Painting Made Clear: The Complete Guide to Landscapes

Oil painting landscapes — master every technique from simple skies to complete scenes.

What you'll learn
- Harmonize colors with a limited palette, mastering mixing and subtle variations.
- Render natural textures such as grass, foliage, tree bark, rocks, and water with specific techniques.
- Control light and contrast to highlight volumes and bring landscapes to life.
- Paint expressive skies — cloudy, sunset, or clear — with smooth color transitions.
- Depict the sea in various conditions: calm, rough, or distant.
- Bring all skills together in a complete final artwork applying all techniques learned.

Requirements
- It is strongly recommended to complete Painting Made Clear: Foundations of Oil Painting first, as the techniques covered there — including blending, applying color correctly, mixing any color, and many others — will be used and expanded upon throughout this animal course

Description
This oil painting course is dedicated to teaching you the techniques that bring landscapes to life — from the way light reflects on water to the texture of a tree’s bark. You will learn to create depth, atmosphere, and realism through a wide variety of subjects.

We’ll start with smaller, focused exercises: painting a cypress, shaping a cloudy sky, rendering the texture of foliage, or building the light and shadow of a snowy mountain. Each of these projects isolates one specific skill, making it easier to absorb and apply in your own work.

You’ll then progress to more complex scenes — calm seas, powerful waves, glowing sunsets, mist-filled forests, and open fields. For each subject, you’ll discover how to select and mix colors, create convincing atmospheres, and handle subtle variations in tone and texture that make a scene feel alive.

The course culminates in a large, detailed landscape combining mountains, lakes, forests, fields, and man-made structures. This final project brings together all the techniques you’ve learned in a structured, step-by-step process, so you can confidently paint full scenes.

Every lesson begins with a clear presentation of the materials, followed by detailed explanations of each stage, so you always understand not just what to do, but why it works.

You may notice there’s no dedicated module on composition. That’s intentional — every scene here is already carefully designed. This way, you can focus fully on mastering technique first, before moving on to creating your own original compositions later.

Who this course is for:
- Artists who want to learn how to paint realistic landscapes in oil, from first sketch to final details.
- Students who have completed Painting Made Clear: Foundations of Oil Painting and wish to apply and expand those skills to landscape subjects.
- Intermediate painters looking to refine their techniques for skies, water, trees, mountains, and atmospheric effects.
- Anyone seeking clear, structured guidance to capture natural scenes with depth, harmony, and a strong sense of composition.
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