Easy Step-By-Step Painting: Yukon Mountains

It’s early spring in the Yukon, meaning there is still a lot of snow but an abundance of sunshine. I decided to capture one of the views from my apartment and turn it into this easy step-by-step acrylic painting project. Landscape painting is one of my favorite ways to relieve anxiety and stress. All you need for this project are a few basic supplies and an hour or two of time. Let’s get started!

Supplies

Canvas Paper

For this painting I used a sheet of 9×12 canvas paper. If you don’t have any on hand, you could also use watercolor paper or cardstock. Canvas is generally best for acrylics, so if you plan on starting painting as a hobby, I recommend getting either canvas paper, canvas boards, or stretched canvas.

Paint

These are the colors I used. I don’t tend to use fancy or expensive brands of acrylic paint – you can find these big tubes of Master’s Touch at Hobby Lobby or comparable brands on Amazon. If you are just getting started with painting, I recommend getting a set of smaller tubes with more colors first. If you can’t read the labels in the above picture, the names of the colors are white, medium yellow, pale blue, permanent black, violet, grass green, and burnt sienna. Slight variations of the blue and green will also work.

Brushes

These are the brushes I used, plus a Micron pen for the last step. If you don’t have these exact brushes, don’t worry. I used a small, medium, and large flat brush, a medium round brush, a brush with a fine tip, and a fan brush. Again, I don’t spend a lot of money on brushes either. Every few years I will get one of those variety packs like this one from Amazon, which give you plenty of decent quality brushes for not much money.

Palette

You will need somewhere to put your paint. Lately, I have been using these disposable palettes, made of flexible plastic. Plastic lids also work well, because you can peel the paint right off when it dries. I have even used old whiteboards or pieces of wood as palettes. You can’t go wrong!

Jar of Water

Finally, you will need a jar of water. Use a recycled glass jar, or just something you don’t mind getting dirty. It is difficult to get dried paint off of the glass, so I just let it dry and keep using the same jar.

Step One: Rough Sketch

Using a pencil, draw the main lines of the scene. These do not need to be detailed, just get the basic shapes down. I drew a background mountain, two hills, two layers of pine trees, and the foreground cabin.

Step Two: Block in the Sky

Part A

Mix a little pale blue with some white, and use your biggest brush to color in the sky. Use large, swooping horizontal brush strokes.

Part B

Next, get even more white and use horizontal strokes to lighten up the bottom of the sky. You can use a big criss-cross pattern to blend the white up into the light blue.

Step Three: Add Clouds

Part A

Add just the tiniest bit of black to your blue-tinged white to make a soft grey. Using a dry, round brush, use that light grey to block in a few clouds in the sky.

Part B

Now, with a clean, small brush, use a small amount of pure white and dab it on your clouds. This is called highlighting, and it’s my most favorite part of painting! Try not to use too much – we want the effect of both light and shadow.

Step Four: Background Mountain

That farthest back mountain is completely snow covered, so I used white with just a tiny bit of the light blue to fill it in. Then, I used some of the light grey on a small brush to quickly dab in some distant trees. To do this, use short, vertical strokes. No need to pay too much attention to detail.

Step Five: Closer Mountains

Part A

Now, mix a tiny bit of purple with your sky color to create a snow-in-shadow color for the closer mountains. Paint the further-away mountain first, then add a touch more blue and purple to make a slightly darker snow color for the closest mountain. You are just filling in color, we’ll add more details in a minute. Don’t worry about covering up part of your drawing towards the bottom of the mountain.

Part B

Next, you’ll add a bit of green to the snow color. Using your fan brush, make short strokes to create the impression of a blanket of pine trees.

Part C

Add a touch of white to your tree color for the pine trees on the further away mountain. Use the same technique with the fan brush.

Step Six: Foreground Trees

Part A

To mix the color for the next layer of closer pine trees, I added more green and a touch of burnt sienna and purple to the tree color we just used in step five. I used a medium flat brush to quickly block in the color for these trees.

Part B

After that, I used the very tip of the flat brush to make some vertical strokes. This is to create the impression of lots of tree tops.

Part C

Now, add some white to your tree color. Using a medium round brush, create just a bit of detailing for your trees. An easy way to do this is to think of each tree as a vertical stack of V-shaped brush strokes.

Step Seven: Closest Foreground Trees

Part A

Now you’ll paint the trees closest to you. Mix green with some purple to create a nice rich color. Use your medium round brush to make short strokes, biggest at the bottom of each tree and tapering off towards the top. Remember, pine trees come in all shapes and sizes, so don’t worry if yours all look different from each other.

Part B

Next, we will create the effect of light on the trees. Mix some burnt sienna and yellow into your tree color and dab in onto your tree branches. Be careful not to cover up the darker color entirely.

Part C

Mix in more yellow and white to highlight the tops of the trees. You may want to use a small brush for this step.

Step Eight: Block in the Cabin

Part A

First, mix burnt sienna with a touch of purple for a nice dark brown. Use a brush with a fine tip to carefully fill in the wood of the cabin.

Part B

Next, mix some white into your cabin color and use the same fine-tipped brush to add some detailing and create the impression of logs.

Step Nine: Snow and Cabin Details

Part A

Mix together white with small amounts of blue and purple. Use a large brush to color in the foreground snow, and a small brush to put snow on the roof of the cabin.

Part B

Next, mix some white and yellow together and carefully paint in the windows. I added even more white to add touches of highlighting on the windows too.

Part C

You can also add more details to your cabin. I added a green door, a chimney, and some shadows. For the shadows, I used the original dark brown cabin color.

Part D

Mix even more white into your lightest window color to add some highlights to the snow. I envisioned the light coming from the left side of the painting, so I added the highlights on the left side.

Step Ten: Final Details

Part A

Add chimney smoke by mixing just a tiny, tiny bit of black into a small amount of white. Using a dry, round brush, get the smallest amount of the grey color and gently dab it in above the chimney. The key is to only use a VERY small amount of paint. Using a dry brush is important too, as it allows you to create soft, blended edges.

Part B

I decided to use some black to add just a bit more definition to the foreground. If you choose to do the same, use a fine-tipped brush to add some shadows to the trees, or some line work to the cabin.

Part C (Optional)

I wanted a touch more detail still, so I used a Micron pen (very fine-tipped art pen) to add some logs to the cabin and more definition to the trees. You can skip this step if you are happy with your painting. Now, give yourself a pat on the back because you have finished a landscape painting!

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