How to Paint a Beautiful Landscape – Learning to Paint
Painting landscapes with acrylics is both relaxing and rewarding. Let your personal style come through and you should find this a great hobby. Acrylic paint is a medium that can look like an oil painting or a watercolor painting when finished. It depends on the artists’ style and how thick they apply the color. Either way, starting out by painting landscapes helps to get your feet wet in the world of painting.
You can learn to paint a landscape on canvas paper, canvas board or stretched canvas. I always suggest practicing your techniques first on an inexpensive canvas or acrylic paper. I am a sort of perfectionist with my art, and tend to become frustrated easily. By practicing first, then applying it to the finished piece I feel more comfortable. You may be satisfied without practicing. Painting is about what makes you feel good!
Keep your supplies handy. Have your spay or mister bottle handy to keep the acrylics moist, keep a water supply handy for the brushes, and always have paper towels handy.
Let’s create a simple landscape painting. Lightly sketch in a horizon line with pencil about ¾ of the way down the canvas. In this case out emphasis will be the sky because only ¼ of the painting is land.
Wet the sky with white gesso. Add some color to the same brush and starting at the top, use criss-cross strokes and blend down to the horizon line. Use any color. Daytime skies can be blues & purple. Nighttime skies can be these colors just darkened with reds and oranges near the horizon. Blend the colors as little or much as you like. Now your sky is done.
Now it’s time to create your land or hills. Chose a medium to light green and with horizontal strokes lay in the distant field or hill. Keep things interesting by sloping it. Change the green slightly by darkening it and add a couple of more layers of fields as you work your way forward. The darkest layer should be in the front of the painting.
That’s it! Anything else you add to your painting is a plus. One or two distant trees would be neat or maybe just a single bird in the sky, low to the horizon.
I hope this little lesson helps inspire you to have fun painting landscapes with acrylics.
About the Author:Julie Shoemaker is an avid painter and hobbyist who regularly gives paintings as gifts to family and friends. Weather it's capturing the likeness of a portrait or the mystery of a seascape it's easy to get caught up in the hobby of painting. When not painting, Julie is busy building an active internet business, or hanging out with family. Learn Painting Techniques
See her web site at http://www.IamPainting.org
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