How to Paint a Landscape Part Two

Establishing a land surface:

By now, you should have your sky, clouds, mountain, and water.  In this section, we are going to focus mainly on the foreground.  Take all of the colors that you used for your mountain, red, blue, yellow, black, and brown.  Mix them all together.  Make sure you have a lot, but don’t over-do it.  You can always add more paint to your palette.  Spread this color all over the white area that you haven’t covered yet.  This is just so your plants don’t have white underneath them. 

Now we’re going to add some grass.  Just below the mountain, cover the dark by making a few blades of grass.  Take your fan brush.  (You can also use your 3 inch brush, but I prefer a more delicate display.  Take your brush, make sure it is clear of paint and dryed, and swipe your brush in little streaks from bottom to top using sap green maybe mixed a little with medium green or yellow ochre, depending on the hue you want your grass to be.  Now we can start having a bit of fun, and make some bushes.  This is where the creativity kicks in.  Not that I’m saying you’re not creative, oh no.  It’s just that two bushes never look the same, at least for me, but even so, people can identify them as your bushes.  For making my bushes, I especially love to use light yellow, yellow ochre, sap green, and red.  This gives a nice spring affect.  Take your fan brush and start with your first bush the farthest back.  Start from the bottom and make Little flings with your brush.  Do this in a small semicircle.  If you want, you can add extra little branches.  To make the bushes look more than little flings of paint, take your palette knife and scratch from one source at the bottom of the bush, to multiple areas of the bush that stick out, or that you think a branch should be.  You may either leave it to this, or you can add a little bit of brown to the branches.  Simply take your palette knife after finished scratching and gently run some burnt umber or raw umber down the branch in a thin stream.  Repeat this process for as many bushes as you want.