Landscapes with houses combine natural and architectural elements.
The ancient Greeks and Romans often made wall paintings based on garden scenes. Then, after the fall of Rome, religious scenes became much more popular subjects for paintings. In the sixteenth century, the Dutch middle class brought back the popularity of the landscape painting, and throughout seventeenth-century Europe, these paintings began to include architectural elements. Today, landscape paintings often contain natural and architectural structures.
Instructions
Rough Sketch and Color Blocking
1. Use the charcoal to draw a rough sketch on your canvas. Include just the outlines of the shapes depicted in your photo.
2. Use a flat-sided brush to paint the entire sky area of your landscape with a coat of white gesso. Observe the colors of the sky in the photograph, load small amounts of those colors onto your mixing palette, and mix the paint to match the sky colors. While the gesso is still wet, apply the colors to the sky area of your canvas using horizontal brushstrokes.
3. Observe the base colors that make up the rest of your landscape, including the ground and trees. Mix some of these colors on your palette and water them down by dipping your brush into your container of water and blending it into the paint. Brush the paint onto your canvas, following the charcoal outlines.
4. Add some paint to your base-color mixtures to create some more pigment-dense colors. Using a small, soft brush, apply these colors to your canvas to provide details such as trees and shrubs.
5. Add some black paint to the pigment-dense mixtures, blend them, and apply them to the darkest areas of your painting, still observing the basic outlines.
6. Add some white paint to the pigment-dense mixtures, blend, and apply them to the lightest areas of your painting, still observing the basic outlines.
Adding the Houses
7. Mix some paint colors to match the colors of the houses in your reference photo. Apply the colors onto your canvas where the houses should be. Ignore details; just focus on filling in their basic shapes, including the sides and roofs.
8. Mix a touch of black paint into the mixture used in Step 1 and apply it to the shadows of the houses in your landscape.
9. Paint the details of your houses including the windows, chimneys, porches and doors. Avoid detail at this stage, keeping the painted shapes as basic as possible.
10. Revisit your reference photo and paint any items in the landscape that need more attention. Then stop working on your painting for a while. When you return to it, you will more easily notice any items that still need attention.
