
If you want to take your landscape painting to the next level, then it helps to understand values. It’s a simple switch that makes a big difference in the cohesiveness and clarity of your painting.
Give the Illusion of Numbers Instead of Painting Individual Items
A mountain landscape might have thousands of trees. You could painstakingly paint each individual tree. Or, you could simply give the illusion of numbers.
Instead of painting individual trees, for example, paint the general shapes and tones of the forest. Focus on the colors of the forest and how they work together and blend. Detail a few trees but leave the rest to the viewer’s imagination.
If someone sees a patch of green on the sides of a distant mountain in your painting, then they’ll assume it’s a forest. The brain uses context clues to fill in gaps — so don’t overwhelm yourself with painting large numbers of objects.
Expand your Color Composition
One of the easiest ways to spot a beginner landscape painter is by looking at the color composition. Beginner painters use a basic color composition for landscapes, mostly consisting of browns, greens, and blues. This gives the painting a basic, two-dimensional appearance.
Expanding your color composition can take your painting to the next level. It breaks up fields of similar colors in your painting, giving your painting a more complex look.
Expand your color composition to break the monotony. This is particularly important if you find many of your paintings have a similar appearance. Create variance and break up sections of your painting.
Understand Color Temperature is Relative to Other Colors in your Painting
Beginner painters may think of color temperature as absolute. The sun is warm, so we paint it in shades of yellow, orange, and red. The lake is cool, so we paint it in shades of blue.
However, color temperature is not absolute: it’s relative.
Color temperature is a scale relative to the rest of your painting. If the rest of your painting is yellow, orange, and red, then you don’t need to add blue to signify a cooler area. Instead, add a splash of blue to your orange color. It creates a cooler appearance relative to the rest of your painting while adding more complexity.
Other Tips to Master Landscape Painting
Want to get better at painting landscapes? Here are some of our favorite tips.
Give Yourself a Time Limit: You could spend hundreds of hours perfecting a landscape painting. Consider giving yourself a time limit. Tell yourself that you have 40 minutes to complete the painting, for example. You may be surprised by what you can create in a shorter time.
Think In Terms of Lines, Shapes, and Colors: Instead of thinking of individual trees, lakes, grass, and people in your landscape painting, think in terms of lines, shapes, and colors.
Try Painting in Black and White to Understand Value: We mentioned the importance of value above. To practice your use of value, try painting in black and white or monotone. It helps you understand how each element in the painting compares to another element.
Don’t Be Afraid to Edit the Landscape: Yes, you may be working off a photograph or visual. However, if an element doesn’t work, then get rid of it. Maybe there’s an anachronistic highway in the corner of your landscape. It’s your painting. Change up the landscape to include what works.
Change Colors: Some painters want to re-create the landscape. Others want to create a more abstract version of the landscape. Change the colors to give your landscape a new appearance.
Learn How to Paint with a Virtual Painting Class
Paint and Sip Live hosts virtual painting classes every week.
Led by real DJs and experienced painting instructors, each class features step-by-step instructions for you and your friends. Follow along at home, drink your own wine, and get ready for a fun night of painting.
It’s the experience of an in-person painting class from the comfort of your own home — plus, you can drink your own wine.
Originally published at https://www.paintandsiplive.com.
