Drawing landscapes is something I used to do quite regularly, going out sketching whenever I could.
But as time went on, and I started drawing professionally, my life moved to working entirely from photographs. The commercial realities robbed me of the time I needed to sketch outdoors. I took photos instead.
Thankfully, I learned to sketch outdoors first and that gave me a good grounding
So that is what this article is about, encouraging you to get out there yourself and give landscape sketching a go.
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Why Draw Landscapes From Life?
Sketching landscapes from life gives you something a photograph never can, and it’s one of the best ways to learn how to draw a landscape convincingly.
You see the landscape in three dimensions, rather than flattened onto a 2D plane.
You naturally take mental notes as you observe, and your brain filters out the fluff automatically, taking in the overall picture rather than getting obsessed with detail.
A photograph shows you everything at once, so you don’t know what to leave out. Sketching landscapes from life does the work for you.
There’s also the matter of the camera lens itself. Photographs distort perspective, especially with a wide lens, and can mislead you about distances and proportions.
And then there’s the light. It changes constantly outdoors, and that forces you to work quickly, and to decide what matters most in the scene before the moment passes.
This Goes into Detail: Drawing from Photos: The Hidden Traps
Great Example of a tree sketched from Life
There are 2 main reasons why artists sketch landscapes outdoors.
Some carry a sketchbook with the intension of making a finished work of art in it’s own right, possibly in the field, but more likely as landscape sketches that will be fleshed out back home.
The other angle is to take field notes as a preliminary for a painting. This helps with distilling the scene in front of you and establish the tonal range.
A sketch forces you to apply contrast between elements instead of relying on color alone.
It trains your eye to see the drama within the composition. Your brain can distinguish depth and contrast better than a photograph and field notes permit you to exaggerate tonal differences if that makes for a better image.
It’s much harder to take liberties working from a static photo. You are faced with a paradox.
In one way a photo denies you all the ‘hidden’ information you need to adjust the image with confidence, while at the same time, providing too much information to easily simplify the view.
Getting Out of the Studio is Healthy
Working in a studio can become claustrophobic, and often solitary.
Getting outside and feeling the fresh air, can recharge you in a way that sitting at a desk never will.
There is also something you can never get from a photograph. When you sit down and really concentrate on one view, you experience it far more intensely, you soak it up and remember it in a way a flat image can’t replicate.
This Post Expands the Subject: Is Drawing From Reference Photos Bad? Are You Cheating?
And there’s a practical benefit too, it helps beat art block.
A studio can narrow your thinking into a single channel. Getting out and about opens your mind back up. You start seeing everything with a new perspective.
You never know what’s around the next corner, or what composition might catch your eye as you walk from one spot to another.
Even if it doesn’t shift your creative block immediately, going out repeatedly into the field can loosen things, and once a new drawing idea excites you, that’s when you build momentum.
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Why Sketching Landscapes is Beginner Friendly
Landscape drawing is remarkably beginner friendly.
If a tree’s branches end up in slightly the wrong place, it barely matters, it still reads as a tree.
Compare that to a building, where a misplaced window or a warped angle is instantly noticeable, both to you and to anyone else looking.
Sketching landscapes gives you far more room to fail gently.
Clumps of trees, coppices, hedges, fence posts, they already lean and vary in reality, so there’s no single correct version to get wrong. In fact they sometimes gain character that was never really there.
This is What I Mean: How to Make Your Drawings Interesting: 14 Pro Tips
That flexibility gives beginners enormous scope to experiment and learn, without the discouragement of an obvious, visible mistake.
There’s also the matter of comparison. No one walking past your shoulder knows exactly what that particular hillside or that particular clump of trees looked like a moment ago.
There’s no fixed reference in their head to catch you out. A face, an animal, a building, people know instinctively when those look wrong. A landscape rarely gives anyone that same certainty, including you.
And that forgiveness works in your favor as you’re learning too. Because the mistakes don’t discourage you. You’re far more likely to keep going, and to try again.
Playing With Landscape Composition
Dedicate some space in your sketchbook purely for thumbnail sketches, tiny, quick studies you experiment with composition before committing to a full landscape drawing or painting
Working small like this makes you bold, you stop being nervous about position and start playing around with ideas
TIP: In my experience, few artists place their main feature dead center, it usually sits to one side with lead lines that pull the eye through the landscape. Think of a path, a river, a fence, or anything that creates a journey into the landscape.
This Is Related: How to Plan and Compose Your Art: A Beginners Guide
Train yourself to spot these and you’ll start seeing potential compositions everywhere you look.
One trick that helps enormously, cut a small rectangular window out of a piece of card, and hold it up to the view in front of you. It isolates a frame from the wider scene, letting you test different compositions before you’ve drawn a single line.
There is another advantage of working in plein air. You can cheat more easily!
You are perfectly entitled to leave things out, add things in, or move things around, if that improves the composition. There is nothing wrong with bending the truth, its called artistic license.
Its very easy to improvise when you’re there in situ, it’s not so easy to do that from a photo.
Without wishing to sound too arty-farty, a photo captures the moment, the sketch catches the experience. That’s the best way I can describe it.
What’s in My Drawing Kit Bag?
Keep the kit simple, that’s part of the appeal.
In general I use an A3 sketch pad, since I like plenty of paper to work, but a smaller drawing pad might be more practical outdoors. It’s purely a personal preference.
It also depends on how far you’ll be travelling. If you’re not far from the car, take a larger sketch pad, why not? But if you are hiking a distance, smaller is better in my opinion.
What matters more is a rigid backboard, so you’ve got a hard surface to lean on, and gummed binder not spiral.
Why not spiral? Because it doesn’t travel well. The wire gets squashed and bent and you cant flip your paper without damaging it.
For pencils, keep it minimal, a small range rather than a full set, something like a 2H, an HB, and a 3B covers the bare essentials.
Read This For Kit: The Minimal Drawing Kit: What You Need as a Beginner
Add a pencil sharpener or a sharp knife, and that’s your drawing kit sorted.
Another tip worth adding. I like to take an extra board to clip over the pad, held in place with a couple of bulldog clips.
Why? Because it holds your drawings firmly in place during transit, and prevents them from getting smudged or creased along the way.
This Covers Things in More Depth:
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Also keep a camera handy.
Light changes so fast outdoors, a dramatic cloud formation can transform a scene in moments, and be so fleeting, a sketch alone can’t capture the atmosphere.
A quick photo preserves it, so you can bring that extra drama back into the piece once you’re home.
Drawing Landscapes: Final Thoughts
You don’t need much to start, a pad, a few pencils, and a bit of nerve.
Landscapes forgive you while you’re learning, so there’s no better subject to build confidence on.
Every sketch trains your eye a little further, teaches you to filter, to prioritize, and to see compositions in places you’d have walked straight past before.
I still believe the grounding I got from sketching outdoors years ago is what lets me use a photograph properly today, rather than being ruled by it.
So take the excuse of good light, or bad light, or any light, and go and sit somewhere with a view.
You’ll come back with more than a sketch. You’ll come back seeing differently.
If you are struggling to get started, you’ll benefit from visual learning. Check Brent’s Drawing Course. There are lots of free lessons.
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