Learn to Draw Landscapes: Exploring Diverse Environments in Graphite

1. Introduction: Nature has inspired artists for centuries, and I want to invite you to take some of that inspiration for yourself. With my new course, learn to draw landscapes. My name is Paul Richmond and I love to draw. I draw all the time. I take sketch books with me when I travel, and I love capturing the beauty that I see around me on paper. In this course, I want to show you some of the skills and techniques that I use to take a flat piece of paper and open it up and make it feel like you could walk right into a beautiful landscape if you're a beginner, this course will be a great introduction to some of the fundamentals of drawing, including working with light and shadow, how to create a sense of depth. How to break things down into shapes and planes and sketch them out on the paper before getting to detail over the course of 30 video lessons that are only 10 min each, you are going to make so many landscape drawings. I've been a professional artist for about 20 years. And when I graduated from art school, I started a mural painting business and painted murals all over the place for awhile. I've done over 400 Novel Cover illustrations and my paintings are exhibited in galleries and sold to collectors all around the world. I've done commissions for Disney and Netflix. Some pretty notable collectors like Teresa Vaughn and Dolly Parton. I paint and draw all different kinds of subject matter. But when I was first starting out, one of the things that I really focused on was landscape drawing. And I found that the skills that I developed from working on so many landscapes that helped me in other areas of my artistic life to this course is going to be all about appreciating the beauty of nature. So often we are flying through our day. We don't always have the time to stop and really look what's around us. This course is an invitation to slow down, take a closer look and draw what we see on paper. You don't need a lot of fancy materials, just paper and pencil. You will end up with so many beautiful drawings by the end of this course. Surprise yourself with what you can draw them, and it's just the beginning. My goal is to teach you some of these foundational skills and also encourage you to take them and adapt them to your own artistic practice. Your own spin on it, find your own creative voice. I want to give you some of the basic skills and encourage you to figure out how you want to use them. And I promised to make it fun and stress-free by telling you lots of bad jokes and giggling all the way through. Everyone has a creative side, but so often, especially as adults, it gets pushed to the back burner and I want to invite you to reconnect with that. This is all about the process. This class is great for beginners, but also artists with a bit more experienced who just want a refresher and get back to the basics of drawing. I can't wait to start drawing with you because practice makes perfect 2. Projects: In this course, we are going to make a lot of landscape drawings together and I am so excited, we'll start off by doing some quick drawings of different elements of nature, just 10 min per drawing so that we can get used to looking and capturing what we see on paper. And then we'll start to add a little bit more time and go more in-depth into different techniques will be traveling together to so many different beautiful landscapes or mountains or desert to the ocean. So get ready to go on a little journey with me. We'll finish the course by spending the last 11 lessons working on one landscape drawing that encapsulates a lot of the ideas that we will have worked through in all the other lessons. So whether you like to do quick drawing or if you like to dig in and spend a little bit more time on your work, this course has at all. I can't wait to get started. Let's go 3. Materials: Let's talk about the materials that you'll need for this course. I've cut it intentionally, very minimal because all you really need is a pencil and paper. I have two different types of drawing pencils. I have a to B and a for b, those are both softer lead. Anything with a B is a soft lead and that just means it makes it a little bit darker. Mark the lead comes off onto the paper a little bit easier. So that's what I'll be using. You can use any kind of pencil you want though, if you have a certain type that you prefer, use that. But if you don't know what you prefer, this might be a good place to start. I'm using this nine inch by 12 inch mixed media sketchbook. You can use any type of paper that you want, but just make sure you have a bunch because we are going to be doing a lot of drawings. I like the mixed media sketchbooks because the paper is a little bit heavier and we will be doing some shading, so that just holds up a little bit better. So whatever kind of paper you choose, just choose something a little bit on the thicker side so it can handle that. And then lastly, research. This is a kneaded eraser. They come in a little rectangle form like this, and then you just sort of squished them around. And what I like about them is, well, a few things when they get dirty, you just need them. That's why they're called kneaded erasers. They are self-cleaning, but then also you can shape them if you want it to fit into a certain level spot, any kind of eraser will work. And then you just need some kind of device to watch me on. But you've already got that because you're watching me right now, and that's it. So sharpen your pencils and let's get started. 4. Quick Sketch: Tree: Hi everyone and welcome to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson we are going to be doing a quick sketch together of a tree. Happy journaling. Let's jump right in. I am breaking in a brand new sketch book today, which is always an exciting moment for an artist, but also it can be a little intimidating. Those perfect, clean white pages can make you feel like you don't want to mess them up. So the best thing to do is to just jump right in and start drilling. And I thought it would be good to start this course by doing some quick sketches of some different elements of nature that show up a lot in landscape art and what could be better to begin with then, a beautiful tree. So we'll just be focusing on sketching it today, getting the lines and I'm using a for B pencil. You can use whatever pencil you want, or pen or colored pencil. Whatever you feel like pastels. This is a very open course. I like for people to explore, do their own thing. I will talk you through what I'm doing, but I also encourage you to ignore me if you want it and approach it your own way as well. So I am starting though by sketching out the structural shapes of the trunk and branches. And it's not necessary to get every single one exactly right, Just kinda get the essence of it in there. But this helps me to understand what's supporting the tree. Before I start doing leaves or any of the tiny branches, I like to kinda prioritize getting the bigger shapes first. And I think that's a good general rule for drawing. Not that not that there are really any rules. Maybe guideline is a better word, but prioritizing the bigger, more important elements can really help you find your way into a drawing if you're just starting out, maybe you haven't done a lot of art before. You might look at an image like this and find it a bit overwhelming. That's okay. Every artist feels that way. I've been doing art a long time and I still feel like that sometimes myself. That just means you're looking closely and you're taking it all in and that's okay. So prioritizing what you're seeing you kinda go through and visually distill it down to the most important parts. That's a great way to kinda just start finding your way into it. And another, I will call it a pro tip. I'd like to share a lot of those actual Hawley pro tip got to have that little branding. And so by first Pali pro tip for you is to just break down whatever it is that you are drawing into simple shapes. Don't get too caught up with important tiny minute details right away. Focus on just getting the big shapes. The end you have to just get something down on the paper and it might be completely wrong. That's okay. At least you got it on there and then you can look at it and compare it with the reference and change it. That's really important aspect of learning to draw is not being afraid to make mistakes because everybody does. And that's how you learn. That's how you grow. Studying a drawing to figure out what isn't working is truly one of the best ways to improve and to learn. And I still do that all the time myself and my paintings and in my drawings. I definitely do not get everything right the first time. It's all about just stopping and evaluating and looking closer. But I think that that is one of the things that I love most about landscape drawing in landscape painting is that it does just give you an opportunity to slow down and look closer. I guess, not slowing down too much when it's a ten-minute lesson, but still you can draw a lot longer than this if you want to. But it's an invitation to just pause and look closer at something and really appreciate it. We go through life so quickly and don't always pay attention to everything that's so wonderful around us. So I think that's what I love probably the most about drawing landscapes in particular is that it just lets you really appreciate and enjoy the beauty of nature. Alright, so I have my main branch shapes. Now I'm just going to draw a very sketchy, almost like an outline really of the overall kinda clump of leaves up there. I'm not I'm not trying to draw each individual leaf or anything. I'm just drawing very scribbly little line here just to indicate where I see those different clumps of leaves and how they're shaped, how they fit together. Drawing is also sort of like putting together a puzzle. You get one area that's working and then you just start to connect it with the other parts. And sometimes you'll put it in a puzzle piece and you'll realize, oh, that's not where that one goes. That's okay. You just erase it. That's what that's what this little guy is. Four. So don't worry about that. Draw lightly. That would be another suggestion I would make for you, especially if you're just starting out, see how I'm holding the pencil really far back towards the back. That helps me to not get too tight and heavy handed. I tend to be a pretty heavy handed artist. I like to make dark, aggressive lines. I don't know why it doesn't really fit my personality, but that's, that's how I draw. I guess I'm kinda bold, so maybe it fits. But if you do that, then if you do that too soon, then you're pretty locked into that shape and that line. And because it's difficult to erase, it makes deep grooves and the papers, so you're kind of stuck with it a little bit more. So if you start off lighter and sketchier and looser like this, then it's a lot easier to make adjustments. So that helps me a lot. It just kinda keeps me from getting too locked in too quickly to anything. Okay. Let's see a little clump of leaves here now you're not going to get every single branch and every little detail exactly, right, or maybe you will. But that's okay. We're just kinda get it going for the essence of it here. That's a good way to think about this when you, especially when you're doing a quick sketch, you just trying to capture the essence. And then once I go through and I get the main shapes laid out, then that's when I like to go back and clean up the edges to do more interesting line. So if you end up having some time for that, that's great. But if not, that's okay too. You might only get so far as drawing just kinda like a very loose sketchy version of this tree today. And that's great. Whatever you, whatever you end up with. It's an awesome First, first drawing for our course. Don't judge it too harshly. Don't judge it at all. Just let it be. Drawings like this are wonderful because they're low commitment level. You're just really trying to capture what you see and then move on. But if you end up really loving it, then you can just press pause on this video and keep going as long as you want. And you might be surprised how long you can really spend on a drawing like this. Because one thing that you will notice is that as you're drawing and even as you're going back in now as I'm going back and refining some of my lines here, you start seeing so many more things. There's all these little branches and little shapes and interesting leaf, little clumps of leaves that I didn't notice the first time around. So you could spend a long time on this, just doing line work, let alone shading. And we'll get to that all later in the course. But for now, I'm just focusing on lines making kind of interesting, interesting lines. You can vary the pressure of the lines that you're using and that can make the drawing more interesting. So for example, making the lines a little thicker, in some parts, thinner and others can just give it a little bit more life. That can be an indication maybe of where there's more shadow. You might use thicker line. That's one way to think about it, or just kinda to add some visual interests to the drawing. Again, this is all just a suggestion. If your drawing is leading you in a different direction, follow it. It knows best. Alright, I'm having fun with this. I hope you are too. I hope that this was a nice way to just kinda ease into this course. We're going to do a few more quick sketches like this. And then we'll move on to some other fun stuff. I have so much in store for you. I'm so excited to get to spend this time really exploring different aspects of landscape drawing. With all of you. We're going to have so much fun. Alright, I'm just going to put some finishing touches on this, including drawing a few of the negative spaces. So negative space is basically like the opening and the leaves. So positive space in a drawing is the subject matter, is that in this case the tree and negative space is what's around it, the sky in this, in this case. So don't forget about those negative spaces. That can always be a really interesting aspect, especially of drawing trees and other webs of branches and the openings in the leaves and all that kinda stuff. Alright, I've got my scribble technique happening here. Scribbling is a great way to just get some quick essence of leaves. A few more branches. It's great job everyone. I hope you had fun with that. In our next lesson, we're going to be doing another quick drawing this time of a mountain. See you then? 5. Quick Sketch: Mountain: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes on Paul Richmond. And today we are going to be doing a quick sketch of a mountain. So sharpen those pencils. Happy journaling. Today we're gonna go climbing in the mountains. Again, pencil, paper. Let's get started. You ready? We're going to sketch this out and then if there's time, maybe we'll do a little bit of shading because there are some nice shadows on this. Again, just kinda pick a point and very lightly sketch in the basic shapes that you see first, even if you just start with a true triangle, that would be enough to get it placed onto the page. I think that's a good way to think about it too. When you're, when you're starting out a drawing like this, you are basically trying to just figure out how to place those elements that you're seeing in front of you onto the paper. And there may be some adjustments that are needed with that and that's okay. For one thing, your paper might be a different proportion than the reference you're looking at. This reference is kind of a more vertical orientation. So depending on the shape of your sketchbook, you might be working on more of a square, you may be working on more of a horizontal. So be sure to take that into account. T, You can always choose to crop images differently. Just be aware of that. That's something that not, not a lot of beginning artists always think about the relationship between the shape of your paper and the frame of reference of your image. Alright, so I'm just going to lightly sketch in, a lot of this is in shadow, but you can see that there are some interesting other kind of hills and mountains and rocky things happening down here. So I'm just very lightly sketching some of that stuff in right now. Just sort of dissect the image. That's another way to think about it. You're just breaking it apart in reconstructing it on your, on your paper. The beauty of drawing landscapes. It's, it's a little bit more forgiving than say, doing a realistic portrait or something where if you get one line in the wrong place, it's not going to look like that person. But if you get one line a little bit wonky on here, it's still probably going to look like a mountain. So don't stress about it. Alright, so now I've got my basic lines, my basic shapes. So I'm just going to go back and clean up the lines. I really want to pay attention. There's a lot of interesting, just lumps and bumps. I think that the lines on this mountain are really beautiful and I wanted to take my time and just appreciate those. I'm using thicker lines where I see the mountain kind of going more into shadow. So that's a way to make the line drawing just feel a little bit more interesting and reflective of what you're seeing there. I'm making adjustments as I go to my quick sketch. Line was lower. And you can see how easy it is to just erase that. Pretend like it never happened. Don't be afraid to make adjustments to your drawings as you go. That's a pro tip. And you might not think that prose have to do that a lot, but it's a little inside secret. We do the secret. Everybody does. Everybody has to make adjustments and corrections as they go. But I think I've said this before in other classes that one of the things I have noticed after spending a lot of years teaching artists, when they're first starting out, those mistakes can make you feel like you're really doing something wrong and like, I'm not good at this, I should just quit and I don't know what I'm doing. It just triggers all of those impostor syndrome feelings that a lot of people have tried to try to work through that. If you experienced that, if you, as you're drawing, if you have a voice in your head that's saying, I'm no good at this. I don't know what I'm doing. Just say, Okay, thank you. But I'm going to keep going anyway. It's no big deal. The mistakes are the best part. That's how you, that's how you align. Alright? I'm really enjoying just looking at some of these different shapes that happen where we're seeing over the other side of the mountain here. You can, we're going to talk more about lighting way on down the road. But you can tell him this image, the lighting is coming from the right and that's why there's a dark shadow on the left side. Dark shadow on the left side here. In lighting is really important element in landscape art because it allows us to understand The form, the way that the light wraps around the objects helps us to really see how, that, how that forum lays the different planes of that structure. And it takes it from looking like a just a two-dimensional thing on your paper to creating that illusion of being three-dimensional. I think that's one of the magical things about making landscapes is that we're starting on a, on a flat paper. If you're doing landscape paintings, it's a flat canvas, but by the time you're done, you've created something that it feels like you could just walk right into. And to me that's just magical. Alright, I'm going to keep the lines down here, even though it's in shadow, I'm going to keep them kind of late because there's not a lot of contrast. If you look in that area, the shapes are much more subtle than what we see happening up here because there's light against dark. So I'm using the line thickness to talk, talk a little bit about the amount of contrast that I'm seeing between light and dark in those areas. Alright, so now that I have the basic shapes down, I'm going to do a little bit of shading on this one. Nothing to, nothing too detailed. And it is completely fine for you to not do this if you want to just focus on getting the lines. That is okay. But I know that there are some overachievers out there who might want to take it a step further. So I'm going to start on the shadow side of the mountain. And I'm just going to very lightly shade in the whole thing. I'm not trying to make this a super realistic drawing in terms of hiding all the lines. If you want a drawing to really feel photographic like photo realism, then you're not going to want to see your lines. You'll use your camouflage them with shadows and highlights because you don't see outlines on things in the real-world. But in this case I want, I want the drawing to look like a drawing. So I'm leaving the lines and I'm just kinda doing very light subtle shading. So that gives us a hint of what the light's doing without being too overbearing. So now I've covered the whole shadow side that's missed this little spot. Don't want to forget you, sorry. You ever talk to your art? I do a lot. I try not to do it too much when I'm teaching so that you don't think I'm crazy, but I do it a lot when I'm by myself, so alright, now I'm going back in and if you see where on the shadow side it gets even darker over here. And then pretty much all down here. So I'm just doing another pass over top to make that a little bit darker. And it kinda goes right up into this part. Here. See how with very little effort, we've kinda given the viewer a sense of the lighting in the image and it just makes that, makes that mountain feel so much more dimensional. Now, you'll notice that as it goes down on the right, it falls into shadow a little bit over here too. It's not as much as down here. So I'm going to bump this a little bit darker. It's always about push and pull when you're working with light and shadow. Because we're working up from a white piece of paper. So you have to really kinda factor that in as well and know that you're just kinda inching your way towards dark. I haven't gotten nearly as dark as it really is in the reference, but I've done enough to give us an idea. And then I'm just gonna make some little marks and little almost like scribbly shapes just to indicate more of the texture. Texture is also a great thing to think about when you're doing a landscape, because everything within the landscape usually has a different texture. If you're doing grass and then tree trunks and think about mountains and water, maybe, you know, everything has a different surface. And thinking about the way it would feel if you were to touch that, that thing can help you to understand a little bit more about how to draw it. So just trying to simulate some of that texture in your, in your quick drawings if you have time to keep saying that because I don't want anybody stressing out. This is supposed to be fun. No stress, no pressure. I try to be as soothing and calming as I possibly can. I think I am about finished with this drawing. I'm happy with the way that looks. I hope you are happy with yours too. Feel free to keep going as long as you want. Awesome job you did it. Alright, in our next lesson, more quick sketching still this time we are going to be drawing rocks. See you then? 6. Quick Sketch: Rocks: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm still Paul Richmond, and today we're going to be drawing rocks, which I promise is a lot more fun than it sounds. Be drilling. Want to be showing me go, gorgeous. Hey, time for one more quick sketching. This time I wanted to have us draw some rocks and maybe doesn't sound too exciting. But look at that gorgeous image. I love the color. We're not gonna get to really get into color today, but it's fun to look at while we draw. I picked this for a couple of reasons and I'll talk to you as I'm drawing so we don't waste any time. But just again, start by drawing the simple shapes. Don't get too detailed to quickly. But as I was starting to say a couple of reasons why I picked this image. First of all, I love the textures of rocks. So I thought that would be fun for us to play around with a little bit here. And also, this photo does a really nice job of introducing something that is very important in landscape art. And that is the concept of perspective and creating depth. And that's something that we will go a lot more in depth into as we go through this course. But this is a nice way to introduce it because it really shows you that idea in a very simple way. If you look at these rocks, you can see how as they start moving back in space, they get smaller. And that right there is the essence of perspective, drawing. That word, that perspective that terrifies so many artists when they're first starting out because you have visions of having to draw these vanishing points and lines and every sounds very, everything very technical. When you're doing landscapes, that kind of thing isn't always necessary unless there are a lot of buildings are structural things with straight lines in the drawing, then you might have to have a little bit more of an awareness of that. But, but true landscapes where it's really just focusing on nature, use a little bit more of something called atmospheric perspective. Which is the way that the lighting and the values, the different shades of light and dark helped to create that sense of space. But then also just the relative size of things. You can see how, especially once we go from this area to the rocks that are back here in the middle ground, they get much smaller. So try to quickly sketch in as many as you can. It's not necessary to draw every single rock. I'm going to let you know when we're about halfway through because that's the point when I think it would be good for us to start doing a little bit more with the texture and playing with wines and shading and all that kinda stuff. So draw as many as you can and however many you have when we get to that halfway point will be perfect even if it's just one. But try to give you at least try and get a few that go back in space because I think it would be fun to start to see that happening in your drawings to create that illusion of depth on the page. So very sketchy, very loose here, just kinda get them locked in. This is another case where you can think about the positive and negative space and use that negative space. Here's your pro tip for this lesson. Negative space can really help you create your drawings. If you actually draw. If you think of it as though you were drawing the shape of the negative space. So normally, like right now we're drawing these rocks. I imagine in your mind you are thinking, I'm going to draw the shape of this rock, which would be a very logical thing for you to be thinking so that he's not wrong, that is good. But try thinking about it a different way instead of thinking about it as though you were drawing the rock. Imagine you were drawing the shape of the water, the container. If you want to think of it that way, the containers of the water, that the edges of these rocks at creating that border for where we see the water. So it's kind of a reversal of how you would look at it, how you might approach it normally, and those kinds of tricks, really good to play on yourself. A lot of art is kinda like playing tricks on yourself and getting you to just look at things differently. Think about things differently. Alright, so we are approaching the halfway point. We have about another 20 s. So I'm going to just quickly scribble in a few more rocks. I'm not going to worry about the distant mountains horizon line, none of that. This is all about rocks today. We're at halfway. So now I'm going to go back and start refining the rocks and really playing with the texture. Going back to that whole idea of atmospheric perspective. The way that you, another way that you can show that in your drawings is by putting more detail and more emphasis on the elements of your landscape that are closer to us. So anything that's right up front like this big rock that I'm drawing right now. That would be in the foreground of your piece. And then in my case, since I don't have the horizon line in the mountains and stuff, I would say these rocks here are the middle ground, then the smaller rocks or the background. So you want to always be locating in your drawings where, where to all of the different elements fall. That can help you to really start breaking through that flat piece of paper. I do think about that a lot as I'm working on landscapes. You almost, it's almost as if you're reaching into the paper to put this place, those little rocks way far back in there. If you're just focusing on line. So this is really up to you. I'm starting with line. If there's time, I might do a little shading. Try segmenting the rocks are looking at the different faces, the different planes of the rock and breaking it up because rocks are very, they have a lot of different sides to them usually. And you can really see that when I'm teaching kids and adults, because we're just big kids, Julie, I always use the example of a soccer ball. If you think of how a soccer ball is, are they hexagon has pentagons. One of these times need to look that up, but it's made up of geometric shapes that all fit together to form the sphere. And a lot of what we draw is like that if you really think about all the different sides, sometimes they're not quite as sharp edge, so it depending what it is that you're drawing, but anything can be broken down into planes like that even if you're drawing faces. But especially when you're doing landscapes. So try to not just draw the outlines of the rocks, but look for interior lines too. That's a good way to think about it. It helped, it gives you more to look for and it helps you to understand how rock is actually formed, whether what are the different angles, what are the different sections or planes of it. Just really try and understand what you're seeing and use your lines to do that. I might not even get to the shading today because I'm just getting really wrapped up in drawing the lines. That's okay. Whatever you want to do. One thing, one trick that you can try is to let the lines get a little bit lighter as you move back in space. That can be another way to show depth without doing any shading just through varying the line weight. Getting some of this really interesting texture here on this rock. Alright, so i'll, I'll show you now. So I'm moving back into this kind of, these more distant rock. So I'm going to use lighter lines, little less detail too, because you do see less detail as things recede in space. We tend to want to draw everything. We know what we know what things look like. So we want to draw every aspect of it no matter where it is in space. But if you are really wanting to create a sense of depth In your work, let the, let the elements that are farther away from us become more, more faint, more essence like we don't might not see all the details. We might not see as many edges or sides, or we might not see all of those things that you know, are there. So drawing is very much about drawing what you see, not what you know. At least if you're doing, if you're going for realism, if you're working from a reference and you're wanting to capture that, it's really very much about just kind of letting go of your own preconceived notions about things and just really focusing on what's there. Breaking it down into shapes and trying to replicate them. It's kinda meditative in a way because you're removing all of the labels from things and just really appreciating them for, for, for what you see. Not what you'd not what you know them to be, but just what is happening right in front of you in that moment. Whether you're working from a photo or if you're actually out in nature. Alright? See how just by making the lines and I'm going to go back and make this one even just a little bit thicker. See how just by using differences in the line weight, we can start to get a sense of depth in this drawing. Then we also start to really understand the complexity of those rocks because of all of the interior lines that break them up into different sections. And you can keep going with this, which is true for all of the drawings that we're going to do together and try to capture even more of those interesting textures. Sometimes a little speckles like this can be a nice way to just finished up a quick line drawing of some rocks because it implies that there's a lot more roughness and texture going on. Alright, I'm going to pry myself away from this drawing because I know our time is up and I'll see you next time. You rock. I couldn't resist, sorry, Nice work. In our next lesson, we are going to be going out into the desert and doing some quick sketches of sand. See you then? 7. Quick Sketch: Sand: Hi and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond and today it's time to head out into the desert because we are going to be drawing some sand. Happy journaling everyone. Okay, Today we are taking a trip into the desert. I want us to do another quick sketch this time we are just going to focus on the way that the light falls across these different hills in the sand. So start by sketching. I'm going to, I'm going to start back here at the horizon line. Horizon line is a really useful tool when you are making a landscape. A lot of things are very dependent on that horizon line, things that we might not even realize. So when you establish that horizon line, what you're really doing is telling the viewer what their eye level is, what their perspective is on the entire scene. Because, for example, if you put the horizon line really low in your drawing, then that makes the viewer feel like they are looking up because they're seeing a lot more sky. And if you put the horizon line really high, and that makes the viewer feel like they're looking down. And everything that is in the scene. In this case, nothing. But if there were trees or if there were other elements. The way that those things interact with the horizon line also tells us about our relationship to where they are in space. So if a tree is up above the horizon line, if the top of the trees up here, then we're looking up at that tree. But if we're looking at the roots, we're looking down at it. Anything that's below the horizon line means we're looking down at it. Anything that's above the horizon line, we're looking up. So it's just a line, but it's so much more than that. So your pro tip for today is really pay attention to that horizon line. It's a lot more useful than you might even realize. And that's true no matter what you're drawing. You could even be drawing something. An interior scene inside of a room where you can't even see the horizon line. But wherever that horizon line is back in space, if you tore down those walls, that is still impacting the way that you see every single thing in that room. So this is where we're just focusing on the sand and creating the shapes of the shadows and the way that, the texture of it. But I also just wanted to introduce that idea of the horizon line, which we'll be talking more about as we go along. I know I keep saying that I'm making a lot of promises of what we're gonna be doing later, but I really do have plans for all of you. I promise I will deliver for now though. Just focus on drawing what you see. And this is one thing that I'm doing right now, is I'm not just drawing each hill, but I'm also drawing the shapes of the shadows that I'm seeing. And that's something that helps me a lot when I'm drawing and when I'm painting is to not just focus on drawing the outlines of things. We talked about that a bit in the last lesson. But to when we were doing the rocks with the interior lines. But also thinking of the shadow shapes as being lines themselves that you can draw. And often that ends up being the same thing as drawing the different planes of the object. Because the shadows, the reason why the shadows land where they land is because there is a change in the planar structure of that thing. So this shadow here that's on this side of this little hill because of the way that the, the thing is formed, the way that the sand is changing direction and the light can't reach that little part over there. So it's all connected. And it's just, it helps you to, it gives you more to think about. I think when people first start drawing, they want to draw the outlines of everything which is fine. There's a good way to start, but there's so much more to look at, so much more to think about. Hopefully that's exciting for you and not overwhelming. This is this. Remember, it's supposed to be fun. I have to keep reminding you. Don't be stressed Alright, I just about have all my lines in there. I might actually, instead of doing a lot of kinda like what I've been doing with the going back and doing cleaning cleaner lines. Instead of doing that this time, I'm actually going to take my kneaded eraser and just soften my lines a little bit because I want to go back and start doing a little bit more with shading in this drawing. If that's something that interests you, you can do the same thing or you can continue with using your line work or whatever you want. There are many different ways to create this sense of the depth and the texture that we're seeing. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm going to use shading for this one. So I'm going to start where I see some of the darker shadow shapes and just get those established. So definitely right here. That's a really interesting shape to it. I like that. You see how it's really tight right here to the edge and then there's a bigger swoop on this side. That's a perspective thing too, because this side is closer to us. All right? I squint my eyes a lot when I'm drawing and when I'm painting. Because that helps to eliminate a lot of the detail. And I can just focus on what I'm seeing big picture wise. This shadow. And the reason why I wanted to do the shadows in this one is because I think that it's really, it's really, there is a softness to them That's different than what we saw on the rocks. For example, on the rocks, there were a lot of different planes like this and the light and shadow and stuff. But the edges were sharper because the rocks were, had that sharper edge. We do see that in some places here like this, this part has a little bit of a sharper edge. But like right here, you can see how that shadow just blends out on each side. So that's something to think about too, when you're doing shading, what, what did the edges look like? Edge, edge control is a big thing to think about in your work because if you do really sharp edge is everywhere and it's not, that's not really what you're seeing. It can make things feel very flat. So pay attention to where the edges look sharp versus where they seem a bit softer and see if you can kind of capture that. I'm going to just do an overall shadow on this whole back part. Then I'll go back and push the darker parts even farther. That's a good way to make sure that you're, sometimes it's tempting to want to see all of the lighter parts as being the lightest light. But everything is relative. If you look at this stretch of the, everything in the distance, there's no nothing that says light. As this area here, even the little highlight over here, you, everything is relative. The darks and lights. You just want to look at each section and try and imagine what, what value am I really seeing? What shade is it? More of a middle value? Is it more of a really dark value? Is a light value. And again, when I say value, I'm just talking about the different shades of light and dark. That's all their value means. Alright, that's starting to have a nice feeling of depth to it. And it's feeling very sandy, which is good because the goal, Do you feel like you could just walk right into your little desert drawings? Make sure you bring some water, stay hydrated out there. Nice little dark patch here. Here. Then the last thing that I want to do that I think is pretty interesting to see the the little trails of lines that's kind of weave around over here that it's subtle, but they're really beautiful. But from the way that the sand blows, you can notice if you're if you're adding those into your drawings, notice how they get wider as they come toward us. That's perspective inaction. Everything gets smaller as it gets farther away. There's also some down here on this little part. Put those into their little more squiggly. You see what I mean about how the more you look at something, the more you see, there's certainly a lot more in this, but I haven't gotten to draw yet, so feel free to keep going if you are inspired by this one. But every time you draw a landscape, no matter whether you're spending 10 min for 10 h. It's just always an invitation to look a little closer and notice things that maybe other people miss. And I always think that's kind of like the artist's job is to you bring out those things and make people see them. Maybe they didn't have time to appreciate them themselves, but you can show them in your drawing. I like, I like thinking about it that way. Alright, that's it for this one. Great job. But I figured after spending all that time in the desert, you might need something a little bit more refreshing. So in our next lesson, we're going to be doing some quick sketches of reflections in water. See you then? 8. Quick Sketch: Reflections in Water: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. In today's lesson, we are going to be learning how to draw reflections in water. Happy drawing. We're gonna work on drawing reflections. And we'll start by drawing what's above the water. And then we basically just repeat it. But upside down and a little bit blurrier. So start by figuring out, I'm going to draw that little mass of land first that the trees in front or on, just kinda get that placed. And we're not trying to make this perfect in detail. I want to get everything roughed in pretty quickly so that you have time just to really understand the relationships between what's happening up here versus down below in the water. So I've got my massive land there. And then I'm going to draw the bottom, the bank back here. Alright? And then as far as the trees go, let's just kinda the distant trees, we'll just do quick little pointy shapes. Different heights. That's a good rule of thumb for drawing when you have a bunch of trees, our tendency is to want to draw everything the same once we, if we draw one thing and we kinda like the way it looks, then we just want to keep repeating that fight against that urge and just try to make things as irregular as you can because that will feel more organic, more natural. Alright, just work your way over. You can sort of see it. Sometimes it's helpful to, I should have said this from the start to just draw a line, a very light line that will help guide you to make the trees about the height that you want them to be. You can see it slopes up overall. So I'm going to follow that. But not exactly. The sum can be above, some can be below. Just don't, you don't want it to feel too. Regimen it, I guess. Alright, so few more here. Okay? And then I'm going to just very loosely sketch in these trees. I'm going to draw just lines first for the trunks. Okay? And then I'm just kinda come in and do quick scribbly little lines to create the sense of the leaves. I'm not gonna be too worried about making this perfect. Main thing is that they get thicker or wider as you go down. Angle up and this one. So just looking drunk, trying to draw what I see. But in a very loose, stylized way. Scribbly, very sketchy. This will be the last of our quick sketches. So starting with the next lesson, we will actually give you a little more time to do some more detail. We'll kinda break up drawings into a few lessons so we have a little time to get it sketched and then do some different types of shading techniques and things like that. But I always like starting any kind of course with doing some quick stuff first, I think it just gets us loosened up. It makes, it makes us less precious about things that makes sense. So easy to, if you know you have what feels like a lot of time, you can just want to like obsess over details. So if I stress you out at first, may give you just a little bit of time, it gets you in the right mindset. And then when you have more time, it's like, oh wow, look what I can do. Leaves, That's the goal. But even then it's a good idea to still approach it with a little bit of a sense of urgency because it just kind of gets you out of your head and putting, putting something down on the paper to react to and adjust. Alright, so that is enough for my above the water portion sheet in this. Maybe I'll shade in back here to very loosely though. Alright. So now the idea with reflections and just erasing my guideline here is that it's essentially a mirror image of what is happening above the water. But in this case, depending how much movement there is in the water, sometimes it's very distorted. In this case the water is pretty still. But it's a little Ripley. I'm going to start actually by looking at where I drew those lines for these trees and then just continuing them. And one trick that you can use Here's pro tip for today Is put the point of your pencil at the top of the line and then put your thumb at the bottom and then go down from there. And you're basically like using the pencil to measure each of those lines. They mean. That way. The relationship of one tree to the next in the reflection matches what's happening above the water. If you've ever noticed artists, maybe who are out painting or drawing in nature, that's called Planck doing plein air. Plein air drawings or plein air paintings when you're actually working from life like that. But you often will see them holding up their brush or their pencil and doing that kind of thing. And that's the same idea. They're just measuring. They're using the pencil measure. Alright, so now I'm just repeating. But this time it's, the reverse, gets thinner. As it moves down. You can be a little more scribbly in the water if you wanted to, you. And we also have the reflection of this back part to get that in there as well. Okay, time for some more leaves. I think it's also really fun to draw water that does have more movement because it really, you know, when you draw those ripples, the distortions in their reflections, you can really feel that water moving compared to the stillness that's up above. So we'll do some stuff like that. I'm sure at some point later on. But for starters, this is a good way just to understand the concepts, reflections. It's really not that difficult. One more. And I'm just have a little time to refine. Wow, Look at us. I'm going to push the values a little darker here, just to kinda get more of a separation. I'll do the same thing back here. We're not we're not shading everything in detail, but I'm kinda just prioritizing where I put those values to really help make sense of the image. When you, when you do a quick sketch, a lot of times, that's how you need to think about it because you can't draw everything. So it's kind of like a visual shorthand. You're, you're just looking to see what, what can I put down here that will help convey the sense of what I'm seeing without drawing every little thing. And it takes awhile to figure that out. So don't worry if you're not able to get everything that you see right away. Or if it doesn't feel like you're totally capturing it. If you're even just getting a portion of it, that's awesome. Whatever whatever you're making, whatever you see on your paper, just don't judge it. This is all about the process. I can't emphasize that enough. It's not about the end product, especially when you're first learning, especially when you're just doing quick sketches. This is like a warm-up. This is helping you to learn how to really see and capture what you're seeing. So relax and enjoy. Loose little tree over here. Right? I just wanted to take it all the way to the edge of my paper. So I thought that would look cuter. We go, alright, and that is how you do reflections. Awesome work. Okay, in our next lesson, we are going to go a little bit more in depth and do a drawing deep in the forest. See you then? 9. Line Drawing of Forest Part 1: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond and today we are going to do the first part of a two-part drawing, Forest. Be drawing. Today we are going to start out drawing this forest scene, and we'll split this up into two lessons. So we have a little bit more time because there's a lot going on here as you can see. So let's jump right into it. I'm excited to draw this. I think that this is going to be a lot of fun, but I want to encourage you not to feel overwhelmed by it. I know when you look at the image, there's a lot happening, but just follow along with me and we will find our way through this forest. You're ready. Okay, so to start, I like to establish where the ground is and there's a few different layers of it. There's this kind of dirt layer at the bottom and then you see there's like kind of I guess a grassy area. And you can't really see where the horizon line is because it's obscured by all the trees and plants and everything. So I'm going to draw what I see, which is the line where the dirt meets those rocks and the grass, that'll be my my kind of anchoring line. I think that's a good way to think of it. In fact, maybe that's even a pro tip for her today is when you're first starting out a landscape, find something, some kind of a line that can just be a good anchor point for you. And that gives you a place to start and build everything else up from there. So I've got that line. And now the next thing I'm noticing is there's this big chunk of land that kinda comes forward. Rate here. Ish, doesn't have to be exact. We're just kinda walking stuff in. All right. Then I'm going to draw a second line right up above this one. That's sort of like the top part of that little ridge. Notice I haven't drawn any trees yet, which is the part of this that I'm the most excited about. Actually, I think trees are really fun to draw. It's why I started with a tree on our very first lesson actually might as well do what I enjoy. But we have to get the basics down first. You know, you have to eat your vegetables before you have your dessert. So let's figure out where everything goes and then we'll have fun planting all those trees. Alright, so now I'm just going to make a guess where the horizon line is. I'm going to say it's about here. I'm going to draw it very lightly because we don't see it. But whenever I draw a landscape, I like to figure out where the horizon line is because as we talked about before, helps you to have a sense of our perspective on the scene. Alright, I think I have enough information now that I can start doing some of those vertical lines to start putting the trees. And the interesting thing about this in this particular reference is you really get to see a lot of depth because you have not only the larger trees that are closer to us, but there's also a big difference in the waiting between foreground, middle ground, and background. So let's start with the foreground. I always like to establish some of the bigger, more prominent elements of a composition first, before I get into the tiny stuff, the smaller details. So trying to establish some of the big, most dominant trees, I'm beginning right over here on the left with that giant one, right against the edge. Then I'm just kinda drawing the outline of it and it goes right off the paper. So I don't even need to draw the left side. And then right here next to it on that same level, ledge is another tree skinnier, but I'm going to sketch that went in now to you and pay attention. You don't have to get all the curves and angles, but look at how the trees overall are. Leaning or moving. You don't just want to draw a bunch of telephone poles. In other words, each of these trees has a lot of interesting character and you might not get every curve exact. If you are paying attention to that, if you're looking at the way that the trees are moving and the way the shapes are playing off of each other and the negative spaces, you will draw trees that feel a lot more believable. So even, like I said, even if you're not drawing it exactly, keep your eyes going back and forth between your paper and the reference as much as possible. Don't just sit and stare at your drawing and try and draw the landscape for memory because it's right there in front of you. Just look up And you'll notice things. The more you look at something, the more that you see and the more you can bring out in your drawing. Alright, so I have those two trees in there. Now, we're just focusing on getting the basic rough sketch down for this lesson. And then we will come back to it and add some more details next time. So no pressure. Don't rush yourself. Take your time. I'm gonna go for this tree right here in-between the first two. And I want you to notice the negative space. See how it's much closer to this tree than this one. This is a great example to try out that idea that I talked about previously of drawing the negative space. In other words, drawing the openings instead of drawing the trees. If you look at those as shapes to, it gives you a much more well-rounded impression of the overall scene. Now this tree does not go all the way down to the same ledge. It actually comes about to hear. Then it gets obscured by plants. So I'm going to just draw some little leafy scribbly shapes here to represent that so that we know why that tree is ending. It's not just hovering there. Alright, look at how far we've gotten so far we're doing grades. Alright, now let's come over here. About halfway across is where we have this next little cluster of trees. So I'm going to draw the left side of the farthest left tree in that little cluster, if that makes sense. And then I'm going to draw the right side of the farthest right tree, which I'm going to say here. That way I'm giving myself kind of a sense of how I want those to fit on the overall page. Sometimes if you're focusing on drawing each part, we lose sight of the relationships to the whole. So kinda just go through and maybe even give yourself some quick guidelines like that. I'm going to actually do that right now myself. I'm going to jump over here now I'm looking at the amount of negative space between the right edge of that, then the left edge of the next little grouping. It looks like it's a little bit less than the space here. So I'm going to measure that space and come over and then I'm just going to come in a little bit from there. So there's another opportunity to use that measuring trick that I showed you. And I'm drawing now the left edge of this tree. There's two trees in this little grouping. And it actually does not go quite that low. It stops at the top of that ledge as do these guys. Getting a little ahead of ourselves there. Alright, and then we've got this one that comes leans a little bit to the right, I would say. Then we have one more like really dark tree. I'm going to draw that one now. It's about right here. Okay, now I'm gonna go back. Now that I know that everything's gonna sort of fit where I want it and draw the rest of these tree details. So this first one here on the left, about this wide. Another good thing to think about when you're drawing trees is they tend to get thicker toward the bottom. Even if it's a very subtle change. You generally don't see trees that are exactly the same all the way up. They tend to be the thickest at the base where it's going into the root system and then thinner as it moves away. Alright, and then, let's see, we have this one over here, so I'll go ahead and draw that is about the same thickness. It helps to compare the sizes of things. So when you're looking, when you're drawing one tree, just sort of look around at other trees that you've already drawn in your reference and see how it compares to those. And that'll give you an idea of how thick you need to make it. And like I keep saying that I'm going to say it again. It doesn't need to be perfect. But it's good to really look at the reference and try and pick out as much as you can. Because that is a big part of this. It's being inspired by what you see and really trying to capture it. So finding that balance between not obsessing over the details, but trying to make it capture as much of what you see as possible. This tree actually comes down and overlaps this one a little bit, which I like a lot. So I'm gonna draw any kind of overlapping situations are always good. It just gives you a little bit more depth, more, more of a indication of what's in front. What's behind, opens up that flat paper. And we have a few more little skinny trees that are farther back in the distance over here. This one we only see down to about here and it gets hidden. Alright, I'm going to quickly draw in a couple of more trees and then I'm going to save the distant trees for the next lesson because we're just about out of time. All right, so this one comes down like that. Then we have a thicker one right here. Alright, That's going to do it for this lesson. Hang onto this drawing. We will come back and work on this some more. And if you need more time, take all the time, you need tried to get it to this point so that you're ready by the next lesson to go into more detail. Beautiful work you did it. Okay, Now hang on to that drawing because in our next lesson, we are going to take it a step further, add some more detail and refine the lines and make a beautiful wine drawing out of this forest sketch. I'll see you then 10. Line Drawing of Forest Part 2: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond. And in this lesson, we are going to pick up right where we left off and finish our forests drawing, happy drawing everyone back into the forest. Here we go. Okay, so I wanted to take a break for a minute from drawing all these vertical lines and take a look at where we see some clumps of leaves because those are also important in helping space things out here. So one prominent one that I see right in front is over on the right side. And I'm just going to use my scribble technique to indicate where those go. Approaches this grouping of trees but doesn't quite overlap them. So that shows me where to stop. Can always just use the other elements to help you figure out where things go. Relationships between all the different parts, all the different elements in your landscape are really important in helping you just kinda pull it all together. I'm not going to erase that tree back behind there yet because you do see some little hints of it through the leaves. So we'll figure that out later. Next. I see one over here. I kinda had started it before. I think I made it a little too low, so I'm gonna come back and raise that up a bit and then continue it. It's sort of peaks out behind this tree and a few different spots like that. And comes all the way to about here. Alright? This see how we're just kinda getting everything figured out in there. Alright, now I'm gonna do one more. So we've got this here that I had started. There's this clump of leaves right behind everything really behind all the trees that are in shadow. So I'm just going to start scribbling, making some of those shapes that I see. It kinda comes right up and touches this one. I think it goes behind it. Those leaves are a bit lighter. In this scene. You can tell the lighting is coming from behind. So because everything that's getting closer to us is more in shadow. Okay? Alright, let's do some more tree trunks. I'm gonna go back here and do there's 123. And then the fourth one is a little bit thicker. So let me kinda figured out where that is. So looking at that negative space between here and here, the last tree in the row is just a little bit past the halfway mark. So I'm going to start with that. That one is pretty vertical. Still got it still has some irregularities to it though. And I'm going to make it the thickest one of this little grouping. And then there are three more. So one, let me just kinda figure out the spacing for so 123, okay? And then I'll go on each side of those little tick marks to actually draw the tree. All kinds of tricks you can use to figure out spacing. And I think that that's it's an important thing to consider and it's something that a lot of artists struggle with. When you're drawing, you'll start drawing and it'll be looking good and you'll get excited about it. And then suddenly you're not able to fit in something that you that you need to be able to fit in because there's not enough space allotted for it. And so just want to encourage you to not think of that as being a indication that you're not good at drawing, which unfortunately a lot of people do that they have when they, when they, when that happens, they immediately think, Oh, I'm no good at this, I just give up. But all it means is you just need to give a little bit more thought to the overall relationships, the spatial relationships between the different elements. And anybody can figure that out. It just takes a little bit more time and thought and paying attention to the relationships between the spacing of things. So it's always okay to erase and move stuff. Alright, we've got those looking good. Just because I'm excited about them, I'm going to draw some of these little branches that go like this man. I like breaking up all those vertical lines. I think those are interesting. As you can see, there's a lot going on in this little forest. And of course, in 20 min, we can't draw it all. So it's always a matter of editing, choosing what you want to emphasize. And it's very possible that there are things in this image that speak to you differently than these speak to me. That's the beauty of being an artist. So if you get really drawn in by something that I'm breezing past, feel free to go deeper into that. And maybe if you really enjoy the shaping of the leaves and all the negative spaces and you want to focus on, on that. Emphasize that more in your drawing. Or if you really like the shapes of the shadows or the way the light is working in the image. There's so many different things you can choose to focus on. But if you're new to this and you're really just not sure, definitely just follow along with me because I'll give you a nice, easy way into it. But as we go along, I do want to encourage you to really find what speaks to you in the image and bring that out. Going to draw this big clump of leaves right here. It looks like there must be a sort of a branch coming off of one of these trees on this side. So I'm going to sketch that in some more up here. One of the things that I think is really cool about drawing forest is that mix of the more kind of straight lines, they're not perfectly straight, but you have a lot of vertical lines, horizontal lines, but then you also get just these really wacky or very organic shapes that come in and break them up. I think that's, I think that combination is really beautiful. It makes it feel very, very natural. All right, now we just see a few other little trees back here in the back. So I'm going to roughly sketch those in. Because up here, you do not have to get every tree exactly right. Especially the distant ones. No offense to them, but they're a little bit less important. Let's see over here. I really do. I'm sure there are more tree trunks back there, but we really don't see them because it's just all covered with leaves. So I'm going to just do a lot of scribbling in that area to represent that. I think we are getting there a little bit more. There's actually a little grouping of trees on this side, so I'm going to show you there. Okay, now with the time that we have left, this is going to remain a line drawing, but even just using line, you can still give a sense of the depth. And so I'm gonna go to the most extreme close elements first and make those lines thicker and darker. We see there's some rocks it looks like kinda in front of the roots of this tree. So I'm going to indicate that a little bit. It's very much in shadow though. All right, and then we have our ledge here. Let's tree really dark, really thick line. See how just using those thick lines it makes That tree come forward. I love that trick. Sometimes if you are out sketching in nature, this is a really good way to capture that sense of depth if you don't have time to do shading, just to use your lines to help us understand the space. So this tree is also very close to us, but I'm going to make it a little bit thinner. The lines a little bit thinner because it's farther back on that ledge. That's the other thing I like about this technique is it really makes you stop and look at where things are in relation to the other parts so that you're, you're just kinda getting in and really exploring that scene. That's, that's pretty fun. Whether you're drawing from a photo or if you're drawing from life out in nature. This just makes you really appreciate what you're seeing right now. What else do we have that's close up. Alright, I'm gonna come over here so these leaves can get a little darker. I'm going to do a recap our ledge here a little bit more. There's some raw facts that I see. You're all experts at drawing rocks now after our rock lesson, so enjoy it, put that knowledge to use and go a little bit darker. These trees are farther from us than these are, but they're closer than those. So I'm gonna make these a little bit darker. Even within that grouping. Some are closer to us than others. Then jump over here. These trees are about in line with those. We'll go a little bit darker there too. Hello, alleging. A little bit darker with these leaf shapes. Have fun with that scribbling technique. You can really kinda fill in some of the spaces with that. It can help to activate the space and make it just feel very forest. There's a lot happening. You don't just have to do the outlines. You can do it on the interior of those leaf clusters to you. Can go a little bit darker here. This is in front of all of this, so those are going to get darker as well. And look at how our forest is opening up just with the line work. Super fun. Last few touches, I'm going to go a little darker here. These are in front of all of that. So that's gonna get a little bit more emphasis. You up here. Now, I am going to just erase a few of the lines inside of the overlapping leaf areas. I'm not going to erase them perfectly because like I said before, you still do see hints of them in through the, through the leaves and the open spots. And there we have a very nice not to toot my own orange line drawing of our forest. And of course, you could spend a lot longer in if you feel inspired to do that, I hope that you will and you can even shade it in. You can color it, you could paint it, do whatever your heart desires. This gives you at least a good sense of how to sketch it out, get it on the paper. That's, that's very important. First step in any piece of landscape or it's great job. All right, now in our next lesson, we're going to start on a new drawing. And this time we'll be focusing a little bit more on value or the lights and darks and Image. See you then 11. Mountainscape Part 1: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm still Paul Richmond, and this time we are going to go exploring in the mountains. Are you ready? Happy drawing. We're going to start another two parter. This one has a little bit less detail than our last drawing. Last time I wanted to focus on wine, so I gave you a lot of stuff to draw. And this time I want to shift the focus a little and talk about value. In value just refers to the lights and darks in an image. And it's not just the most extremes, but also all of those subtle shades in the middle. I thought this, this mountain scape would be a really good way to practice that. So in this first part, we're going to get it sketched and then we'll move into shading it. And that will be a really great way to set us up for our next section of lessons that deal with lighting. Because value you understanding how to shade is really important in capturing lighting. Okay, Let's draw, I'm going to start in the distance here and just roughly sketch in that most distant mountain range first, I'm just keeping my lines very loose, sketchy. Trying to look at where, where things fall in relation to the entire picture plane. The picture plane just means the shape of the space that you're drawing in. So in my case, my sketch book is actually a little bit bigger. And so my picture plane though is not the full page, it's the area in which I am choosing to draw. So look at that in related to the reference, especially if you imagine where the halfway point is. This is a pro tip. Imagine where the halfway point is in the reference and then also in your drawing. And that can give you another tool for how to place things. So I see this in this distant mountain range. There's a peak right in that middle. If I am saying this is the middle, then I can just build outwards from there and it gives me ways of checking and making sure that I'm on track. One thing I like to do too is to draw very loose guidelines. First, if I notice that there's sort of a dip, just an overall sheep to the way the mountains are going. And then you can go back in and actually draw more mountain knee shapes. That's a way of making sure things are landing where they're supposed to also feel like a big part of being an artist is just learning all of the tricks to help you stay on track and make everybody else who's not an artist think that you're some kind of magician. So I'm giving you a little peek inside them. Magician's hat here, it's not magic. I mean, I do think creativity is kinda magical. There's something magical about that. But as far as just the techniques and skills in drawing, truly, anybody can learn this. Anybody. So many of my students come to me really wanting to learn, but also just being a little bit scared of it because they're afraid they aren't going to be any good or that they'll do it wrong. And you just have to take your time, learn all the tricks, and practice. Anybody, anybody can do it. It's not a magical ability that you have to be born with to be able to draw and paint. It's really just a matter of practice and learning how to, how to see you do have to retrain yourself, they're a little bit and then how to capture what you're seeing on paper. And I'm doing my very loose sketchy line here for this one. Actually several different mountain ranges right here within what appears to be this one layer. There's, you can kinda see the overlap, see how this gets a little bit darker right here and then it's lighter behind it. And then you have the same thing just to the left of that center peak that we used. That's something I would consider an anchor point as well. So we'll come over here and then we have another overlap. As much of that kind of stuff is you can bring out the better, but don't want to bog you down either. It's still just try to roughly sketch it out. I think you have to find that balance Between checking and measuring and using all the tricks that I'm showing you. And then also just getting something down on the paper to respond to you also, because you can always change it. You can't always know if things are in the right place until you have something drawn. So take all the suggestions I'm giving you and use them when they work, but don't, don't let it make your process become so technical that you lose the fun part of drawing, which is just this very intuitive thing that happens. You look at something and then your hand just kinda starts drawing the lines and shapes that it sees. Doesn't have to be any more difficult than that. All the other stuff are just ways to help you if you feel like you're heading in the wrong direction. Okay, got our second layer here. And I'm looking for the relationships between the different mountain ranges, the space between them. So over here, this is pretty tight. And then I'm going to skip all the way down to the next big section. There's a few more little things going on in there, but we'll come back to that. So there's a bigger opening if I'm looking from here, probably all the way down to about here. And then this comes up. And writer again around that center point, keeps coming back. It's good that we identified that. This comes down. Then over here it comes down a little higher in the middle. See, I just messed up on purpose to show you that everybody can do it. Not really. That was a mistake. We all we all deal with. All right. That's what your little erasers four. All right. Now before I even detail that one and I'm gonna go ahead and sketch, roughly sketch in the other planes to the other sections. So we have some smaller peaks here. We have something back here. There's probably, there's, there's even some that are more subtle that I'm skipping. You can draw you can draw them or not. It's up to you. Can I get to play God a little bit? When you're making a landscape to put those mountains wherever you want. There are times when you might want to change the location of things. That's something that I don't think we've talked much about yet, but composition is a big part of drawing and painting too. In composition just means how things are arranged on the page. And sometimes you might decide that you want to change something about the placement of elements in your piece because it works better for your drawing or if you're painting or whatever you're making. And that is okay. You get to do that. It does not have to be a photo realistic depiction of that scene. You can arrange things however you want to make it work best for you and for the piece and for the viewer, how they're experiencing it, how their eye moves around the page. I want to lower this guy just a smidge. Bringing you down about here. There we go. That feels better. It's comes over here. And then there's this cute little one in here. Can't forget the cute little parts. Anything cute, I have to draw. Alright, And how does a little bit more time? So I'm going to this one here, this little mountain seems kinda important. So I'm going to make the shaping. I'm going to bring out some of those looks like little, you see a lot, a little trees and things on the along the edge. And that's true when you're, when you're drawing any kind of landscape, especially mountains like this, as things come closer to you, you see more of those details. So that can add depth to your work as well. Just bringing out more detail, more information as things move into the foreground and keeping things a little bit more, not generic, but just a little bit more ambiguous. It's better word in the distance. All right. That is looking good. So hang on to this one and we will come back and work with the shading next time. Great job. Alright, Now, hang on to this one because in our next lesson, we are going to keep going and add some shading to our drawing. See you then? 12. Mountainscape Part 2: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we are going to add some value to our drawing of the mountain that we started in the last lesson. Be drawing. Okay, Let's jump right in and start shading. Are you ready? So I am using my four B pencil today. That's the softest slide that I have that I'm working with here in this course. But use whatever you like. I like this one for shading because I know it can go really dark, which we're going to need down here. So I'm going to start though up here in the sky. And I'm using the side of the pencil and I'm just kinda going in a diagonal direction. I'm going to use that same direction for everything. Because since we're doing just a quick, quick study, we're not going to be or at least I'm not going to be trying to hide all of those pencil marks. I'm going to keep it a little bit rougher and sketchier like this. So I like the look of having all of the pencil lines going in the same direction. But they're just like with anything in art, there are 1 million different ways to do everything. So if you want to at some other options, you could try. You could do a cross hatching technique where you go in one direction and you go in the other direction and you kinda keep mixing it up that way. Or you could go very slow and go in different directions, are going little circles and kind of camouflage the pencil lines if you don't want to see them. So many choices. Now this guy gets a little bit lighter as it approaches the horizon. And you can even take your kneaded eraser and lift those horizontal stripes out to make it have that kind of cloudy Miss D vibe. Okay. I'm going to come back here between the two. You bring that out a little bit more. Okay. Now, jumping down to the mountains, at the top. The mountains, actually what I'm gonna do is first cover that whole distant range of mountains with a similar value that I used in the sky. Because down at the bottom here you see each, each layer gets lighter as it goes down. So with the exception maybe of this last one. And that gives it that Misty feeling. So first let's just get that mountain range in. Now, I'm shading everything using this one pencil, this for B pencil. So in order to get different values, and like I said before, a value just refers to the shades of light and dark. The pro tip for you is to make it darker, press harder. You already knew that, but it is a pro tip because I do this all the time. And you can build up those values. You don't have to jump right to the extremes. I think that sometimes layering the pencil can give you a more interesting result too. So don't rush. I say that even though I keep looking at the clock because I know these lessons are always wants to be admitted. But you take all the time you need. And now I'm going to jump down here. And I'm going to make this whole mountain range as dark as the top. Okay? And then we'll go back and make the top of that mountain even a little bit darker. So we're just kinda taking baby steps until we get down here where it will be much darker. I'm still going in that diagonal direction. Actually, you know what, I'm going to take this all the way down because all of these mountains within that middle ground area are similar in value. And then I can still see my lines though for the different mountains, mountain peaks in there. So we'll go back and bring those back out again. But sometimes I do find it very helpful to just get a whole section shaded in first. Now, over here on the right, you'll notice this distance. The distant mountains in this section do get pretty light. They're almost on par with the mountains in the background. So I'm going to do that part separately. Just go a little bit lighter there. I think it's interesting how so much of art Is about looking for relationships. Everything is dependent on something else. It's kinda fascinating really. And we talked about that a lot when we were drawing the forest. And we're thinking about the proportions and sizes of things. But we also have to think about that when we're working with value because the value of one area, it looks the way that it does, because of the way that those values really to what's next to it, this image would feel totally different if these mountains in the front where white, for example. So it's all about comparing what, what you're working on, the section that you're working on with what's around it. This image is pretty monotone already. It's shades of blue. Sometimes when I'm doing a black and white drawing, if there are a lot of colors, when I'm first trying to look for those value relationships, I will just convert it to black and white. You can do that on your phone, or you can do it on your computer if you have Photoshop or something like that. But even just in the photos app on your phone, you can convert an image to black and white. And that can help you to see those value relationships a lot easier. Because sometimes shifts in color, especially if there are areas where the colors really saturated and then other areas where it's more neutral that can mimic the, those relationships and make it seem like an area should be darker or lighter than it actually is. Alright, now I'm going to do this whole section and then we'll come down here to the darkest part. So what you should really be seeing happening on your paper is a value scale. A value scale is when you just create every value that you can from the lightest, light, the darkest dark. And instead of doing it in little boxes, which is how you normally see value scales done. We're doing it in a landscape, slept more fun. Okay, getting this whole big middle section and then we'll go back just like we did in the section behind it and bring out different, the different layers. One thing I do a lot when I'm drawing and painting is squint my eyes. And I do that because when you squint your eyes and look at something, all of the detail disappears. You really just see the value relationships. And that can be, that can help you to not get to hyper-focused. The good thing about this image, there's not a ton of little details anyway that will distract you. But if you're drawing something more complex, especially that can, that can be a big help. We're all wired to want to focus in on all those little details and bring those out. And there's a time for that, but it's not when you're first getting things established. I'm going to come back here now and make the top of this mountain nice and dark. There's a lot of drama between this range and the ones behind it. I think it looks to me like there's a big gap in space there. So we want to bring that out and make sure that really jumps forward. And then it gets lighter down here. Then I'm also paying attention to those lines that we drew before showing the layering even within this section. So you have this mountain that kinda comes forward a bit. Then there's another layer, another section of it that's behind that. Then there's another one over here so you can start to get thinking about depth. You have not just foreground, middle ground background, but you have all of those within each of the sections too. So it's just kinda keeps getting more and more. You take that idea and you keep applying it on a smaller and smaller scales. Two, you end up with so much depth in your image, It's really awesome. I think. All right, can I quickly get some shading in here and make this come forward? And then there's a little peak here, comes down. Another one that comes up. There's little bit of mist. It looks like that's really creeping in here. So I'm going to use my eraser, just lift up some of that value. There we go. Then lastly, this big dark mountain in the foreground. So I'm pressing as hard as I can with my pencil. Look at that range of values you see just even without getting super detailed, using the different shades of white and dark can open up that drawing and creates so much depth and dimension on your paper. Okay, Let me just clean up this edge a little. Fortunately, it's not like a super clean line. It's kinda got a lot of little looks like little trees, little texture going on all. And I don't want to forget our super cute little mountain went to the trouble of drawing it. So I gotta shaded. Go out. I noticed that I would've felt bad if I let you out. There we go. That is a really quick example of using the different extremes now of light to dark in your drawings to create nice work. All right, we're starting on a brand new piece. Next time, we're gonna go for a little walk on the beach. See you then? 13. Beach Drawing Part 1: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond and I'm really excited because in this lesson we're gonna go explore the beach together and we're going to do a little bit longer drawing that lets us focus on light source. Happy drawing. Today we are going for a walk along the beach. You ready? We're going to sketch out this beach scene. And while we're doing that, we'll talk a little bit about concepts of lighting. That's really what I want to focus on for this next section of lessons because it's a very important concept for making landscapes come to life. So this, we'll take it, we'll spend a few lessons on this one and really make it beautiful drawing together here. So let's start by lightly sketching it. I'm using my Tooby pencil. I'm going to sketch very lightly. And starting again with the horizon line. And I just kinda comparing my picture plane to the reference, I see that the horizon is not at the center point. It's a bit above that, maybe about right here. I don't like to say that there are rules in art, especially when we're talking about landscape art. So there are no rules but one guideline or pro tip. Pro tip. That's what we'll call it. One pro tip to think about is where you placed that horizon line on the picture plane. And a lot of times it can make your drawing a little bit more dynamic and interesting if you choose not to center it on the picture plane, if you put it a little above, a little below, it just gives, it, gives the drawing a little bit more of a dynamic breakup. Now, that does not mean that that is a rule though. And there are times when it may be it makes the most sense to center it. So still just do what feels right to you. Symmetry, centering things has a tendency to make a piece feel more still in calm and balanced. So if that's the vibe you're going for, then that might be a good time to do that, but it can also make it feel a little bit more contrived or controlled. Or I think having things offset a little makes it feel a bit more natural. Like you're, you could imagine walking into that scene and that there's more to it beyond the edges of the paper. And that's a, that's a cool thing to think about and try to instill in the viewer's mind when they look at your work, is that you're just showing them a little part of this much bigger scene. Makes them invites them. I guess. It doesn't force them, but it invites them to use their imagination. I always like that. Alright, and I'm just sketching in the basic shape of that distant mountain. And looking at the distance between the tallest part and the horizon line versus when it dips down on the sides. Now as I'm sketching this one out, Let's start to talk just a little bit about the lighting in this scene. Lighting in landscapes varies dramatically depending on a number of factors, but one of the big ones is time of day. This appears to be a mourning scene, so the lighting, the sun is maybe just rising somewhere over here. And you can see that for a number of clues in the image, you don't really see the sun, but you see a strong glow in the sky over there. So that's our first clue. Then there's the way that the light is hitting the water along the beach, you can see it's the brightest along the left side and also farther back. And then just the way that the water is hitting this little kept the waves. And then look at the mountain itself, see how the mountain is lighter over here on the left, and then it goes more into shadow on the right. So this one I pick to start with because the lighting, It's pretty obvious. There are times when it's much less obvious though, the sky might look all look the same all the way across. You might not see dramatic highlights and shadows, but there's still, there's still light source at play. And whether it's diffused lighting, maybe it's a really cloudy, overcast day, but there's still light coming through those clouds. And how, where is it in the sky? And how is it affecting what we're seeing? If you can start thinking about that in your, in your drawings and paintings and whatever else you want to make. That can be a great way to also clue in your viewer about what they're seeing and make the scene feel much more believable. And dimensional. Lighting, lighting is seen is just to me, that's when it really crosses the line from being a kind of a flat image to feeling like you're really there. So we'll talk a lot about that, about different techniques for creating different types of lighting. But first we're just getting this guy sketched out. And I want you to notice too, with the water the way that it's coming up onto the beach here. That the little sections, the little waves, I guess the little, the little shapes where the water is lapping up onto the beach are much smaller, tighter and closer together back here. And then as we move into the foreground, they start spacing out more. And that is another way of showing depth perspective. Things get bigger as they get closer to you. This piece of water, this little section right here, in reality is probably no bigger than this one, but it just looks much smaller because it's so much farther away. And then I'm just tracing, following this all the way down. It looks like it comes about to the halfway, points. Horizontally halfway. You can always go back and adjust if you need to do anything, make it so it lands where you want. That's what this this part of the drawing is really all about is just getting it on the paper, refining it, moving things so that it will be a lot easier when you go to shaded in. You won't have to worry about, is this in the right spot? Because you'll know that it is and you can just focus on the values and the textures and all the other fun stuff. Alright, so now I'm gonna do this. This line is the farthest left Part of the water where it's just right up on the beach. And now I'm going to come over and draw this next one where it's more like we're actually getting into the water now there's a little bit of depth to it. Again, notice the difference, I'm sorry, the distance between the two lines back here versus down here. It's huge. The down here that wave is probably about, looks like maybe it's about a fourth of the way up the vertical side, maybe a little lower than a fourth, but the clothes, so about right here. The distance from there to there, versus by the time you get back here, it's almost that it's so close you can't even really see that space. So we have that. What that does is it creates a very dramatic sense of perspective. And it makes the viewer feel like we are standing right here, just just where the photographer, I'm sure withstanding when they took this photo. So we're going to gradually make this get wider and wider. As it comes forward. Look at how that just kinda pulls you right in now it makes you feel like you could go for a little walk on that beach. Like I deal with our dogs. Sometimes I live, I live by a beach. It's beautiful. And you definitely appreciate the beauty of nature when you are out there walking, seeing the light hitting the water the way it affects the sand dunes and the sand. So much to take in. And I think you will find after doing this class that you're going to look at nature a lot differently. I've had so many students tell me jokingly, but kinda blaming me like Paul, you, it's your fault You made me late for work because I saw a beautiful sunrise and they had to pull over and look at it and study it and appreciate all the different shades and colors and everything. Well, that's that's what you signed up for. So be prepared for that. We are not responsible for any tardies that you get for when you're supposed to be somewhere. Because you're busy appreciating the beauty of nature. It's a good thing hoping everybody else can just wait. Alright, now that we have this sketched out, hang on to it. And then in the next lesson we will start shading it in beautiful job. Okay, you have your sketch all laid out. Now, hang on to that because in our next lesson, we're going to start shading it in. I'll see you then 14. Beach Drawing Part 2: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond and we're going back to the beach today. So get your flip-flops and you're swimming trunks. We're going to start shading in the drawing that we started in the last lesson. Happy drawing. Okay, Let's jump in and start shaving this scene. Now, I'm very excited to work on this. I think we're going to be able to create a really beautiful landscape here just by adding in some different values. So let's take a look first. The overall breakdown of value in this image. When I squint my eyes and look at it, I see the brightest are lightest values in the sky, especially on the left. And then I see also some very light values being reflected in parts of the water, which makes sense because the water is reflecting the sky, but because it's being reflected on top of sand and on top of other stuff. It's not quite as white as it is up here. Using the white of the paper makes it a little bit easier because we already have that lightness up here. So let's start in the mountain area. And I'm going to fill it in overall with just kind of a medium white tone like this. We may need to get a little bit darker over on the rate. But for starters, I'm just wanted to get it blocked in. I like to think of I'm shading in a drawing as really being a multi-step process. So my pro tip for you is don't try to do everything at once. It gets so overwhelming. And you very quickly can lose sight of the goal, which is to capture that essence of the scene or the feeling of that, of that scene. So just take it step-by-step, section by section, and know that we'll go back into each of these sections until it all comes together and looks great. Okay, So I have that value there. Now when I squint my eyes and I look to see where else do I see a similar value? I see it back here on the sand. When you look at the sand, you see a shift in the value between the background. Back here. In the foreground? I do. It's subtle, but the sand gets a bit darker as it moves toward us. That is something that is very common in landscapes. And a good thing to look for when you are focusing on value is to pay attention to how the land changes as it moves from foreground to background. Chances are it is not going to look the same. So even though right now I'm just blocking it in all with this one value. We will, I will come back and darken it more in the front. And that will give it more of a sense of depth. So anytime you are showing distance in a piece, really pay attention to how the values change over the course of that distance. There are a lot of things that change, not just value, as we talked about before, the amount of detail. You can see that in the water. How we see we noticed much more detail in the water over here and then in the distance that becomes much more subtle. Color changes over space too. But for right now, we're talking about value. So focus, Paul, Ryan, okay, now I see the darkest values in these kind of treat this treeline area here. So I'm gonna come in and block that in next. We're just keeping it very loose, very simple. You can go back and add as many details as we want. But for now let's just get it locked in. So there's a section that is what I'm actually noticing here is there's a little hill And it first when I saw it, I thought it was trees all the way down, but it's actually trees to about here. And then the rest of that darkness is just the shadow of the trees on the sand. And that makes a lot of sense when you think about it, because if the light is coming from over here, first of all, we're seeing those trees basically in silhouette. We're looking at the dark side of those trees. I love whenever I get to see the dark side. Alright, focus again, Paulo. See not too good at that today. We're seeing the silhouette of the trees, but also we are getting the cache shadow of the trees coming forward because the light source is behind them. And those are all clues that tell us either consciously or subconsciously where that light is coming from. So without drawing a son in your sky, viewers will have a sense of where that sun is, just by how you arrange your values. So first I'm just getting the tree line and then I'll go back and do the shadow underneath it. Because it looks to me like the tree line itself is darker little bit. And then the shadow is still pretty dark, but it's just ever so slightly lighter. Alright. I have my trees in, blocked in any way. And now I'm going to just go through and do that shadow below them the way across. Okay? Now I'm going to grab another pencil because that one's getting a little worn down. And I'm going to just lay in a value, a light value to start with over top of all of the water. And then we'll go back in and darken it where we need to. But there are very few places where the water is pure white. And if we need to bring that back out, we can erase those away. So as a starting point, I'm just going to color the whole thing in. I like to, I like to keep it really simple at first and think very big picture that helps me a lot. And then get more focused. So as long as you don't go too dark too quickly, you can always erase. Now again, you see me using my diagonal lines for shading. So that's one way to go. Some artists like to use the direction of their pencil lines to actually give more of an indication of what the direction of that section or what that plane is doing. So they might go maybe more horizontal on the water to make it feel like it's flowing. So experiment with that and see what works best for you. You can also use a tissue or paper towel if you, if you don't want to see those pencil lines, you can smooth them out, but just want to caution you against doing that too much because it can very quickly make your drawing to start to feel very foggy, smokey. You lose some of the definition. When you overlay blend everything. So I like seeing the pencil lines myself, so I'm not worried about that, but every artist is different and you will find your own style as you go along. Alright, now, lastly, for this base layer, we are going to come back and work on this more. But for this base layer, I just want to also bring a little bit of that value into the right side of the sky because you see how the sky does get a little bit darker. It's still so very light, so much lighter than the mountain. So again, thinking about just those relationships between all of the different parts. Now we have a nice kinda layer of value that helps us establish sort of where all of those things are. Now of course, we have a lot more to do, especially in the water. But hang on to this drawing and we'll come back and do some more C. Awesome work. Okay, we're not finished yet though. Hang on to this drawing because in the next lesson, we are going to go back into the background and start bringing out more detail in the shading. I'll see you then 15. Beach Drawing Part 3: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. And we're going right back to the beach today and continuing on the drawing that we've been working on for the last two lessons. Happy drawing. Welcome back to the beach. Let's keep going with this. I am going to start in the sky now and work my way forward. So every landscape artist has little different approach. Once I get everything kinda blocked in, one of the things I like to do is then go back and work my way from the background to the foreground. That's not a rule. You can, if you feel inspired to work somewhere else, do that. I'm starting by just sketching in this cloud shape. But I think the reason that I like to do that is because for one thing, if you have a lot of elements that overlap, like if we're in a forest and there are trees or different things, it's easier sometimes to deal with things in order so that when you do a tree, you don't have to go back and try and put this guy in around it. Um, but also I just like the idea of feeling like I'm sort of reaching into the paper and to the far, this most distant part first. And then working my way forward, There's something about that, that for me helps me to think more about the depth of the piece and the dimension of it. So that's my polyprotein have start, start in the distance and work your way forward. Alright, now I'm shading in this cloud that I've just drawn. And there's, there are some probably like medium values, I would say, in the shadow parts of the Cloud. And it's a good idea to bring those out even though it's a really bright scene. And we really want that feeling of the light coming from the sun. You, the way that you capture that requires darkness. You can appreciate the light in an image. If, if you're not also thinking about where are those shadows, where, where the dark parts. So even up here in the sky, even on a cloud, which we would think of normally as being a really light, puffy thing. A cloud has volume, it has sheep has formed. So it's going to be affected by light, just like anything else. And it will have shadows, will have dark sides, light sides. I'm going to take my kneaded eraser and pull out some of those highlights around the outer edge of the cloud. Because it's always about that contrast between light and dark. Every little section of your piece. The more that you can think about that and have consistent lighting and have the lighting affecting everything in a consistent way. It really pulled, starts to pull that piece together and the viewer will read it as being the true light source for that scene. So in order to really see that rim lighting that's happening on the Cloud, I noticed that I need to go a little bit darker with my sky. I'm going to do that now see how just putting a little bit of value rate in the sky next to that cloud makes the light hitting the clouds stand out more. If you're going for a realistic drawing, one that maybe does not rely on a lot of outlines to distinguish the different elements, then you really have to look closely at what are those value relationships. Because if you want to have a defined edge of something like this cloud and you don't want to have an outline on it, then you have to kinda bring out that difference is bringing what am I trying to bring out the differences between the darks and the lights and use that to create the edge. Alright, so now I'm coming around, see how just putting that value and that sky, look at how it makes that cloud start to glow. It's kinda cool. So now that I'm doing that I'm noticing, I really think I want to just make the sky get darker over here all the way across because that will Emphasize the lightness on the left side, even more. Drawing is about push and pull of the values until everything sort of lands in the right spot. And I think that from a technique perspective, to accomplish that, it's often easiest. If you start light and work your way up to dark, because it's a lot easier to erase a light tone on the paper if you realize you want it to be even lighter versus if you've gone too dark. Sometimes it can be a little challenging to get all of that graphite lifted up with the eraser. Okay, I'm liking that sky. Now I want to work some more on the mountain. And again, continuing that idea of just working my way forward. So I'm going to start back here. There are a few different ridges of the mountain that creates some lighting effects. Also. I'm noticing that right up here at the top, there's these two distant parts. They're still, of course, much darker than the sky, but lighter than the mountain peak fits right in front of them. So I'm gonna go darker up here first. To dark. Gotta be just right. And then I'm gonna come down in front of that. See, I might have even gotten a smidge too dark. So let me just kinda, one thing you can do if you want to just lift a little bit of the graphite up, is just take your eraser and just kinda had it. Alright, now I'm going to come in front of that and darken the mountain. And I noticed that the mountain gets the darkest over on the right. I'm going to I know that we needed to be at least that dark there in order to separate the part right behind it. So I'm going to take that value on over. You can see that's also going to mean we're probably going to have to darken our trees some more. Because like I was saying, before, everything is relative and you make one adjustment somewhere and then it affects everything. So yeah, you thought we were getting close to being finished with this. I'm not going to drag it out too long, but after doing all of these quick drawings, I do want to start giving you a chance to go a little bit more in depth. So we're not going to finish this one in this lesson. We're going to continue on and, and kinda deal with each of the different areas. So we're focusing on background right now. And then in the subsequent lesson, we're going to work our way forward. I didn't think you all would mind spending a little extra time at the beach. So now we're going to let that we still need we still want to get a little bit darker than the section behind it. So I'm paying attention to that. Then we see that the mountain gets lighter as it goes over toward the left. So let's see if we can get that kind of gradation to happen just by varying the pressure on the pencil. So pressing a little harder as I move over towards the right. Pressing a little bit lighter as I move towards the left. And it may take a few passes. See now I'm kind of going in different directions with my pencil and my first layer was all kinda very diagonal. But now I'm mixing it up a little bit and it making it feel smoother, less, less apparent, pencil marks. And then the last thing I want to do on the mountain for now is take my eraser and do you notice how there are just a couple of it feels like light beams that are coming across. There's one right here and then it gets really light, right, right over here on the far left side. So I'm going to do the same thing. I'm just going to lift up some of that graphite with my eraser and create those lighting effects. Because I think that's going to be a really neat way to also just reinforce that idea of the light source. Over here. If you end up erasing away too much, don't worry, you can always add it back in. I might lift a little bit up right here. I love these erasers. Just kinda very subtly shift things until you get it just where you want it. Okay, that's all for now. Nice work. Okay, this is really coming together, but we still have further to go. Hang onto this drawing, bring it back next time and we will continue to see you then 16. Beach Drawing Part 4: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond and we are continuing with our drawing of the beach scene today by working on shading in the sand and starting on the water. Happy journaling. Alright, let's keep going back to the beach this time we're going to work on the sand. Pretend we're taking a little stroll along the shore. I've got my four B pencil because this area is dark. So let me just kinda start back here and work my way forward. If you look at the reference, you can notice that there is a little bit of light hitting the sand rate right here in this top part that's closest to where the sun is positioned. And then as it moves into the foreground, it starts to get a bit darker. So paying attention to subtle things like that can really help to reinforce the more dramatic areas where you're really showing the light source. You want to just always be thinking about where is that light coming from, how is it affecting every single part? So there's your Pali pro tip for today, even in subtle areas where it doesn't seem like there's a lot of contrast. You can still sometimes pick up on very, very subtle shifts in value and bringing those out will make your drawing a lot stronger. It's all about just slowing down and really looking closer. I know I keep saying that, but based on the number of years that I have been teaching and also the number of years I've had to remind myself of that. It is something that you probably can't repeat enough. As an instructor. We all just want to get in and work on our drawings and get all swept up in the drawings. And it's easy to forget that that reference is there. But it's there for a reason. We can notice things that other people might not see in when we bring that out in our work. It just helps transport the viewer right to that spot. I'm going to draw, speaking of subtle things that I just noticed for the first time. There's some little variations in the sand back here. It could be like footprints are evidence of humans or animals back here playing on matures. So I'm going to put that in just a little bit darker, a little texture. Basically. It's kinda brings that sand area, makes it feel a little bit more activated, not just like a flat, flat ground. I love going to the beach. I live a few blocks from a beach. Myself. Go over there all the time with our dog. She quite enjoys it to. So as I'm sitting here drawing this, just thinking about my own trips to the beach and whether it feels like what the atmosphere is like at different times of day. So that's another good thing to try and get in the habit of doing as well when you're working on a landscape. Really try and imagine that you are there. It's obviously a bit easier to do if it's somewhere that you actually have been before or if you've been somewhere that is similar to the place that you're depicting. But putting yourself in that mindset really will help. Because ultimately making a drawing or making any piece of art is really just about capturing the essence of something. You can, you can be as detailed or as loose as you want. That's just a matter of personal style. But in all of those instances, the goal is very similar. It's taking this very complex three-dimensional space, this environment, and putting it down on the paper, somehow making it come to life in a new way. I think in a way that's very different than how it would be if it were done in any other medium. Photography, painting, everything, every, every printmaking, collage. There's so many different artistic mediums and styles to choose from. And they all have their pluses and minuses. And I enjoy doing all of them. But there's something really special about just pencil on paper, capturing the essence of a place. And that is what we're doing here. It's coming, it's coming to life. Now, if you fill in an area like I'm doing here with the sand and then you want to maybe pull out a few little highlights or make a few little irregularities in it. Again, doesn't feel t flat. You can also use your eraser to do that. Especially using it back here where that light is stronger. There we go. And getting really dark as we come down here into the foreground. You can also see that on this path, I'm going a different direction with my pencil. And then I had done previously with those very diagonal strokes. So that helps too, if you want it to feel a little bit more realistic and not be as lining, then just do a couple of passes and go a different direction each time. Almost done with that. It's looking good. How's yours come in, you having fun. You're not getting stressed out there, are you? This is quite literally a walk on the beach, so don't be stressed. Because imagine you're hearing those sounds of the waves, the seagulls. It's very chill. And your drawings do not have to be perfect. This is supposed to be fun. Remember? I'm putting in some more little footprints, textures here in the front. And I'm making those bigger than the ones back here. Because things that are closer to us or bigger. I also notice if you look really closely right on the front side of each of those little footprints or whatever they might be, there's a little highlight where it must be that the sand is just has a little bit of an edge or a ridge there that's catching the weight from back there. Do you see that? So erase those out if you want. Alright. Now, I am going to move one step over and start working on the water that is lapping up onto the shore. I just want to get a little bit darker for us. I just realized kinda comparing all the values now to everything else that I already have. So look at the, look at the value of the sand and then compare it to say, the mountain or to the trees. You can kind of figure out where it needs to land. You can always backtrack and push it farther one direction or the other if you need to. Okay, coming back here now I'm just kinda creating that a little bit more of an edge. There's a very light, almost like a wine really along the back here where you just see like this little bit of the edge of the water. So I'm going to come inside of that and go dark. Remember when you, whenever you want to make something look white, it means you need to put some dark around it. So I'm going on each side. Chains darkening it a little bit, dark and my trees a little bit too. Okay. Now let's just work our way on around. I'm using very horizontal strokes this time because I see a lot of very horizontal movement in the water. Okay, so I'm starting to like that. The edge up here, I can really see that white tip of the waves. So I'm just going to try to bring that around now. And as it comes closer to us, of course it gets wider. We go. I think it will help actually if I go all the way down on the inside of the water first, then I'll have that edge more defined. And then I can go back in and do the section where it's really up on the shore. So working my way backwards a little bit on this one. Now, you can go wherever you want with your shading. You do not have to do exactly as I'm doing. I do want to encourage you to really look at the reference and let that be your guide. I'm over here and you can always look and see what I'm doing to get inspired. And that's always a good thing too. But ultimately, it's about what you see in the reference, in how you bring it out in your drawing. Okay. Great job. Okay, we are almost finished with this drawing. In our next lesson, we're going to finish up the water and do some final touches. And then we'll be ready to start something new. I'll see you then 17. Beach Drawing Part 5: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson we are going to finish up our drawing of the beach, happy drawing. We're going to start right back here on the edge of the water and create just the kinda dark shadowy shape that we see. It's, it's kinda like a lot of very horizontal stripes or lines. And then as it gets closer into the foreground, they get wider. But it kind of creates that movement of the water moving from the right to the left, having all of these lines go through. And there's parts where it gets a bit darker and then there's other areas where it's more of middle shade. So just keep moving your eyes back and forth between your drawing and the reference and try to match what you see. Easier said than done. I know. But you can do, I can view it, you could do it. Now, as we come up here, notice how there's, first of all a really wide section that's very light right here. So I'm going to jump ahead and actually kinda just give myself a little indication of where that is. And that way I'll be able to know where, where I'm heading. Sometimes I like to jump around a little bit in my drawings. In fact, that's a good pro tip. Rather than just staying in one area. Kinda work around the space so that you gave yourself different kinda mileposts are leading from one section to an x so that you're not just aimlessly wandering around and hoping you're going the right direction. It's like just pausing to look at the map a little bit first before you, before you carry on. Alright, so now we're back here in this section where it is mostly dark except that there's this patch right here now that comes out, that's kinda light. You see that? So creating some kinda like barriers are edges to know where, how far I want those lines to go can really be helpful. Okay. Then this kind of goes off. So this whole area, now it gets kind of more of a medium tone. It's still lighter than the sand. Definitely darker than what I had on there. So we're just building up that value a little bit. And it's okay to make some, especially in the foreground, to make some of those lines be a bit thicker and a little bit more irregular. Two doesn't have to be just a perfectly horizontal line. I think as things get closer to us, you start to notice more of those nuances. So back here the lines may stay pretty, pretty horizontal overall, might be broken up a little bit, have some spots where it's more of just like little dots. But then as we come up here, we start to see a little bit more of the personality of the sheep. So it takes some time to just kind of study that and bring that out in your drawing to showing more detail in the foreground, more, more of a subtle shapes and values and things like that. Shadows highlights anything you can bring out in the foreground will help to just make it feel closer to us because you see more when things are close to you. That's called atmospheric perspective. When it's not necessarily about using vanishing points and things that you might normally associate with perspective drawing. That's about the way that you depict the atmosphere and how it changes through space. It's more to think about harm. But don't worry. It all sort of becomes intuitive after you do it for awhile. And I have been doing it for quite awhile. So just keep practicing. You don't have to think about everything at once. Just focus on the area where you are, what you see there, and then just just keep going. Okay. I'm liking that. Now I wanted to just get some more value out here in this big section. And then everything will be brought up to the same level. And we can go back through and do any finishing touches that we need because we are almost finished with this one. Can you believe it? Don't worry though, I have more in store for you after this. We have many more drawings to make together. I hope you are enjoying the course so far. I am having a blast. If you couldn't tell, it's always fun to get to draw with you and share a little bit of what I've learned. And I also really love Seeing your work and how you interpret things. Every artist sees things a little differently, so love it if you'd take a moment and share your creations with me. Making art is all about expressing yourself and showing how you see the world. So we don't need a bunch of carbon copies of my drawing. You'll learn the techniques that are relevant to you and that you're interested in. But don't, don't try to make it exactly like mine. You use your own your own style, your own voice. If you don't know what that what that is, that's okay too. You chances are other people see it when they look at your work, even if you can't, that happens so often. We appreciate everybody else's style, the way that they see the world. And then we look at our own work and with just such a critical eye and we can't see what's wonderful about it or what's unique about it. Or maybe you always think, gosh, I just wish that my work could look like this person or that persons. But meanwhile, those people are probably thinking the same thing about their work, wishing it looked like some other person. So the curse, I guess, of being an artist, you, it is a bit more difficult to appreciate your own stuff, but just keep going. And if you're, if you are interested in sort of figuring out what your style is as an artist, how you want to start portraying things are stylistic elements or touches you might want to use in your work, the best way is to start approaching that is to pay attention to the kind of art that you are really drawn to you. What inspires you the most? When you see a drawing or a painting or sculpture, do you do like like really tight realism? Do you like more expressive marks? Do you like bold use of color? You like subtle colors with lots of neutrals. Do you like abstraction? All of those things can help you pinpoint what you want to try next yourself. It's not copying. Every artist gets inspired by other artists. So take some time and really look at what other artists are doing. It's so easy now with social media and most professional artists have a web site and there's all kinds of art blogs. There's special art blogs for landscape artist, landscape painters. They're special magazines and blogs for people who like to draw. So take, take some time to feed yourself inspiration. It's, it's very important to kinda stay motivated and inspired by getting excited about what other people are creating. I love looking at other artist's work, even artists who do work that is completely different than mine. I can be, I can get very excited and inspired about that as well. Just, just kinda expand your mind every time, every time you look at an artist's work. Alright, I'll get off my soapbox now about that. As we are just about to wrap up this drawing and I wanted to just do a few more things. I'm going to make a couple of kinda bolder marks here in the front part of the water go a little deeper with the value and just really try to make that feel like it's moving forward toward us. You could continue working on this for as long as you would like also, I mean, there's certainly a lot more of it you could bring out in this drawing. And I would encourage you to keep, keep going if you feel inspired to see how, how far you could really push those values, how dark Can you make those shadows? It could go much darker, more extreme in the shadow areas, and that'll just make it feel even more realistic. So I'm trying to keep this reasonable time frame so that will be able to move on and tackle some other subjects and different drawings to in this course. But by all means, take all the time that you want with it. And with that, I'm just going to pull out a couple of highlights quickly here. And then I think that I am going to be finished. Very exciting. Few little highlights here in this part where the water gets a bit lighter. Trails over this way. Well, I certainly enjoyed hanging out at the beach with you. And can't wait to make some more drilling soon. There we go. Beautiful work COP is to spend a little extra time on our drawings occasionally and we will actually get some practice doing that again with our next project. See you then 18. Desert Mountainscape Part 1: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we're going to start sketching out a brand new landscape this time it is a rocky mountain scene, happy drawing to start a new one. Okay, here's our reference. I love all of the shapes and textures in this one. And I especially love the way that you can really feel that sunlight hitting the mountain, hitting all those different clips and ridges and rocks. And then you get those dark shadows over on the shadow side. So you can see that the light source is coming from the left because all the highlights, although all the strongest lights are on the left side of each of the different sections and then the shadows are on the right. Let's start sketching this out. Are you ready? So I'm going to just kinda make, make a few loose marks for myself to decide where I want all of these different shapes to be or where I think they should be. And before I get too detailed about it, that way, I can just kind of see how it's fitting. You are also welcome to, if you would like to just crop in on a certain area of the image, if you don't want to draw the whole thing, that is completely valid. There was actually a lot more to this photo. I cropped in on it, even some myself to what I thought made a good composition. But that's the thing with landscapes. You are never showing the whole thing because it's a 360 view. So it's actually a really cool thing. Here's your polyprotic for this one. I think it's a really cool thing to imply that there is more to the scene than, than what we're seeing right on the page or on the canvas or whatever you're making it on. This landscape continues. So we're not trying to show it all. Certain ways you can kinda help create that illusion is by not lining up everything and centering it perfectly. Although like we talked about before, if that's the look that you want for a certain piece to make it feel more balanced or symmetrical, that's completely fine too. But when you have things a bit more off like this, then it really does give us that feeling that there's a lot more. The mountains are not just like lining up here to pose for their school photo. We're just getting a little section of all of the awesomeness that is out there. I'm looking also at the ship, the sky as a negative sheep intended drawing that, as well as drawing what's on this side, which is the mountains. So use those negative spaces that they really do help. Alright. I noticed that this, the way that I have it framed up the bottom of this mountain or where it intersects with the one that's right behind it is about at the halfway point vertically. So that looks like it's lining up about where I want. And this peak is pretty close to the edge, so that's feeling pretty good. It's a little bit lower than the one next to it. So just to let you know a few of the things that are going through my head right now, which scary place in there? So go, go, go at your own risk. But I'm thinking about how obviously how everything is fitting on the page, but also how does each little section that I'm drawing compare and relate with what else I already have sketched out. So height-wise, where does this hit this and how far down is this one from the top of this. So it's just like pieces and parts. You just build it out of all those little pieces and make sure they are relating to each other the way that they're supposed to. Or you can also certainly feel free to make some take artistic license and make some changes to the way that things are laid out. If you want to move a mountain a little bit, changed the shape of a mountain. I said you're going to feel very powerful as all the hints. Good part is you get to literally move mountains if you want to. But sometimes, sometimes that's a good idea to make a better composition. So take the takeover license that you want. With that Okay, I'm getting this hill here now. It looks like there's a little bit we're seeing a little bit of a road or something over here, so I can't tell if it's a road or if it's like stuff. I think it's a road. He knows. It can be whatever you want in your in your world. Feels pretty good. Now one thing I like to do sometimes with a really dramatic image like this, where the light source does play such a big part in creating the breakup of the shapes. I'll actually sketch out some of those shadow shapes are right now you see how the bottom-right corner is kind of all in shadow. So I'm just sketching that actual shadow shape. And I'll do that again up here to the shadows, tell you a lot about the structure of the mountain and of the hill. There's a reason why the shadow is shaped that way. It's because the angles of the, of the formation turn there. They move in a different direction away from the light. The light can't reach those. So it's not just about drawing the shadows, it's actually also about, you're starting to get more of a understanding of the three-dimensional form by using the shapes of the shadows, by looking at why does the light hit this area in a particular way. I think that's really an ideal thing for us to be talking about and thinking about right now, since this section of the course is really about light source. And light source does a lot in our inner landscape. For one thing, it weights the image so that we can see it. We can see what we're looking at. Nights keeps are pretty interesting too, because even in night scapes there are still some light sources or else it would just be a totally black piece of paper. But the light source lights the image. But then it also, because of how the light falls across the forms. It actually helps us to understand more about the sheets and the volume and the structure of stuff. So the light, the light source, it does a lot and it also helps to create that sense of depth because light changes as it moves through space. The farther you get away from a light source, the shadows, the edges of the shadows might become softer. They become more stretched out. So it's a really interesting thing when you start thinking about it that way. The way that the light impacts what we're seeing, it allows us to see it at all. But then it also tells us even more about what it is we're actually looking at. Obviously I can talk about white source for a long time. It's interesting when you are doing pioneer landscapes where you're drawing or painting outside because the light source is constantly changing because of the way that the Earth is spinning the sons in one spot, 1 min and so different spot the next. And so you're, it changes everything about what you see. So the trick to that is to draw fast. Alright? Just trying to get a little bit more detail now in some of my lines, really understanding the shapes and the way that all of these different sections fit together. I'm focusing on the most dramatic ones first, I think like we've talked about before, when you're doing a landscape drawing, there's so much information to take in, it can be very overwhelming. So a big, a big help is learning to prioritize, squint your eyes a lot. What do you still see when your eyes are squinted? Chances are that is an important part. And things that disappear when you squint your eyes. Because maybe the contrast isn't as strong. Maybe that's not as important. That can be put in the category of stuff that we'll deal with it if we get to it this time. So of course, you can always make time if you want to make a super detailed piece. But I think having a, having a sense of what it is you want to focus on what's important, what's most important to creating the feeling of that piece, learning how to identify that, and then using that as a strategy for drawing is very, very helpful. I get this little swoopy just re, we have a lot of fun shading to do on this one. I'm excited. The more that you workout in your sketch stage, the easier it will be to jump right in and know where some of those shadows need to go with something that's complicated with so many different layers. It does, I think really helped to take the time to give yourself a good blueprint of where everything is lining up. You. I think that's gonna do it for this one and then we are ready to start shaving. You did it. Okay, so now we are ready in our next lesson to start shading this drawing in. I'll see you then 19. Desert Mountainscape Part 2: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we are going to start shading in our mountain landscapes, starting with the shadows, happy drawing, shading. Let's make this landscape come to life. We'll do a little rock-climbing today. But first, I'm gonna take my kneaded eraser and just soften some of my lines a little bit. This is something I like to do a lot when I'm doing a bit more of a realistic drawing and I may not want to have as much line work showing. That is all a matter of personal preference. There are times when I like to use a lot of line work in a drawing. So you do you. Alright, I am going to squint my eyes and look at where I see the most contrast in this image. And I think I'm going to start there. So I'm looking at the shadows on the mountain. In the last drawing, I sort of started with the sky and worked for word. That's also a really good option too. I like to do that quite a bit myself, but for this one, I want to show you a different approach. So I am going to start by just very loosely kind of shading in all of those dark shadows. So looking at just starting over here on the, the left, one reason I'm doing that is because I'm right handed, so I know I'll have somewhere to raise my hand as I go along. There's really no right or wrong as far as where you start. So choose the spot that speaks to you. And as you go as you go along, use that as an opportunity to also just kinda refine the edge of the mountain. I think edges in general are something that is very helpful to understanding the complexity of whatever it is that we're drawing. It's, it's very tempting to want to simplify the edges to make things just a little bit more maybe rounded than, than they actually appear, or just kind of exaggerate the simplicity of it, but with something like this that so textured and has so many different angles and planes and ridges and things. Having that very irregular, complex edge can help a lot. Help us understand what it is we're looking at. It is actually big, big rock formations, not like giant marshmallows. Think about, I guess, texture. Let's talk about texture pro tip. Imagine the texture of what it is that you are drawing. As you draw it. Think about what would it feel like to touch this thing? Would it, Is it smooth? Is it rough? Is it doesn't have fine grainy texture, big rough sections. Just kinda imagine that you are feeling that surface as you shaded in it. We'll make a difference in your drawing. I know my mind likes to wander a lot. You've probably picked up on that by the way, that I jumped from one thing to the next as I am talking with you here in this course. But there is always a part of my brain that is right here in this landscape than imagining what these different areas feel like. What it, what it, what it would feel like in general to be there to the emotional feeling of it. And then also the literal textural feeling of the different surfaces. Keep squinting your eyes to make sure that you're not getting too caught up in detail too quickly. Alright, now, there's a lot of interesting texture in this part. And then also down in here, I'm simplifying it for now just by going through with an overall dark shadow. Because when I squint my eyes, that's what I see. The majority of in that space. There are sections of highlight too, so I'm not going super dark yet. I'm keeping it a medium value and that way it'll be easy to go in and erase away some of those highlights and create some of the implied texture of all of those rocks piling up there. We're not going to draw each one individually exactly as it is shown, but we'll give it the sense of the texture of it. Alright, this mountain, I'm adjusting the shape of it a little bit because I noticed there's the opening, the negative space is a bit wider than what I had drawn originally. Notice how also there's, there's the big shadows. There's the whole right side of the mountain is dark. But then you also on these little tiny sections, you have areas where it one section of the mountain is facing towards the light, but then it cuts in the shadows. So those shadows I tried to capture as I go along too, because that also helps to show how the light source is affecting all sides of the mountain. And there are areas that are facing towards the shadow side everywhere. It makes it it makes it feel a lot more complex, I guess, a lot more interesting. Okay, I'm going to raise this up a little, scooped it out a little too much. That's my tendency when I draw, is when I see a curve or I see a cutout, or I see anything that kinda things are going one direction and then it goes a different way. I tend to exaggerate that a little bit more on my first attempt. So I've been drawing long enough now I know to look for that. And if that's not what I'm wanting to do with drawing than I know. I need to just go back in and change it. So learning what your tendencies are as an artist, what you tend to exaggerate or what you tend to kinda, drawing in a different way can be really helpful in different ways you might decide, yes, I like doing it that way. I'm going to intentionally do that in that will become a part of my style. Or you can know that that's something you need to look for to correct if you're going for more realism. I do it a lot. I noticed when I was in college, I think, I think I've sort of worked through it now. But when I was in college and we started, we did a lot of figure drawing classes. I noticed that I would do the same thing with the figure, which is interesting because doesn't matter if I'm drawing a mountain or a person, I still have that same tendency to want to over-exaggerate things. I guess it fits my personality honestly. That's how I tell stories to love the drama. But if, but I noticed when I was drawing the figures in our figure drawing classes that wherever their elbow was, I would always make that angle more severe than what it actually was. Or if there was a curve on the leg, I would make it like really extra curved. And so when I went once I realized that then I just knew, okay, well, I can still draw it that way first if I want and then if I decide I want it to be more realistic, then I know I need to just tone it down a notch. So learn, learn what makes your work unique and then decide if you want to just go with it or adjusted. Everybody has things in their drawings that need fixed. It doesn't mean you're a bad artist. Doesn't mean you don't know what you're doing. In fact, if you can look at a drawing that you've made and identify something that needs adjusted that isn't quite correct compared to the reference. That's a wonderful thing. That is. Most people don't see it that way. Most people think, oh, I've messed up, I suck, I'm good at this, I should just quit. But if you, if you are able to identify a problem, then that means you are learning and growing. And then the next step is figure out how to correct it, how to solve the problem, what adjustments do I need to make? And I think that's the step that a lot of beginning artists don't understand. They think that they have to get it right on the first attempt. But nobody does. Hardly. It's it's just about getting something down on that paper to respond to you. And then you can go back and refine and refine, refine until you have it looking the way you want. Like that little patch of light that's just kinda falling right here. Right here you see that just very loosely filling in this whole shadow side, we'll come back and do more detail there obviously. Alright, that'll do it for this one. Awesome work everyone. Okay, hang on to this drawing. We are not finished yet. In our next lesson, we are going to pick it right back up and continue shading it in. I'll see you then 20. Desert Mountainscape Part 3: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we are going to continue working on our mountain scape and blocking in medium and light tones, happy drawing and jumping right back in where I left off. There's still a few areas that I need to add, the darker shadows too. And then we'll move on to medium tones and light tones and start getting everything laid in. Squint your eyes in, look to see where else do you see values that appear about as dark as what we've already shaded in. I'm doing it to you. I see this shadow area down here gets pretty dark. So I'm just going to fill it all in for now, will go back and add in more detail in a bit. I find that very helpful. Here's your pro tip for today to initially break down the scene into three different distinct values. So I looking for areas where I see really dark darks and then medium tones and then really light lights. If you can just start with those three and kinda block everything in like I'm doing right now, then you can go back and find more variations within each of those sections. So you can take the dark area and find where is it super dark. You could do the same thing with the medium and light parts. And it just kinda increases the level of complexity each time you do it. But to try and start out that way is challenging to try and get every value exactly right on the first pass. So I like to just kinda build up to it. Now this area that I'm working in right now has a mix of some medium and dark tones. So I'm going to just fill it all in for now though, because when I squint my eyes, it's still overall feels pretty dark. Then we can always use our eraser and lift up highlights because I'm not pressing really hard yet. I haven't gone as dark as the pencil can go. I will. I do like some of those really dramatic shadows and I want to add those in. But I like to get everything just kinda blocked in first and then push the extremes even farther. So that's what I'm doing. You do whatever feels right to you. Alright. This just a couple more spots I see. There's kind of this. Let's see where am I? Right here. Dark spot here. Okay. I think we've got our darks pretty well laid out. A couple of shadows right along this hill here. That's what put those into. Okay. Now from here, I'm squinting my eyes again to make all of all of the detail kinda minimize. And when I look this whole mountain range, the hills, everything appears to me to be in a medium to light tone. All the parts besides what we have already shaded. And then the sky looks even lighter. So I'm going to use a medium tone over the rest of the mountains in the ground. And then we'll put a really light tone in the sky. So just like I said, breaking it down into just three values to start with. So I'm using my Tooby pencil now. I'm just going to fill in everything except for this guy. Working like this. Let's you really bring everything up to the same level as you go, rather than doing a highly detailed section and then moving along and doing another highly detailed section. If you do get to add those details, but you're considering the overall image and the effect that there's additions have on the rest of the image. So that's how I like to work. I think that it's very helpful to just constantly keep zooming out and thinking about the big picture. Because details can really suck you in. They do it for me too. I get real excited about working on a certain part. But then I find that I am not really rendering it in a way that works with everything else in the image. I'm not considering the impact that that area has. So building it up like this works really well for me. But there are plenty of artists who work the other way who like to just pick a spot, go get all the detail, and then move on to another spot. So try it, try everything, especially if you're just starting out. I think it's worth exploring and seeing what methods work the best for you. All right. I'm almost finished walking in the mountains. Like I'm just a kid coloring in a coloring book. Okay. And actually I just noticed I'm gonna grab my four B pencil again. This area right over here by the road, that the path or whatever that is, it gets pretty dark. So I'm gonna go ahead and use my OB, just darken that section of it. And I might go ahead and do some of these little shadows that we see coming up diagonally on this hill. I'm still holding my pencil really far back. I'm trying not to overly control it yet. You'll see me change that once we get into more detailed parts, I might grip it tighter and start really doing some very deliberate shading. But for right now, it helps me to hold it farther back so I don't get tempted to go too detailed to quickly. Alright, so now the Tooby and I'm just going to very lightly shade in the sky. Barely touch the paper with your pencil. Okay. And it's a pretty, it's a pretty flat colored sky. It looks like maybe it gets just a tiny bit lighter down toward the horizon, but it's very subtle. You don't have to worry about dodging the mountains because everything inside the mountain is darker than what you're shading so you can just color right up to it. I like being able to do that because then my pencil marks don't look like they are trying to avoid the thing that's in front. So if you can, if you can just shade right into something, it will give it more of the illusion that that sky continues back behind whatever that is, in this case the mountain. You can see how already we've got a drawing here that certainly evokes the scene. And we are going to just continue building it up, adding in more details and seeing how realistic we can make this look. Like. I really like working on things in stages like this. I feel like it gives me time to just focus on whatever whatever it is that I'm dealing with at that stage. So in this case, for me, it's just breaking down the overall value structure. And I feel like I've captured that pretty well here in the drawing and I'm ready to go into the next stage now adding more detail to smoothing out my lines a little bit. You can kinda go back over top of them to fill in the gaps and it'll make it look less. Like I said, I don't mind seeing console lines than my drawings, but if you do, you could always smooth it out with paper towel or a blending stump, anything that you could use to just kinda smear the graphite around a little bit. Because it does look like it just gets a tiny bit lighter. Towards the bottom, I'm going to take my eraser and just lift a little bit of the value at a consistent height. All the way from, well, we're not going to see much too much of it is just over here, actually, a little bit here. Just trying to create that very subtle sense of ingredient, but it's not that noticeable, but okay, great work. Okay, we are almost finished with this one. In our next lesson, bring that drawing right back and we're going to go back into the shadow areas and add more detail. See you then 21. Desert Mountainscape Part 4: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson we're going to revisit the shadow areas of the mountains now and add in more detail, happy journaling. Jumping back into this dark shadow areas. Now I'm going to just do another layer right on top of that initial layer that I put and bring out a little bit more detail. So when we look, when we look closer now those shadow areas you can see there's still a lot of variation within each of those sections. So let's just start and I'm using my four B because I also want to be able to go a little bit darker this time. See how just with a little added pressure. Same pencil, but just a little extra pressure. You can get those nice rich deep shadow tones. This is just a nice opportunity to go back over areas that you've already shaded, but look even closer now. And where do you see the darkest, darkest tones inside of those sections? Where do you see? Maybe a little bit lighter still. So overall a dark value, but lighter than the super dark. I hope I'm explaining that well. The reason why I like to emphasize this a lot is that I've noticed with a lot of my students that they do a really good job of identifying where there are changes in values. You could look at the image and you can say, okay, that's definitely a shadow, that's definitely a highlight. But there's a tendency to want to make everything have the full range of values from super dark to the white of the paper, where you might see a highlight. And when I look at this reference, here's your pro tip. When I look at this reference and especially looking at the mountains like I am right now. There is no spot anywhere on those mountains that is pure white where the lightest value that it goes to a medium, light tone. But it doesn't get super, it doesn't get super, super light. So trying to figure out what the range of values is within each of the areas that you're working, rather than trying to give everything the full range from white to black, because most times you won't see that. So it takes a little practice, but the best way to start is to compare the values in one area to what you see somewhere else. So in this case, I'm comparing the lightest part of the mountain, the sky, and the mountain is still just a little bit darker. It can be tricky to determine that if you're not used to looking for it and color can very much throw you off when you are trying to identify where those darks and lights are. If there's a really strong, saturated color, it can make it seem maybe like that area is darker than it actually is or that it's lighter than it is depending on what, you know, if it's like a yellow or if it's like a blue. So you can always convert your photos to black and white if that helps. But I'm leaving this one in color because I think it's helpful, sort of train ourselves to really look for what we're seeing with those values. Alright, so now I'm working into this spot here where the dark is a little bit more broken up. So instead of just doing it all solid, I'm just kinda doing it in little fits in spurts. This is a greater but making almost a little pattern of dark shapes. Be careful that you don't get too predictable and repetitive with them. Because as you can see there at some of the rocks are really big, some are much smaller, so variety will help. There's some areas where you see a lot more shadow overall and then there's some where it's mostly light and with just a few little dark spots. So just kinda look at the, look at the section. Break it apart, break down what you're seeing and try to capture it. You're not trying to draw every thing Rock for rock and amine unless you have a lot of time on your hands and you want to, you're just giving the essence of that texture of all of the rocks. This is definitely a drawing that you could spend a lot of time on if you wanted to really explore all of those details. Feel free. I'm going to do a couple of more lessons to finish this one up, but you take all the time you want with it. It's good. It's good for you too. Study that reference and try to understand what you're seeing. Breaking it down on your own too. Okay. Moving along. Forgot this little top part here. Sorry. It does always help to talk to your drawings. I wouldn't call that a pro tip, but I definitely do it alone. You want to you want to make friends with them? Then they'll be nice to you. Hopefully. I think that some of these spots where we just see little touches of really dark, actually add a lot to it. The big dark shadows obviously do too, but I think all of these little ones are really cool. They just give us the sense of a lot more texture and interesting stuff happening. Alright, few more shadows I see over here. Another little rocky patch. Okay, really dark here. I think it's so satisfying to go on top of the pencil that's already there and push that value even farther, you really start to see things looking three-dimensional value is one of the best ways of creating volume in your work. Understanding the light source. I know we've talked about this quite a bit now, but it makes such a difference, it influences everything that we're seeing. So it's worth taking some time and really paying attention to that. It's more shadows appear. Now, break this up. There's so many interesting little shapes. Just look at it kind of abstractly. Try not to label it too much. Don't think I'm drawing a mountain right now. You're just drawing sheets. Imagine that you maybe you're seeing a mountain for the first time and you don't even know what they're called. You're just taking it in. Because the problem is, we label everything as humans. That's what we'd like to do. And eventually we stop seeing things for what they are. And all we are really seeing is our own mental concept of that label. So try to just look at it. Like you're seeing it for the first time and you don't know what it's called here. Just appreciating what you're seeing. It's really a beautiful way to look at the world. I think landscape drawing in particular, it's very meditative for that reason. You just get to slow down and appreciate nature and study it and capture it on the page. The little highlighted area here. Then it gets really dark here. Pretty much all the way over. Then we have some interesting wines. I love playing with wine. How are you drawing is coming? Are you having fun? I sure hope so. Okay. Oh, now we're on the hill. Getting carried away there. Alright, darkening of the hill. There we go. Look at the difference that's made already just by putting those darker, darker touches into the shadows. And where we're going to do the same thing next in the middle, value areas. After we get all the shadows dealt with though. Working on this part now, which is similar to this, but the rock shapes are a bit bigger because it's closer to us. So always think about that perspective. Okay, That's gonna do it for this lesson. And we will finish this up with the dark shadows and then working into the medium tone areas next. Fantastic. Okay, We only have one more or less than to go to finish this drawing. So bring it back again. Next time, we will put all the finishing touches on another masterpiece. See you then? 22. Desert Mountainscape Part 5: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to Bella. Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we're going to finish up this mountain drawing. So let's get to it. Happy drawing everyone. Finishing up some dark shadows. Then we are going to jump over to the medium and light areas. Just think of this as kinda creating a texture. Don't get, I wouldn't try and draw every little rock or every little detail that you see there. Because it's still rather far away from us in space. So it makes sense that it would look a little bit more just like an overall texture. So rocky. I do like drawing rocks and mountains. I think that there's a lot of interesting shaping like the, like the organic look, but also all of the different sides, the way that they catch the light. Just fascinating. Some little ones over here. Okay, more shadow here. Now, there's this tiny little guy right here. The kinda pops up darkening this area overall. But then also still looking for little detail parts. Any little subtle shapes are wines that you can bring out. We'll just add more character, make it feel less formulaic. And now lastly, with the dark shadows, I'm going to move down to my foreground area and bringing out some of these shadows a little more. So we have some cast shadows happening. It's creating a lot of different kinds of little mini hills. When here. Notice I'm still squinting my eyes a lot, just trying to stay focused on the big picture. Even though I am at the details stage, I, I never want to totally lose sight of the way that what I'm working on right now fits into the whole of this image. And we get pretty dark over here. Having some really dramatic contrast of lights and darks in the foreground will definitely help make it come forward more. It was a lot of those little diagonal shadows, so it's just filling it in. It's making that area feel a lot more interesting, a lot less flat. Okay. Now I'm switching to my Tooby. And I just want to go back into the medium tone areas of the mountains and add a little bit more texture and shading. There. I'm not pressing very hard. I don't want to I'm not at a point where I want to make really drastic changes. I just want to activate the space a little bit more. In the light side Wherever I see an outline, Here's pro tip. If you want it to look more realistic, turn that line into a shadow, just pull it down one way or the other. Look at your reference and determine if it's lighter on the side or that side. In this case, it's lighter in the sky, darker on the mountain. And just pull that line right in. Now we have some interesting diagonal lines that kinda create these different hills. Like just kinda swoops down. So I'm going to build that too as I go. This one here, this one here. I like, I like those lines because even as an abstract piece, you want to be able to move people's eye around the composition. And whenever you have a bunch of lines kinda pointing in one direction, that will be the direction most likely that the viewers eye will want to go. You do control that as the artist, you have control over what people see first, what you determined to be the focal point of your piece. And you can draw attention to that area by giving it more contrast, by making it bigger, by having wind pointing to it. All of those things are just different strategies that you can use to help create a sense of dominance in the piece. Everything shouldn't be the focal point, which is a lesson I have to tell myself every day when I'm getting dressed too. But also when I'm painting and drawing, you have to let some things be a little bit more subtle in order for the important parts to really shine. Hey, everybody has their role. Not everybody gets to be the star. That's okay. All right, Moving over here, you choose breaking up the space a little bit, making it more interesting. You're drawing, starting to come together. I bet it is. It's looking good. Got a few more of those little diagonal sections here. I want to make sure I get this little peak section down. Okay? Now I'm going to work in the lighter part of this foreground hill and continue some of those shadows, but just in a, in a lighter value so that it stays really dark down here. And then we see a shift as it moves into the highlight area. Still variations, there's still shadows, but they're not as dark as they are down here. One thing that you might try if you're having trouble discerning where the different values are, is create a value scale for yourself just on a, on a piece of paper, draw five or six squares in a row and shade each one in a little bit darker than the one next to it. See if you can go all the way from white to black and make very distinctly different values in each box. And then when you're working, you can actually take that value scale and hold it up to your reference to figure out, okay, which box, which value goes here, which value goes here. And sometimes it, it really is necessary when it, when it is confusing or hard to, hard to tell what the value should be. You can always just use that value scale and hold it up and see for yourself. We are almost finished with this one. As a finishing touch, I just want to pull out a few little highlights on some of these rocks, not going all the way to weight and just wanting to add a little bit more variety in the highlights back here as well. That's why this eraser is so nice. You can just molded into whatever shape you need. All right, There it is. You did it. Okay, Another finished drawing. In our next lesson, we are going to start on a brand new one and really focus on the idea of creating depth. See you then 23. Final Landscape Part 1: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond and I'm very excited because now we are about to start on our final drawing. That's right. We're going to spend all of the remaining lessons on one drawing, but it really encapsulates a lot of what we've been talking about so far. So let's get started. Are you ready? Happy drawing. Here is our final reference. We're going to spend the next ten lessons drawing this beautiful landscape. And I chose it because it has so many of the different elements that we've already talked about and also some new stuff too. So we definitely have foreground, middle ground background. We have atmospheric perspective. We have a light source. Also, a variety of different kinds of things to draw. Mountains, trees, rocks, water, mist. We have it all. So we better get started. Are you ready? So let's start off just as we have with all of our other drawings and lightly sketch it in. Just because you know that we're going to have a little bit longer on this doesn't mean you should settle down and go slow. Still work with that same sense of urgency. Because I find when I do that anyway, I don't overthink things too much. And it allows me to get something down on the paper quickly and then adjusted and respond to it if you start, if you go too slow. Well, I should say if I go too slow, every artist is different and that's important for me to keep pointing out to you. But if I go too slow, then it makes me just get all caught up in one little area and forget about the overall image. So I'm just lightly and roughly sketching it in right now. This is the halfway point that might go a little higher. Actually. I'm drawing that kind of background mountain first, paying attention to the amount of sky that I want to have on my page. Again, just like with our other drawings, if you feel inspired that you want to crop this a different way, focus in on a particular area. You are free to do that. Make it, make it your own in any way that you want. Alright, so now we've got this mountain that kinda comes up this way. Then we have another one. I mean, there's a lot really, but we're simplifying for now, just looking for basic shapes. Alright, if this is the halfway point, I see that the water comes maybe to about here. I was working up here, but now I'm jumping down because remember I like to kind of bounce all around. It first, give myself some indicators of what, what goes where. Alright, so these are the two sides of the stream. And you notice how it gets smaller as it goes back in space. And let's see, it goes up to a little bit below the halfway point. So maybe here. Ish, ish is important. Alright? And then right from where this disappears, we see there's another mountain that kinda comes up this way. A lot of my landscape drawings start out looking very abstract. I'm just looking for the important compositional lines right now before I start drawing anything like trees and rocks and details like that, I want to make sure I know where they go first. So there's this little bit of the bank that kind of sticks out into the water here. And of course there's a bunch of rocks that we'll get to later. Then. We have these trees that are more in the foreground that come up and kind of overlap there. Like you're just giving yourself a blueprint of the scene, feeling it out. That's kinda how I approached this, is just kinda feeling out the scene, walk, walking around in this in this space and trying to understand what is happening. So don't, don't rush through this part. That's my pro tip for this lesson, is really explore the area that you are drawing. Try to understand what's happening at the time that you spend doing that will pay off as you continue working on it. Because you will have already thought about a lot of those things about, well, what is where, what's in front of? What, how big should it be? Alright? Now some of these mountains can dip in and out. They may fade in and out because of the missed. So I'm drawing what I can see and then I'll let it disappear when it needs to do that to you This sticks out a little farther here. Notice how that water is really, we see it going back pretty far. It goes all the way back behind this little piece, this mountain here. So we are actually seeing pretty far back with the water. There's another layer. We're getting. It comes down here. It's going to be a little taller. Does your drawing look as weird as mine right now? I hope so. All right. So then there's this whole big clump of trees. Then in the bottom right corner there's a section where we see some plants that are little bit closer to us. So this would be the most, the most foreground area over here in the bottom right corner. That little bush or tree that's peeking in over here, that's really catching a lot of the light, which makes it pop out against all of the dark tones that are over there. Okay? And then I am going to sketch in this big tree that's over on the right. I'm not gonna get too detailed with it because we'll probably end up covering up quite a bit of it up as we're shading in the background. But this will at least get us started. We can kind of just help to visualize the whole scene. I'm going to draw very lightly the trunk first, Because all the way up and on, it's getting a little narrower as it goes, as it moves up. So it's the thickest down here. Very subtly. Skinnier and skinnier, skinnier. And skinnier than that. I'm not controlled leaves, but I'm just going to roughly sketch in a few of the branches. So we can kind of visualize how much space that tree is really going to take up. Oh, we're gonna have so much fun with this one. I'm excited. So many interesting things going on and I promise you won't get bored. I know after all of the quicker drawings we've been doing, this seems like a lot of time to spend on one. But realistically, if you're doing, if you're doing a drawing and you are wanting it to be pretty, pretty detailed and pretty realistic. I mean, you're gonna put in some time on it and I think it's good to break that time up. You don't have to do it all at once. You can do it just step at a time, get away from it, get a fresh perspective. Come back and look again. After awhile of working. It's just hard to really see, to see what we're doing. We don't really see it the same. So it's important to step away even if it's just for a couple of minute break and then come back and work on it some more. Alright, We have just about got this sketched in. I'm just looking to see what else I might want to include. A dark shadow here. There are a lot of dark shadows, but I see one see that little section of the trees where it down below it's really light and then it's darker. So I'm going to put that and I was kinda sketch in where I see some of the shadow areas. I like, I think I've said this already, but I like drawing the shapes of the shadows sometimes. I'll do that. And go ahead and start sketching in some of these rocks. Now that I know, I'm happy where the where the water is on the paper. There's few back here. Then we would see a big one here. We can always adjust these as we go, but this will give us a nice starting point. We have got this pretty well mapped out. All right, Great job. Okay, we have in all sketched out. So now in our next lesson, it's time to start shading. I'll see you then 24. Final Landscape Part 2: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond and I'm so excited to start shading in this landscape drawing. So in this lesson, we're going to start back in the sky and work our way forward slowly. Be drawing this one. I am going to start in the background and work my way forward again. The sky is very, very light, but not pure white. So I'm going to just put a little bit of value up there. And it looks to me like it's a little bit darker on the left and gets a little bit brighter towards the right. So that's how I'm going to do mine. It'll be a very subtle difference, but I tried to bring out anything like that that I can just because it makes the sky feel less flat. And you can always make the decision to completely change this guy in an image too if you want. In this case, because there's so much fog and mist, I think it makes sense to have a pretty, pretty empty looking sky. But I have certainly done landscapes before where either the photo just didn't capture the sky the way that I imagined it. Or I just wanted to make a change. Add some more interesting clouds or some kind of a sunset or whatever you, whatever you want. So you're never just limited to drawing what's in the photo that you've chosen. You can always change it. If you're not sure how to do that. Let's say you wanted to in Venice, a different sky. You don't have to just come up with that out of your head. You can actually look and find a different reference and use that. So combining references is a great way to personalize something, to create something that's new and different and of your own design. So very lightly, I'm going over this guy. Make it nice and smooth. Then as I approached the right side, I'm just going to press even lighter so that it's almost white, but not quite. Probably shading so light you can't even see it. Trust me, there is, there's pencil there. Even if it just looks white on the screen. Probably begging he was working really hard for not really accomplishing anything. The lights just going back and smoothing it out a bit. Light, light touch. Now, if you have a full range of pencils, I did, I did not ask you to have that for this course, but if you happen to where you get all of the different numbers, like all the way down to four or six h. The harder lead that have h's are really good for doing a light. Areas you as the, as the pencil, Let's get softer. They get darker. So anything in the B range is a softer lead. Anything in the Hs is harder lead. And the higher the number, the more extreme. So you can use all of the pencils. Or if you're like me, I just like to pick a couple. Like I'm still just using my Tooby and for B pencil and just varying the amount of pressure that I've put on them. And that'll give you the range of values to. Before I go any further, I want to take my kneaded eraser and just erase, soften some of those lines. Because there are definitely areas, especially like right up here where the mountain just feeds into the mist and you really don't see an edge. So lifting up just enough so that I can still see where things go. But the lines won't cause me any problems. Good enough can leave the tree kinda dark since it's Pretty dark overall. All right. Oh, and get rid of this line right here because as you notice that that distant mountain just feeds right into the sky. So I'm gonna go ahead and pull that sky tone right down into the mountain range. Like Okay, now I'm going to start shading in this distant mountain. If you notice there's actually, I didn't even see it at first. There's another mountain That's right behind it that you just see the tiniest little sliver of. I'm going to start with this one and then I'll add that other one in. So along the edge, I'm going to start there because I can see how the value that I'm adding relates to the sky. So there's your pro tip for this lesson when you're going from section to section, I like to start right along the edge so that I can make sure engage those value relationships. Makes sure that I'm always moving in the right direction as I go into a new section and that it relates to what I've already done. If I started doing this and realized that I had to make the mountain to quite a bit darker in order to stand out. Then that might tell me maybe I went too dark with the sky so I could backtrack and light in the sky a little bit. It's always about those relationships, how one thing relates to something else. So that's another reason for starting in one area and working your way forward. Kind of always are building on what you've already done. Taking my time and making a really nice treeline back here that the shapes are very small because those trees are very far away from us. But it still makes it a lot more interesting than if I were to just draw a smooth line across there. And then it just feeds right into the midst. So just kinda start inside the missed work your way back into the treeline. Get darker. The mist is thicker, appear and then it gets thinner. Down below. Also the mountain as a whole seems to get a little bit lighter down here. That's actually looks like more mist. It's kinda rolling in. When in doubt go light first because you can always go darker. And that doesn't mean you can't erase and make things lighter too, but it's a lot easier to just build up to dark than to have to constantly train and remove the pencil lead. I'd like to just take my time buildup. Those values are killing. It. Doesn't look like much yet, but just wait until we keep adding layer after layer after layer. This drawing is going to have so much depth to it. And that's something that I really wanted to focus on for this last piece because I think that's maybe one of the most important things about landscapes is that sense of depth and space. We're not just looking at a small, confined area to heal, vast and open. And how do you do that on a flat piece of paper? You can, just by paying attention to what you see. I can, good. I'm going to take my kneaded eraser now and just emphasize some of the misty parts a little bit more. Especially over here. We go. Beautiful. Okay, let's continue this in the next lesson by working more on the mountains in the background. And I'll see you then 25. Final Landscape Part 3: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond and in this lesson we are going to continue working on our landscape drawing by shading in some more of those distant mountains. Happy drawing. Okay, before I move on to this next mountain, I actually need to backtrack for a minute and lay in this tiny little sliver of a distant mountain that we see back here. I don't want it to, I think I forgot it. You do barely see it, but it's there. And I love, I love discovering little things like that while I'm drawing things that I didn't even see when I, when I first looked at the image. Here we go. Okay, now I'm gonna come up here. So there are several different layers that we see within this section. So I'm going to start with the farthest back part, just like we did back here and break up that line along the edge. Only this time. The little triangular shapes that we're making are a little bit more pronounced. There is still small relative to how big they are going to get as we move into the foreground, but little more distinct, also a little bit darker than the mountain behind it. And I'm also paying attention to where I see the midst kinda rolling over. So right around here where we intersect with the mountain behind it, it starts to get lighter, so I'll just press a little bit lighter with my pencil in that part. And then it gets darker again. Try, try not to feel overwhelmed by looking at everything in this image. I know that we've picked a very ambitious drawing here. But my hope is that you're going to surprise yourself if you're someone who thought that you weren't very good at drawing landscapes are at. This is a new, new thing for you. I want you to just give it your all because you are fully capable of drawing this. In. My pro tip for you is just focused on one little part at a time. We've started with filling in the sky. That was easy, anybody can do that. Then we move to the next section and we started laying in some value. Now we're here in this section is a little more complex, but it doesn't need to be scary. It's more like a fun challenge. It's a puzzle that we get to solve. And you may make some marks that you don't like it first, just erase them, redo them, It's okay. Alright, now this Mountains really starts to fade into the mist back here. So in fact, I think what I'm going to do before I go any further, let's just kinda way in a very light value overall. That will be the kind of b's value for the myths. And then we'll just add the darks on top. Even though it's very light, I don't see anything in that area that's pure, pure white. It's got a tiny tinge of shade to it, a little bit of, little bit of a light value. So that will help to avoid the temptation to make all of the highlights just the pure white of the paper. Okay, Now we can go back to trees. So they go all the way over in front of this mist in the back. So let me just kinda keep going. Try not to make them all exactly the same. Make some bigger, some fat or some lower. Feel more natural that way. It goes all the way over to about here. Alright. Now before I pull the shading down, I'm actually going to go in and do another row. I see another row and these are slightly larger because they're a little bit closer to us right here. And then there's still yet another row in front of these guys. So let's just kinda get it all mapped down. Sort of like how we did in the very first lesson for this drawing. We just kinda sketched everything out. I kinda feel like that's what I'm doing now, even though I'm cheating Still doing it loose enough that it feels very much like a sketch in just still trying to find my way through this scene. What goes where, where, where am I locate? Locate myself in the inside of this landscape. And right now we are hiking on these mountains. Okay, So now there's that little section, and then you see how there's one more section of really distinct the tops of the trees that come right in front of that. So I'll just come right down here because I know we need one right about here. These are even darker. Still very triangular, but you can start breaking them up a little bit more now you don't want them to look too perfect. Because they are trees. Then as it moves up, this row just starts to really fade into the mist to you. So many trees. Do you notice how, since we're getting a little bit darker values now, look at how far it pushes that distant mountain back. That's one of the reasons why I was excited to choose this image for us to draw, because there is so much depth. And one of the ways that we can pick up on that is by how soft the values get as the various elements recede in space. So this mountain back here would probably be the same colors is what we're seeing here in the foreground. But because of that missed, it appears much, much lighter. And even if it wasn't a foggy scene, elements in the distance often take on the characteristics of the sky. So that's why when you look at a painting of mountains, usually you'll see the ones in the distance look a little bit more blue, little more purpley. It's because they are taking on some of the color of the sky. And that helps us to register that space. The way that, the way that the values and the colors change as things move away from us. Okay, So then it comes down and it's kinda Misty and then it gets dark again right here by the water. Now I've got this section kind of figured out I know where the main clumps of trees are. So I'm going to jump back up here to the top and pull that value down now and just really paying attention to my reference to see Where, where do I see more shading and where do I see it just really dissolving into the mess. So right about here is where I see that section just getting lighter and lighter. Just feels very magical. Like I like the feeling of this this photo. As you go along, you may need to go back, make your, make your tree stand out a little bit more. Everything is relative. So once you get a little bit done in one area, it is not uncommon to have to go back and make other changes somewhere else. The values all kinda do the same thing from one section to the next there, the darkest up at the tip, the top of the tree. And then get wider. I need to raise some of these trees up a little bit. I can see that I just went through a little growth spurt here. That's better. Right now. Continuing on. Darker at the top. Lighter down here. Okay, and we will come back and finish this section in the next lesson and then continue moving on up. Awesome work. Okay, we're ready to move on up into the middle ground. So hang onto those drawings and our next lesson, we're going to continue adding trees and mountain details in the middle ground area. See you then 26. Final Landscape Part 4: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond and we're moving into the middle ground area of this drawing now and continuing to shade in trees and mountains. Happy drawing. Continuing on with these background mountains. I'm just going to pull that value down so that we get a nice sense of the layering of trees that's happening here. I think that's I think that's one of the things that makes all landscape really start to feel very deep is after you've established where the main foreground, middle ground, and background are, look within each of those sections. How much further can you break it down? Can each section have its own sort of foreground, middle ground, and background? Nothing. Nothing that we're seeing here is flat. Everything has occupies a different place in space. And the more that you can kind of think about that as you're drawing, the more depth you will infuse your drawing with. It all just feeds into the mist over here. And I'm just going to I don't know exactly where that next treeline is going to hit. So I'm going to just pull the value down a little bit further, since I know everything in front of this is darker than the miss, so it won't hurt anything. Just see how our values are slowly getting a little bit darker, a little bit darker. You don't want to jump to super dark yet though. Because again, you always want to be thinking about what is the actual value range within the area that I'm working. And it certainly isn't from black to white. In this part. It's more of a medium, medium gray, maybe a medium dark in some places, too light. You can tell that by comparing the darkest part of this section to the tree trunk over here, see how much darker that is in the photo. So it takes a little bit of mental gymnastics sometimes, like I said before, I tend to want to over-exaggerate everything. And when I see a dark value, I want to go super dark, but I've learned it's darker, but not, not black. Okay, I'm starting to get that nice Miss D field that we wanted. And you can always take your kneaded eraser and pull out a little more missed too if you need to. I'm gonna do that right now, especially like right here where I wanted to really feel like it's disappearing. I need to go as smudge darker down here as I look at it. Especially by the water. Okay, I think that's good for now with this section. And we can always come back and we probably will have to once we get everything else on there. Because it's going to look so different When we're not comparing it to all of the white of the paper here. Okay. Ready for some more cheese? A lot of trees. So you're gonna, you're gonna get really good at drawing these little triangles sheets. Alright, so now we are jumping up quite a bit in space because look at the size in the photo, look at the size of these trees in this next, on this next mountain compared to how small these were. It's funny because when I was drawing these, I was feeling like, oh, they're so big compared to the little tiny ones that we put back here. But now we're making another even bigger jump So this is maybe about that size. You can really start to see the individual trees a little bit more now. So you might even want to go through and just very lightly sketch the outer shape of them because that will help you when you go to shade them. Like for example, look at how the mist is even flowing in-between the trees here. So we can see this tree kind of get a little bit lighter as it goes to the rate and then the one that overlaps it is darker again. Did you notice that? If not, it's okay, don't worry. But those are the kinds of things that just add so much interest. When you can take a concept like the mist and then figure out how it's going to interact with each of the different parts of the scene. That's when it starts to feel more believable. Little one. Now, as I've said before, I'm not trying to draw every tree exactly as it is, but I am constantly looking because it does help to have that visual inspiration there. It'll help you avoid drawing generic shapes. So even if, even if you have a different number of trees, if they're different sizes, if they're in different places than what's in the reference, that's okay. You have you can put things wherever you want. But I would suggest still looking closely at the reference as you draw them because that does help make them more believable. Alright, now, these trees, if you look, if you imagine that this tall foreground tree wasn't there, these trees do get very late in this area as the midst overlaps and covers them up too. So we're gonna go from these darker values. And then as we approach the big foreground tree, it just gets much lighter, which is convenient because that's what allows that foreground tree to stand out so much since it's really dark. That's actually a really helpful way to think about. Shading. And working with value is two, when you're working on a part of your drawing, ask yourself, is this primarily light coming out of darkness? Or is it darkness coming out of light? Meaning, if I didn't want to have any outlines on my drawing, which side of the line does the value needs to be darker? And in this scene were primarily seeing things emerge as dark, coming out of light because the light is in the background, in each layer that we're adding is darker in front of them. But there are some exceptions. You'll see as we get down into these foreground trees, the leaves are actually lighter than what's behind them. So the lighting is affecting the foreground differently and it is the background. Kind of interesting. If you are inventing it, I don't know that you would draw it that way. I don't think I would. But that's what happened. I think waiting is always really interesting in these kinds of scenes to when there's mist and a lot of atmosphere, the diffused lighting, it just feels so different than how the light would look if this were a bright sunny day with clear skies. Now, I'm coloring this pretty solid for now, but I am noticing that there is a bit of texture That's starting to show up. We just see little hints of especially like right in this area and especially down in here we see more suggestion of the leaves. So we will come back of course and add that. But I just wanted to get it in the right value range first. Break up this edge a little bit too as I go so that when I'm ready to do the next row of trees that overlaps this part. I'll be ready. Okay, I need to draw some more. Kind another tree right here. Here. I love, I love creating all this overlap. That's another great way of showing depth is having each section overlap the one behind it. Okay, I'm going to stop here and we will continue with this section in the next lesson. Great work. Can't wait to continue with this. We're just going to pick up right where we left off and keep working on the middle ground. See you then? 27. Final Landscape Part 5: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we're still working in the middle ground, shading in some more trees and mountains and missed. Let's get to it. Happy drawing. Alright, let's get back to it. I am picking up where I left off here in the middle ground. And I want to just make this section a little bit darker here. I noticed that it wasn't coming forward quite as much as I wanted it to from this section. And while I'm at it, I'm just going to go ahead and start creating a little bit of texture in there. So I'm kind of going in and just shading some areas a little bit darker, making it more uneven and I guess irregular, just kinda implying that texture because we can't really make out a lot of what we're seeing. We can see that it's not a flat value, this stuff going on. So you can kind of imply that without drawing every little detail. I'm also just emphasizing a little bit more where we have overlap from one tree to another. Because that starts to make it feel closer to us as well. Separates it more from these trees that all just kinda flow into each other. Darker here too. Okay, And we continue shading. This goes all the way down. So we've got the bank here. Can I just give myself figured out where the trees stop? Right here? Then I'm not even going to go ahead and draw the rest of the tree tops. So I kinda have a sense of where I'm going. So there's one right there next to it. A little smaller. Okay. And then we'll just make one more right here. Okay, now I'm going to shade in that whole section and then we'll go back and kinda do like I did up here and just create a little bit more texture and interests. But I like to get it covered first so she un starting to look good even though we haven't made it anywhere into the foreground yet, we're already seeing quite a bit of depth in this piece. Okay? Alright, so now down here in this part, do you notice how you can actually start to see different little sections? It kinda looks like, I don't know, like you're looking at the top of some broccoli. So I wanted to just kinda create those that there's different layers that are a little bit more rounded, I guess. And then I'll go in-between each of them and create shadows so that we get started, start to get a sense of that kind of shaping. So I am going right above my first line like that. And then there's one right above it. So I'm gonna go darker in there. Just really trying to draw what I see, really paying attention inside of those. It's all very much in shadow, but there's subtle variations that create a lot of texture and layering. Then it gets darker down here too, because that's where we're rounding out to the bottoms now of those trees and the light can't reach that part. Pretty dark over here where this tree kinda juts out. It's not so scary when you just take it one step at a time. And honestly, that's true for anything that you might ever want to draw or paint. So I always say that I really hope everybody who takes these courses will walk away with a little bit more knowledge than they had before and be able to use it in your own work, in your own way. So I think that our brains are pretty fascinating. We do something once in a, in a piece of art and then you'll be amazed at how often that will come up again and again and help you work through other pieces, other issues because any anything that you paint or draw, you'll have a lot of this kind of stuff to think about. Especially if it's something realistic, but even in an abstract or a very stylized piece, you still have to think about eye movement. You have to think about value and sheep. So it's all, it's all good stuff. Alright. I am feeling good about that section. We will go back, I'm sure and do a little bit more here in the air, but compared to what's behind it, I think that it makes sense. Definitely feels closer to us than this section. So that's good. If you're finding that your background areas are a little bit too dark, you can always take your eraser and just pat them, get, put pennant, push them back a little bit. Say bag, back it up, back it up. Now, if we follow that tree line across, I think that we have, well, there's a couple of rows, but there are some trees that are in this section that I think are in the same general area as where we were working here. So I'm going to jump across the stream now and do the same thing to this side. First, starting out by just figuring out that the very top tree line. And then we will work our way down. There's kind of a tall, skinny one here. I like the variety, the EC and the tops of the trees. Definitely each one is different in terms of their size, their width, and also the distance from one to the next. So just I know I'm a broken record about this, but just the more variety you can work into it, the more believable it will be. And we do have a tendency when we're drawing often to just go into brick layer mode as what I call it, where you just do one brick after the next and they all look the same. Each of your little trees, its own personality. I don't want to blend in the, each one has its own characteristics, its own sheep keeps you more engaged in the drawing process too. If you do it that way, if you are really thinking about each tree that you make and giving it a unique look. I'm noticing how this comes down and we see it actually overdue, see these trees overlapping this section. So I'm going to draw one here, maybe one more right here. Then it comes down to here. Okay, that's that top row. Now, just like we've done in this section, we see that there are several layers here. So let me before I fill anything else in, I'm gonna jump to where I see. The next little lineup. Is a tree right around here that kinda stands out from the midst. So I'm going to make that one now. There's a little one right next to it. And then we will continue this section in our next lesson. Great job. Okay, Bring your drawing back next time because as you know, we still have more work to do. I'll see you then 28. Final Landscape Part 6: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond and we are right in the middle of an awesome landscape drawing. So we're just going to pick up where we left off and add a little bit more detail to the middle ground and working our way into the foreground. Happy drawing. Okay, I am going to start right where I left off by just kind of shading in this whole section over here, I think that will help us to get this part in a little bit quicker. So we're not just fighting against the white of the paper. So there's your pro tip for today. If you're shading in a drawing and you're working in an area where you know that nothing is white, like the pure white of the paper. Then just start by filling it all in because you'll be a lot closer than if you're constantly just trying to cover up the white paper. So take a moment if you're following along and doing what I'm doing. And just shade in this whole section, we'll go back and add in some of the details that we see. It's also just kinda satisfying to feel like you are knocking out a big chunk of your drawing here all at once. And for me it really helps to just keep thinking about the big picture. I know I talk about that a lot, but it's so easy to get kinda just cut in the weeds literally and metaphorically in a drawing like this. So keep stepping back, looking at the overall image and how everything is coming together. Alright? Okay, so now that we have it all filled in, I'm gonna go back up here to the top area where I left off last time and just create a few more of the trees that I see here in this center part. We have this one that kinda comes down, has a few more small ones that overlap the keys. Don't worry if your trees are not in the exact right spot, just just plant some. Your cheese can be in different places. That's okay. That's the beauty of doing landscape work. And I'm certainly leaving out some details and not capturing every little thing. You just kinda get to choose what, what is important, what helps to really create the sense of that space and prioritize them. Okay, now we've got one that just goes right off, right there. Okay, So I'm just going to start pulling these darker tones together. And also just kinda creating some little variations inside where I might go a little bit darker in some parts, especially where it's farther away from the light. So you can do that as well. Don't feel like you have to just shade in everything really smooth, especially now that we're getting a little bit closer into the foreground space, we're not there yet, but we're approaching it. So we will start to see some more details. Alright, so now we've got a little clump of something here. You don't even need to know what it is. It's kind of shade what you see. Let's see. It kinda comes all the way down here to the bank. I'm going to just sketch in where I think that Bank actually is. We see a lot of rocks along the, along the edge there. So I think about here and then this will all be rocks. Okay. I wanted to go back quickly with my kneaded eraser because there's some cool mist effects happening. There's some mist that's kinda spilling in this area and makes these trees a little more faint. And we also have some mist coming in this direction. So as long as you don't press too hard with your pencil, you can always lift up the value and make it a little bit lighter. For effects like that. Just going to make that transition a little smoother. So we get from the darker tones appear to the lighter tones in the myths. And then see some branches. Here. It's kinda nice to break up that space with something different. Just imagine while you're drawing, but you are going on a little hike and exploring all of these different areas. Long hike to go from where we started up to, up to here, but we must be experts, hikers. Alright, so now these kinda fade into what looks like maybe another grouping right about here. So I'm just going to take these darker tones and pull them down a little bit. It's coming together. There's something that's really nice about being able to spend a bit more time on a drawing like this, especially after all of the quicker drawings that we've been doing in this course, you can still take all of those ideas and apply them here, but you just get a little bit more of a chance to bring out the details and spend some time really studying that image. If you were drawing this, for example, and you only had five or 10 min or 20 min. You would have to be a little bit more selective about what you decided to emphasize it. You could still do it. It would just be at very different drawing. Now because things are getting darker, I'm going to switch from a to B pencil to my four B pencil. That will just make it a little bit easier to lay in some of these darker shadows and add a little bit more variety. Because I definitely want the feeling of a lot of texture, a lot of different layers of plants and trees. You're almost kinda scribbling really. Just to create the implied texture. You don't have to know what every little thing is shaded in. Doing a variety of different kinds of marks. But right now I'm doing a lot of little circles. I feel like that's kinda helping to create the feeling that I want in there. Almost made it down here to the foreground where it gets quite dark. So I'm just going to keep building that up a little bit. Okay, Let's go back now. I'm just going to add some more details and really make this section feel finished. So that will be able to move on to the water in our next lesson. Kind of trying to make it end on a very irregular edge here because I don't want it to feel to cut out and perfect. So just kinda pull some of those values right on into the ROC area and then we'll we'll deal with that when we're working on the water will bring out some of those rocks. Think about all the different layers and how far away this is even just from here, just a few inches on my paper, but a lot more in the scene. This is the first area of the immediate foreground that we have shaded. So feel free to go super, super dark here in this image because of where the light's coming from. In the back, we see a lot of darker values and deeper contrast in the foreground. So this is the place where once you get it established, you know that things are where they're supposed to be. Don't be afraid to go ahead and commit to some of those darker values now, because that's what will really set everything apart. It'll make this come forward from the rest of what we have shaded so far. Leaving some little highlight areas not white but just a little bit later also helps to add to that feeling of the contrast edge of a tree right here. I'm going to add in. I like I like always making it feel like there's more to the scene that goes off the page. So wherever you can incorporate that, I would. All right, I think this section is good to go. Awesome. Okay, in our next lesson, it's time to do something a little different. We are going to be working on the water. I'll see you then 29. Final Landscape Part 7: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson we are going to start shading in the water and all of the rocks have be drawing. In this lesson we are going to work on shading in the water in the rocks. So let's get started. I'm using a to-be pencil and to begin with, I'm just going to lightly cover that whole area like we did last time. I like getting rid of the white of the paper. Makes me feel like I've accomplished something before I've really even started. Then we'll go back and figure out where we want to put the rocks and some of the different values that we see in the water. Alright, I got it all filled in. Just about. Okay. So now let's study that reference. And I see there are a couple of large rocks back here in the background. So I'm going to start with those and just shade them in a little bit darker. And it looks like it gets a little bit darker towards the bottom, which makes sense because the light's coming from above and in the bath. And there's another interesting one right here. Tried to use a variety of shapes. Don't just draw the same rock shape over and over again. And you don't have to make it up. You can just look at your reference. Try and be inspired by the shapes that you see. You don't have to make them exactly like what's in the photo. But I do find that looking at a reference helps prevent me from drawing things in a very generic way. You can pick up on some of the more unexpected things that happen. The shaping, this where the shadows fall. It's just very hard to invent some of that kind of stuff. And when we try a lot of times it ends up looking very contrived. So use the reference, however, it works best for you. But I do, when I'm working on a piece, I do like to have something to look at. Even if I M changing it completely. You're still in charge. You get to decide what you want to use from that image and what you want to change. But it will definitely make it a bit easier, especially starting out if you're somewhat new to drawing. There's a bit of a stigma against working from references and I don't know why, because every artist's just about has looked at a reference at some point or another. So don't be afraid of that. I'm just gonna kinda go dark all over in this area to you. I'm going to take it a step darker then what I had laid on that area originally because this looks like we're seeing a little bit of the bank here. And then it just kinda merges into the water with a few other rocks. We get to do all kinds of different surfaces. In this piece we've done mountains, trees, missed. Now we're doing rocks and water. We had got it all. That's why I thought this would be a good one to finish with. Because I think it really does encapsulate a lot of what we have been working on in this course. Few more rocks over here, a little bit smaller. Lot of overlap too. And that just helps create more depth and make it feel more believable as well. So look for where you can use a little bit of overlap. Some of those rocks, there are a lot of rocks right up against the edge here. So I'm just going to imply a few. They're not in a super sharp focus. That's not our focal point, but we can just kinda create the illusion that there's a lot of stuff going on over here. That's the pro tip for you for this, for this lesson. You don't always have to draw every part of the image in extreme detail. You can choose your focal point and then allow other things to just be more implied. Big rock right here jutting out right into the foreground space A little bit darker on this side. When I'm shading in rocks. One tip is don't overly blend them because they tend to have a lot of different edges, different planes. And the breakup of the shadows and highlights really helps to give it that feeling. So if you overly blend, then it will make them appear softer and you won't see those different edges as much. So just kinda put a few different values in and it's okay if one doesn't blend smoothly into another, it actually is probably better. If they don't. I'm going to put a big rock here. I think there's more rocks than water, actually. Some smaller ones. You put them wherever you want it though. Make kinda use those as visual aids to help lead the viewer through your piece. You have total control over that and that's one very good reason to make changes. When you're working from a reference, especially with the landscape, you might decide that it works better for your piece to relocate a tree somewhere else or to create different arrangements of rocks and trees and whatever it is you're working with. It's all about how you lead the viewer through the piece. You create a focal point and then use the lines and the shading, everything in the piece to support that. That's one thing that landscape art has in common with pretty much just about every other type of visual art. You can look at a landscape drawing or painting and kind of analyze it using some of the same tools and same vocabulary that you would use if you were analyzing and abstract non-representational piece. Because even though this is something that we can recognize, it should still follow all of those rules and make you strong composition, focal point, how it leads the viewer through the piece. How you work with value. Okay? I have, I think enough rocks. Not quite. When do you want more against up it's two-fold. Alright. I think that'll, I think that'll do it. I say that now, but wait, I'm going to ask some more before we're finished, but I do want to get to the water. First. I'm taking my kneaded eraser and where I see the really light parts of the water, I'm just going to lift up the graphite in those places. It's kind of a zigzag, which is also a good compositional thing. The way that that light is moving through, then I'm going to go darker. In the areas outside of those. You can sort of look to see the water is not really just a flat value anywhere. Kinda keeps suddenly transitioning depending on how the light is reaching it, what might be blocking the light in certain cards? How much movement there is in the water. So it will look a lot more realistic if you incorporate as many different kind of gradations as you can. I'm still using my Tooby pencil. After I do this pass, I might grab my four b just to darken a few spots. Kind of just working my way around that zigzag for a man. You can break it up to they are a little it's not a perfectly smooth white thing. Okay. And then right around back, here is where the white little ripples stops. I'm going to darken the water more over there. Then as we come back into the background, we do start to see some again. So I'm just going to create those by shading in little stripes, maybe connect a few of them. You don't want it to look too perfect. I might even take my eraser and just lift up some of those highlights back there. Remember you can shape your kneaded eraser to fit into whatever spot you want. Okay, now, very quickly, just going to use my four B pencil and darken some of the shadows on the rocks to start with. Because if you look in the shadow areas of some of those rocks, especially the ones that are the closest to us. We see a lot of value contrast, a lot of extreme darks against the middle tones. So using your four B pencil makes it a little bit easier. You don't have to press as hard to get those dark values. And as, as they move back in space, the dark shadows just tend to get a little bit softer. Contrast of value definitely makes the elements appear closer to us. Hey, a little more value in this part of the water and I think that will do it. They have even more contrast against the lights and darks in the water too. Not just on the rocks. Little shadow underneath some of the rocks. It's kinda nice. Even though it's water, it will still have shadows on it. Just like if it was sitting on the ground. This water is moving too much to see reflections. But if the water was more still, you might also see reflections of the rocks and the water. So reflections and shadows, two very different things when you're talking about drawing or painting. Expansive water. Sometimes you see both. All right, There we go. Great job. You did it. Okay, in our next lesson, we are going to move over and work on that foreground mountain and all the trees. See you then 30. Final Landscape Part 8: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we're moving on over to the foreground mountain and all of those trees. So get ready to do a lot of shading, happy drawing. Jumping over here now to this big clump of trees that is in the foreground. So I'm using my Tooby pencil just like I have been in the last few lessons. And to start with, since there is no pure white anywhere, in this section, I am going to just cover the whole thing that way we're not fighting against the white of the paper. Just get something on there. Then we can push and pull it in whatever direction we need. This might take a minute or two because this is a pretty large, significant area of the composition. So no rush. Working our way over. If you get some in the tree, are in this little bush over here, it won't hurt anything. Don't try and be perfect about it because you will be covering up those areas anyway. Okay. So now that I've got that all filled in, I'm gonna just squint my eyes for a minute and study it. And I'm gonna grab my four B pencil now because I do see a lot of darks in here. And to begin, I want to just start breaking up this section. I think that a lot of times beginning artists, one of the biggest challenges when you're working on a piece is figuring out your way into it. Where do I start? It can feel overwhelming because there's so much going on. But it's not a bad thing that you can recognize that, that you can see all of those details. That's a good sign. That means you are really paying attention, but you just have to pick a, pick an area and start. Don't, don't overthink it too much. We like to overthink. Sometimes. I always need to be listening to music or listening to a podcast or something. When I'm working, There's your pro tip. If your brain is like mine and you tend to overthink things a little too much when it's too quiet, makes noise, listened to something that will distract you a little bit. Of course, in this course, I'm providing that service where you can just listen to me yammer on, but try it when you're working on your own to you, it does, It does help a lot of people. Now some artists are more introverted and enjoy the silence and just being with their thoughts. But I just feel like, at least for me, art is such an intuitive thing that it doesn't really take a lot of how logical thought. It takes more of just being open to really noticing what's there and then just letting your hand make it. So one of my favorite things that I always say to my students is I can tell you're thinking too much. No thinking just draw or just paint or whatever it is they doing. Right now you see I'm just continuing on from there and breaking up little clumps, sort of like we've done in other areas. But because this is so much closer to us, we just see the details a lot more and there's more contrast between the darks and the lights. So don't go too dark and those highlighted areas, it's like I said before, it's not white, but it's also not as dark as the highlights in any of the other mountains. It definitely moving towards the lighter values. You see how now that I picked a place to start, It's a lot easier to just continue on from there. I would find it more challenging to do a little here, then jump over here, then jumped down here. Where if I get one area starting to look the way I want it to you, then you can just carry that energy on over. Let it expand and fill in that whole space. Still not going quite as dark as I need to yet in the shadows, this couldn't be a process, probably going to spend a couple lessons getting this section in. So don't rush. We are able to perceive so much more detail in the foreground because it's closer to us, so it's really worth taking the time to bring that out. It will really add to the sense of atmospheric perspective in the piece that will make it just feel like there's so much depth Remember that you want to create variety. You don't just want to make the same squiggle over and over again. That's where looking at the reference really helps me to, like I've said before, even if I'm not exactly copying it, every time I look, I see something different and it gives me an idea of a different shape to make different way to that the shadows and highlights are being broken up in different areas. It is a big shadow here, so I'm going to leave that in place to start. You can use whatever kind of pencil marks you want. I'm kinda doing little circles here. That to me seems to work really well with the texture that I'm seeing. Just imagine what it would feel like to touch those leaves. What does that texture like? And then try to use your pencil to simulate them. Right? Now we get pretty dark down here, which makes sense. Whole bottom section, because that's farther away from the light and it's also lower. So the light is being blocked more in these spaces. Look at what a difference it's making already, even though this isn't even close to being finished in this area. Look at how much farther back these areas that we started with. Feel. Now, kind of unreal. Can always use your eraser and go in and erase some highlights to you if you are making these shapes and you don't like some of them or you want to reshape them, you should already see. Just working my way over. I think when rain here. Definitely tried to have some larger shadow shapes. Some smaller ones. Have them kinda moving in different directions. Anything to make it not feel too forced or too perfect to man-made. You want it to feel as organic as possible. I also like how some of these shapes kinda help lead your eye using shadow shapes that are thicker on one side and gets skinnier function almost like an arrow in your piece, telling the viewer go this way. So every little piece that you add, in addition to making it look more like what you are drawing, can also be a device to help with the composition and the way that people navigate. It's a lot to think about, but I just got through telling you not to think. But it's okay to think a little. Just trying to make it so that maybe blends a little bit more from the dark into the light. We are getting. This definitely looks very broccoli like gigantic these abruptly. Okay, we are going to continue with this in our next lesson. Fantastic. Okay, in our next lesson we're going to pick up right where we left off and continue working on that mountain. See you then? 31. Final Landscape Part 9: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson we are picking right back up where we left off and continuing working on all of those foreground trees. Happy drawing. Right back up where we left off. Let's keep laying in some shadows in our foreground. Overall, it gets quite a bit darker as it moves toward the right side. So what I might actually do is just use this value. Kinda fill in a large section because we are going to backtrack and go even darker in some select spots. Again, it's okay to just shade right into your tree. We're going to come back to that in a bit. Can have using these shadows that we're creating right now is a way to start breaking apart this section. You probably noticed when we first just filled it all in with one value, it just felt like one big solid thing. But now that we're adding all these shadows, It's really feeling a lot more complex. That's the, that's the goal. Start simple work your way to complex pro tip. It is very tempting to want to go right for super detail. I do understand that. Okay. Yeah. Right. By the time we get up here, it's pretty much dark all over. Medium dark. Which is interesting if you notice. Down in this area, the highlights are brighter than the background, and that's what makes it come forward there. But then as you move up toward the top, when the mist is really lightening, that middle ground area. The foreground trees in that section feel a bit darker. And that's why, that's what helps them to jump forward and not feel like it's a continuation of the middle ground is all values can shift. I remember how I talked about. Often, a way to make something stand out in a piece is to decide if it is late coming out of darkness, or if it's darkness coming out of light. And in this particular section, we've got both. So that makes it more interesting to you. That's one thing that really helps creating that sense of realism. If that's what you're going for in your work, try and get away from using outlines and less that's intentional part of your style. But wherever you would need a line to separate things, just try and look closer and see which side of that line is darker, which side is lighter? And use the shading to make all of those distinctions for you, then you don't need any lines. Now that said, I do love a good drawing with some interesting line work. So I'm not, I'm not distinct lines here. And you can definitely use them if you want. But it's good to learn how to do something different to you. I think over here on this side, pretty dark overall. I really like working on this type of paper when I'm doing a pencil drawing like this, because you also just get some interesting textures from the paper itself. This is a cold press, watercolor paper. And the cold press is what makes it have a bet texture. Hot press paper is a lot smoother and I find it more challenging to draw on a really smooth surface because you see every little stroke of the pencil. But when you have some built-in texture like this, the texture helps to camouflage that and it can also just really enhance when you're shading in an area that does have a lot of texture, you can use that texture of the paper to your advantage. Okay. Can I have it all roughly blocked in? Now? I just want to go back. And for starters, I'm gonna go a lot darker in my shadows. Just by overlapping what I just did and pressing a little bit harder with the pencil. Be careful that you don't press so hard that you make deep grooves in the paper though. That's one of the reasons why I hold my pencil a little bit sideways, so I'm not jabbing it with the point. Slowly building up values like this is a nice way to work. It lets you process what you're seeing. It prevents the paper from getting too overworked. Just kinda ease your way in. Now as I am adding these darks, I'm also just kind of working to bring the shadow into the highlight area and let it fade a little more so it doesn't feel like there's such a distinct shift between like a dark line and then a light side. It's more of a gradual thing. So I'll start in the shadows by pressing really hard and then pulling it up into the highlight area just a little bit and getting lighter and lighter as I go. So applying less and less pressure. This is definitely coming together. I hope that you're enjoying working on your version. For anybody who might have been feeling a little overwhelmed when we first started this, however mini lessons ago. Look at what you have done. You hung in there, you did it. If you are at this stage, you're not totally loving your drawing. That's okay. Keep going anyway. You can always stop. Pause the video if there's something that just doesn't feel right to you and just study that reference. I can't encourage that enough. If you are, if you're spotting mistakes in your work or things that you think aren't, aren't really accomplishing the goal. That's a great thing. You can then go to the next level by figuring out what you need to do to fix it. This is just making it feel a lot more like each, each little section has a lot more shape and volume to it by bringing those shadows up into the light a little. Just letting it fade and even the highlights get a bit darker down toward the bottom part. So you might even want to go over some of them, like lighter. You don't press as hard as you are in the super shadow parts, but you can revise anything as you go along. Use the negative space here to start creating the shape of that little bush in the foreground. We are getting it. It's okay to do some scribbly marks in there also. Just imply as much texture as you can. This is right up in front, so we're going to see a lot in there. It's making such a big difference, getting those dark values in. Again, just trying to remember to use as much variety as I can. Bigger sections, tiny little sections, break up this area, but over here, we do great work. Okay, in our next lesson, it's time for the moment. I've been waiting for that giant tree on the right side of the image. We are going to shade that in and see you then 32. Final Landscape Part 10: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we're going to shade in that giant tree on the right side of the image. And I'm so excited. So let's get started. Happy drawing. I don't know who you are as excited as I am, but I have been looking forward to working on this giant tree for the last few lessons and now it's time. So let's jump in and get started. I'm using my four B pencil because that tree is pretty dark. And starting with the trunk, just going to fill it in as it goes down. The lower portion of it does kind of blend in a little bit with the dark values that are on that mountain right behind it. But there are places where the highlight butts up against the trunk. And so you can kinda follow it on down and see, see it at all the different stages. It's just a little bit more obscure down here where it's overlapping but mountain. And just like we discussed when we first drew it, remember that you want the trunk to get narrower as it goes up. I'm also going to leave a couple of spots that I don't shade in all the way because as I'm looking I see where there are some leaves that overlap that trunk, so I'm going to just accommodate for them right now and then we'll come back and make them look more leafy in a bit. Don't be afraid to go dark. Now. We are, we are in the foreground and we're seeing the side of the tree that's facing away from the light source because the light source is coming from the back. So going dark will really make it come forward. This is, I think, a focal point of the piece. It's just such a, it has such a different shape, different characteristics than everything else. And it is so close and it has so much contrast. Going to leave with another little leaf spots. You can put this wherever you want. The whale. Then we'll go back and do some branches. Look at how much it stands out against that really, really light section of the sky. That's cool. Okay, now let's do some branches. Just like the trunk. The branches are going to be the thickest where they where they touched the trunk or where they're connected into the trunk and then they get more narrow as you work your way out. I like drawing branches because I think you can make some really elegant lines almost with a calligraphy fields the way that when people write with calligraphy, a lot of times it's about having a thicker line in one part and then as it moves around the letter, it gets skinnier. So take advantage of that. Also, just make little branches branching off of the bigger ones. And I am looking at the reference to just notice the overall direction that the branches are going. Some of them are very horizontal. Summer aimed a little up. I don't see too many that are going diagonally down though. Some of them dip a little. But overall it's a little bit more of a horizontal or slightly upward position. Let me get all of the branches in first, and then we'll come back and add some leaves. It's a good way to do it because then you have a better sense of where the leaves need to be. Especially with this kind of tree. Do as many branches as you want. This is fine Hill. Trees are so beautiful I to n. So there are so many different kinds, so many different shapes, textures to play with. You can just fill a whole sketchbook with drawings of different trees. It's a very popular subject for that reason, I think. Try to make it so that all of your branches are not the same length, like I just did that. So I'm backtracking now and adjusting some. You don't want them all to end in a line or it'll feel perfect. But let each one can have its own space. Even though it's a little bit more subtle way when it's on top of these background elements, we still want to draw them down here to grades. It looks like this may be a few little ones down here, but for the most part I think about from about this point is where we really start to see them and I think they're a little bit smaller. At first. Did our treats beautiful, big one right here. Okay. Now that we have our branches, I'm going to go back. Just do a little bit of almost like a scribble along some of the branches to imply the leaf texture and the leaves are pretty dark too. They're a little bit thinner, obviously than the trunk, so there's light that's coming through, which is why they're not as dark as the trunk and branches. But still pretty much you don't really see a lot of strong highlights or anything on then still keep it dark. I'm still using my Ford. Look at the shapes of the negative spaces as you are drawing. I think that's helpful with any kind of subject matter, but I find it especially helpful with trees because the leaves can be tricky. You either feel like you need to delineate each one and make it maybe too detailed or over-simplify. So if you look at the shapes that are created by the negative space and just act like you're drawing that. It can help get just the right amount of information on there. Make some some sections thicker, more filled in and then other areas more open. The negative, using the negative space can really help you see that. This is the fun part. I like making this JPEG pro tip. If you find that you want more leaves in a certain area and you hadn't drawn a branch there yet. Edwin? Sure. The trees already been planted and it's grown, but you get to put some branches and leaves wherever you want at any stage. So do not just stuck with what you I've drawn before. Now, I'm kinda in the spaces where we left the trunk a bit lighter. I'm trying to build out some leaf action from, from that area so that it makes more sense why we're seeing that highlight there. Just kinda working my way around it to continue that sheep. Because even though these leaves are darker than the background, you can see when they overlap the trunk, they are a little bit later. So in our next lesson, we'll finish up the leaves. Work on this section down here in the bottom. Won't be finished. Beautiful. I cannot believe that we only have one more lesson to go. And in that lesson, we're going to finish this drawing. I'll see you then 33. Final Landscape Part 11: Hi everyone and welcome back to learn to draw landscapes. I'm Paul Richmond and we have come to the end of the road, I can't believe it, but in this lesson we are going to finish this drawing together. So let's get started. Happy Drawing. Going to start by finishing up this tree. So I'm just kinda going back to where I left off and adding in a few more leaves, It's kinda fill it in. Then we will move down to that bottom corner. Once we finish that, we'll take a look at everything altogether and see if we need to make any adjustments. That's a very important part of the process, by the way, might even be important enough to call it a pro tip. It can be tempting once you get everything covered on your paper to just say, I'm done. Once you have everything on there, It's actually a very good time to make sure that everything is working together and see if you need to push the values anywhere or make any other changes. Alright, I'm coming down here to this bottom corner now. Using my Tooby pencil, shading it all in lightly. There's a lot of light hitting this part especially. So don't press too hard. Just getting something on there because we know it's not pure white. Okay, great. Now back to my four B and 0 actually. First, I want to take my kneaded eraser and just see if I can lift up enough to create a few that oh, yes. Hey, it worked. See how I made it into just like a very narrow almost like a line. And then you can just kinda pull up to create some of the shapes that we see in the foreground. Break up that solid area. If you do that and you end up making one that feels too thick, just go around it with your pencil here. I'll just kinda bring the background re, backup. If you just want to even give it more interesting shaping. Always use the values in the background to help bring out things in front. Alright, now this section has a lot of kinda diagonal lines. So I'm going to start with that. The way that I am shading it is just really paying attention to the lines and the shapes and the movement that I see. This has a very different feel, once again than anything else that we have done so far. So just use those lines, break it up. I see darks, median values and a few little spots where I see some lights as well. So don't completely cover up that base layer. Just break it up a lot with different values. When you squint your eyes over all this area is still quite dark. It's looking good. I can't believe we are almost finished. Okay. Now, on this side, I'm just going to draw myself a very light line so I can kinda follow the sheet that I want. It kinda goes up a little like that. So I'm going to continue this section done first. Then we'll go up and finish with that little bush or I don't know if it's a bush. Yeah, I think it is. Unless it's the top of it, distant tree, something, some kind of plant. This is a good area for something like this because you get to make it feel very I'm busy. And that helps to bring it forward, but you don't have to be too cautious about it. There's just so many lines that they kinda just all merged together really. It's more of like an overall texture really been anything, but you just see a few distinct ones that pop out and that's really it. And the rest is just very, very textural. Looks good. Now I'm going to take my OB and come in here behind it and I want to start with the shadow areas. I'm just going to make the whole bottom part in shadow and then just kinda work that shadow down into some of these shapes so that it doesn't feel, you don't want it to feel like it ends in a straight line. You want it to feel like it is going behind this foreground stuff. It actually gives you another chance to create some additional shapes. You can draw things by drawing the actual subject and you can also draw things by shading in the negative space behind it or around it. How much more realistic that feels just by creating that very irregular edge. Okay? And now what we see happening is kind of similar to what we did over here, but there's a lot more white. So I'm just going to look and see where I see maybe a few little shadow areas there. They tend their smaller on this one than what we were doing over here. And I'm also going to just kinda reshape the edge of it too as I go so that it looks more interesting. Also, if you are a detail person, this area and the tree is where you can just go for it because that will make it come forward. We are getting this almost to the finish line. Kind of sad for it to end. It's a good book. But couldn't use is maybe the last drawing for this course. But now you get to take everything that you have learned and practiced and use it to create more work, more landscapes, or any subject matter you want. The ideas that we've talked about in this course can help you, no matter what it is you want to draw. Okay, Looking good. Alright, let's pull back now and just take a look. A little bit more dark in here. Got ahead of myself. Sorry. Hold that thought. Okay, there we go. I like that better. Just needed a little more contrast I felt. Okay, let's take a look at our whole image now this is our final review, period and see if there's just anything that feels like it needs to be adjusted. I'm squinting my eyes and comparing it to the reference. Feeling pretty good about it. Actually. I think if anything, I might just want to go a little darker. In some of these areas. You look at yours and compare it to the reference. You might see something else that you want to adjust. You don't have to do what I'm doing at this point and do what's best for your drawing. And just kinda keep squinting your eyes every so often to look at how the overall value structure is working. And if it feels like you've captured it, if you squint your eyes and look at your drawing and then squint your eyes and look at the reference. It should have very similar overall breakdown of lights and darks. I don't want to stop having too much fun. Yes, all good things must come to an end. Eventually. You, if you're, if you're happy with your drawing and you wanna be able to protect it. You may want to get a spray bottle of fixative. Spray fixative for drawing easily says it's for drawings and charcoal or pastel. And you just spray your drawing and that will keep it from smearing, especially if it's in a sketch book. A lot of the graphite can come off on the back of the page in front of it. So it's a good idea to very gently and lightly spray your drawings, the ones that you really want to preserve when you finish them. Just make sure that your paper is vertical. So leaning against a wall, it's best to do it outside because most of those sprays kinda have a strong smell and just very gently spray over it. You don't want to do it down flat because the spray can drip. Mess up your journaling. All right. My friends, We did it. You did it. I hope that you feel very proud of this drawing and all of the drawings that we made together in this course. And I hope that you've learned a lot that you can take with you into your future artwork. Thank you so much 34. Closing Thoughts: Welcome back one last time to learn to draw landscapes. I'm still Paul Richmond and I just wanted to make a quick video to let you know how much I enjoyed drawing with you. And I hope that you learned a lot. For some of you. This might have been a refresher of some skills that you've learned in the past. For others, you might be just starting out on your artistic journey. And I hope I've given you a good foundation that you can build on all of the ideas that we covered in this course are very applicable to whatever you decide to do with your artwork in the future. I would absolutely love it. If you would share your drawings with me, post your work, and also, I would love it if you would give me some feedback about the course, let me know what you thought. If you enjoyed this course, I have so many other courses available for you you can jump into right now, be sure and check them all out. Each course tackles different subject matter, different techniques, different mediums. I want to try and share as much as I know with all of you and really helped to nurture this online art community that we're building together. Thank you again for spending this time with me. And as always, happy drawing