Watercolor mountains “Winter” How to paint mountains – Tutorial

Sometimes you paint your dream places

I am one of those persons who live by the sea and love the mountain. This watercolor mountains landscape is how I express my desire to admire the mountains landscape from close. This current painting is the 13th painting from the Painting Challenge. I wanted to paint mountains with watercolor for some time already and I decided to do it today. So how to paint mountains with watercolors? Well, it’s easier than I was expecting. Because I used to watch Bob Ross’ mountain painting in acrylics I wanted to create something as beautiful as that. I felt like I want to paint watercolor mountains as majestic as them. In this tutorial, I will show you how to paint mountains using watercolor. It’s easy! Let’s begin.

Let’s meet the tools:

If you are not used to them yet, I will remind you which are the materials I use almost always.

• brushes
• good paper
• water
• pencil
• a regular watercolor palette

How to paint mountains

For our watercolor painting we will sketch using the pencil, where are the mountains. Since we use the wet on wet technique we want to keep the mountain white and sparkly. After dampening the paper, we paint the sky. I used a mix of yellow and blue. However, try not to mix them too much on paper, you don’t want to create a green sky. Try to apply a darker shade of blue on the side where you want to be less sunny or that is shadowed by the tall mountain.

While the sky is drying, we start painting the side of the mountains where the sun is not shinning. Actually, in my opinion, this part is the most important one. Because I couldn’t see this perspective, my watercolor mountains were ugly. It’s important to observe photos of mountains to understand how the light is projected.

In the next image, you can see the line between the dark and light zones of a mountain. Also, remember that the area where the sun is shinning must be painted with a lighter color or left blank. The darker area must be painted using a darker color. So, this important aspect will help you create a beautiful painting. In my painting the sun is positioned on the left, so the shadows are switched.

After painting the mountains we can paint the glacier lake. Try to observe what colors and shapes you see reflected in the water and copy that. If the water is frozen the lake color will contain more white and blue. If not, it will be perceived as darker than the color of the actual objects reflected in its water.

Next, we can start painting trees in the background using diluted colors. Hence, add more pigment as you paint elements closer to the foreground. I use a very thin brush for painting trees and branches with black. In the end, add details that will make your watercolor mountains painting stand out. Don’t be afraid to experiment.

Watercolor painting tutorial

You can watch my video tutorial on how to paint mountains using watercolor. Also, don’t forget to subscribe because I am publishing a lot of painting tutorials. Therefore, click this channel link to stay up to date and subscribe. Thank you for watching!