To begin, I chose a photo of a lake and mountain to work from.

Then I simplified it by sketching it. I kept it simple and modified the composition a little. I thought about how I would be constructing every part of this.

Then I placed that image into Adobe Illustrator and drew on top of it. I used circles, rectangles, and triangles to make my main shapes. I kept the color to greyscale and I will add color later.

Now I will add colors and gradients to add depth to my drawing.

I exported it as a jpeg and here is my final landscape made entirely out of simple shapes.