Making the far mountains sit far away
The last lesson added clouds by lifting rather than painting, so the sky now has some air in it. This lesson puts mountains under that sky, with one objective: making the far ones actually feel far.
The technical name is atmospheric perspective, though you never have to say it out loud. What it means is simple: things farther away are lighter, cooler, and less detailed than things close up, because dust, haze, and distance itself wash the color out. Your eye already knows this, so the work is just triggering it on purpose.
Why your mountains keep looking flat
Beginners paint the far mountains at the same strength as the near ones, and the whole thing then reads like a green blob sitting on the paper instead of a landscape going back in space. I learned this firsthand: months into the hobby I painted the mountains from my own back patio and got a solid green lump with no depth. My husband walked by, tilted his head, and asked "is that the point of the mountain?" — and it was, exactly what I had aimed at. The lesson was clear: if the shape does not read and someone has to ask, the value and color are not doing their job. A correct shape still fails when everything carries the same weight.
So the fix is not really about drawing the mountain better. It is about which color you load onto the brush and how much water is in it.
What you need
- Your reference photo — mountains with at least two or three rows of ridges going back, if you can find one. Foothills up close with a bigger range behind them works well around here.
- 140lb paper, the good stuff you have been using.
- Round brush, flat brush.
- Blues, a warm color (burnt sienna or similar), and whatever green you have been mixing.
- A clean water jar and a rag, as always.
The actual technique
Step 1: Look at your reference and squint. Squinting kills detail and leaves only value — light, medium, dark. The farthest ridge is basically a pale blue-gray shape; the closer ridges get darker and more colorful as they come toward you. If your reference does not show that clearly, push it anyway. Real life is subtler than a good painting.
Step 2: Mix your "far" color first. This is mostly blue, a tiny touch of your warm color to keep it from looking like a crayon, and a lot of water. Keep it pale — thin enough that the white of the paper is still doing most of the work. This is your farthest ridge.
Step 3: Paint the far ridge shape, then stop touching it. One layer, dried completely. Do not go back in and fuss with it. The whole trick of "far away" is restraint; keep adding to it and it stops looking distant.
Step 4: Mix your "middle" color one shade darker and slightly warmer. More pigment, less water than the last mix. Add a little more of your warm color, moving from blue-gray toward the gray-brown you already know how to make. Paint your middle ridge, overlapping the bottom edge of the far one just slightly. Let it dry.
Step 5: Give your closest ridge or foothill the most pigment, least water, and most warmth. This is essentially your foothill-in-August mix from a couple of lessons back, maybe darker. Detail is allowed to show up here too — a little texture, some darker green strokes, whatever you want. Detail belongs close up; keep it out of the distance.
Step 6: Step back and check the order. Far should be palest and coolest, near darkest and warmest. If a middle ridge is fighting your foreground for attention, that is the one place to go back and glaze lightly with a thin wash of the sky color, pushing it back where it belongs. One pass, dry brush contact, no scrubbing.
A caution
Working wet mountain shapes near each other means edges can bleed if you are not watching dry time, which out here is fast. For a crisp edge between ridges, wait for full dry, not "mostly dry." If you are unsure, touch the paper with the back of your finger rather than the front — less oil transfer, and you can feel damp better that way.
A note on mud
Mud is genuinely useful here, not a mistake to panic over. When your middle-distance blue and your warm color overlap and go a bit muddy-gray, that is the haze that makes a mountain look far away. A slightly muddy ridge that reads as distant beats a clean, saturated one that reads as close. Learn to make the mud on purpose and it stops being scary.
Before next time
Try this on a second reference photo of your own choosing — a hillside, a distant tree line, anything with layers going back in space. The same rules apply whether or not it is technically a mountain.