To give you some ideas, you might want to paint a bright spring scene of a mountain with pine trees in the foreground. You could also paint a darker landscape of the ocean at sunset with deep streaks across the sky.
Improvise if you don’t have a classic artist’s palette. Use a smooth piece of cardboard, a flat glass platter, a thin plank of wood, or a plastic container lid.
To make a warm sunlight tone, blend ivory black with white and a little orange. To create a pale blue, mix blue with gray and white.
To ventilate the room, run a fan or open a window. Remember to clean your paintbrushes and cover the paint palette tightly to prevent them from drying out.
Be as detailed or basic as you like when you paint the outline. Make the shapes more detailed if you want more guidance as you paint the landscape. If you prefer to make up the composition of the painting as you go, you can skip this step.
You can make a few different hues with the colors on your palette. Keep in mind that if you want to apply layers of oil paint, you should with the thinnest, most transparent colors before adding thicker layers.
If you’d like to make the edges of the painting even darker, especially if you’re painting an evening landscape, add a touch of black paint to the corners and blend them in with your brush.
If you run out of the paint to brush down, don’t be afraid to dip your brush onto your palette to pick up more oil paint.
It’s fine to leave some areas of the sky darker to create interest and draw in your viewer.
If you’d like to soften the clouds even more, brush a clean, dry 2 in (5. 1 cm) brush over the clouds to blur them into the sky.
You can use the palette knife to simply outline the shapes and then fill them in with a paintbrush. If you prefer, keep using the palette knife to paint the subject, especially if you want it to look really rough. If you are painting the sea or the ocean, pay attention at how the color and density are changing. The water would be fairly dark far in the distance and more transparent near the shore.
To make a treeline with realistic earth-tones, mix a little green, black, and brown oil paint. Then, dip a 2 in (5. 1 cm) paintbrush into it and tap the end of the brush along the mid-ground of the painting. The farther away the objects are, the less sharp and detailed they become. For the distant objects, the sky will work as a color filter. If the sky is blue, they will look a bit bluish. If the sky is yellow, like at sunset, they will look a bit yellowish.
For example, paint a large tree or flower in the foreground close to the viewer. Make the colors darker and the leaves or petals very detailed. If you have trees or flowers in the mid-ground, use muted colors and just paint their general shape.
The shadows will also add depth to your landscape.
