Drawing Mountains

Mountain landscapes captivate not only active hikers but also the artists among us. In this tutorial, we will draw mountains together using pencils and colored pencils, though you can also use other tools such as charcoal pencils or watercolors.

Finding a Reference for Mountains

As always, we start by looking for suitable referencess for our drawing. Ideally, it’s best to draw a mountain directly on location, but if you’re not traveling or don’t have mountains right outside your door, you’ll need an alternative.

Photo by Trawaydo

You can find numerous great pictures online, or perhaps you have some photos from a past trip that you can use. For this drawing idea, it’s not necessary to use perfectly sharp image material. We will use our reference mainly for orientation and draw quite a bit ourselves.

Choosing Colors for the Picture

To use a harmonious color palette, we can choose appropriate colors for our picture before we start drawing. For my drawing, I want to use a cool, fresh color palette, so I primarily choose different shades of blue and green.

Drawing Mountains Step-by-Step

Drawing the Sketch

With the sketch, we can capture all the elements of our drawing. If we don’t like something, we can still correct it at this stage. If we were to start directly with the detailed drawing, we might notice too late that something is off and might not be able to correct it.

I decide to include a lake in my landscape and first draw a horizontal line across the drawing surface. If you’re not in the mood to draw water and reflections, feel free to replace the lake with something else, like a large meadow.

Next, I sketch the mountains in the middle and background with simple lines. In front of the mountains, I draw small hills and landmasses on both sides, where I plan to place trees later. Once everything is done, I turn the paper 90 degrees and try to draw the lines mirrored on the other side of the horizontal line. While this part doesn’t need to be perfect, the reflection should not look like a completely different landscape.

Drawing Mountains

It’s best to work step by step from the background to the foreground in this picture. The further an element is in the background, the lighter we should draw it. Accordingly, we should draw all elements in the foreground darker. So let’s start with the mountains.

Grab one of your light-colored pencils and decide where the light hits the mountains and which areas of the mountains are in shadow. On all illuminated areas, apply the color lightly, and for the shaded areas, press harder.

To create structures, you can incorporate long lines in places to form edges in the mountains and add short lines in other areas. If you want to add snow to the mountains, try to draw the peaks even lighter or leave them white. When drawing the mountains, pay attention to clean, sharp outline lines – even for the light areas. This way, the focus will always remain on the mountains later in the picture.

Tip: Do not apply the color all the way down to the horizontal line; instead, let it fade gently. This gives the illusion of fog and looks good both with water and a meadow.

Drawing Hills

Next, let’s focus on the hills. Unlike the mountains, the outlines here don’t need to be sharp because we don’t want to draw the viewer’s attention away from the mountains.

To make the hills look covered in vegetation, you should move the colored pencils over the paper in a circular or U-shaped motion. It’s important to do this consistently over the entire area of the hills. If you choose the U-shaped motion, the resulting peaks should point upward. This will make them look like treetops.

I use a light green for my hills and then add a layer of blue. Green because the hill is covered with trees, and blue because the hills are still far from the viewer.

Drawing Trees

Now we draw the trees on the two landmasses in front of the hills. First, I use a dark brown for the landmasses. Then I draw the trees with a green colored pencil. The trees don’t need to be perfectly drawn. It’s enough to suggest them roughly.

In my case, the colors are too light, so I use a 2B pencil and draw over both the trees and the landmasses. The trees should stand out in terms of darkness from the mountains in the background to create better depth.

In my picture, the hills behind the trees now look too light, so I also draw over the area with a pencil (an HB, however).

Drawing the Reflection on the Water

Reflections don’t have to be as difficult as they look. Essentially, we draw all elements again but move the pencil in lines parallel to the horizontal line.

It’s important to use the right colors in the reflection. For example, since I used a 2B pencil for the trees, I also use it in the reflection and draw over the green lines.

Finally, you can add a color for the sky to your mountain landscape. Don’t forget to reflect the sky in the water as well.