Southwest Peace. Painting #69. Mountain Depth Painting Tips

Drink in the astonishing beauty of a spectacular desert as you ride down a well traveled road with the amazing brushes of Bob Ross

Southwest Peace is painting #69 and Twitch stream #13. It’s pretty much a full on Bob Ross episode full of mountain depth painting tips

The Inspiration

Like many Bob episodes I follow, I did this one in order to learn something new like a technique or different way of painting a certain feature. In this case, I wanted to try the technique of creating depth in the mountains using shading and different values of a single color. Plus I was still feeling inspired by my trip out to New Mexico.

I followed along with The Joy of Painting S18E12 and you can too!

Materials

Colors

• Alizarin Crimson
• Bright Red
• Cadmium Yellow
• Dark Sienna
• Indian Yellow
• Midnight Black
• Phthalo Blue
• Sap Green
• Titanium Hwite
• Van Dyke Brown
• Yellow Ochre
• Don’t forget the Liquid Hwite!

Equipment

• 2 Inch Brush
• 1 Inch Brush
• #6 Fan Brush
• Large Palette Knife
• Script Liner Brush

Notes From the Easel

If you look at Bob’s painting, you can see quite a few differences. His mountains are lighter and I did the foreground a bit different. The one minor issue I have with this one is that there isn’t as much contrast or distinction between all the layers of mountains. Despite that, I am pretty happy with the mountains overall. I’m overall pleased with the shape and depth of each mountain range. I enjoyed working with the different values to create the shape of the mountains.

Tips and Lessons Learned

Here are some mountain depth painting tips for doing if you try this painting along with Bob. Start out with a very light value of color to start at the back. The lighter the better. If it’s too light, it’s easy to make it darker but it’s a son of a gun to try to make it lighter. By starting really light, it makes it easier to go gradually darker before you get too dark as you come forward in the painting.

When you add the dark color to create the shadows, it will help if you blend them back. I did this in most areas but I can see a few areas I neglected. Of course, I didn’t catch it until it was too late.

Like I said though, I’m pleased with it overall. The techniques learned throughout the episode taught me something. It also helped me a bit later when I attempted my first portrait. I’ll post about that one in the near future. Stay tuned.

I made a timelapse of this painting. Since I was following a Bob Ross episode, I went full cosplay.

Give this one a shot and let me know how it turns out. Video coming soon. Wanna buy it? It’s available in my Art Store.

Happy painting!