28 Landscape Painting Ideas of Desert Canyons, Prairie Skies and Misty River Valleys

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Landscape painting gets fun fast when you stop worrying about every blade of grass and start thinking in big, flat shapes. Gouache is made for exactly that: a few confident washes, a crisp horizon, a sky that sets the whole mood before you have painted anything else.

Below you get 28 terrains from around the world, from a red canyon river to a lava field under low cloud, each one built from simple layered shapes you can finish in a single sitting. Scroll, pick the one that catches your eye on the way down, and go paint it.

Start with the river, not the rock. Pencil in a loose S-curve of turquoise water across the lower third of the paper, then build the canyon walls around it in two or three overlapping red sandstone shapes, darkest where they curve away from you.

Mix a base terracotta from cadmium red and a touch of yellow ochre, flat-brush it in big wedges, then drop a darker mix into the shadow side of each wall while the first layer is still workable so the edge stays soft but the shape stays crisp once dry.

Compare the width of the river to the height of the tallest wall before you commit to paint. If one canyon wall ends up too wide and swallows the river, narrow it by painting the water shape slightly wider on top, since gouache covers in one flat pass.

No turquoise on hand works fine with a mix of teal and white gouache. Keep the sky a plain pale wash so the red and turquoise stay the loudest colors on the page.

Palette: Terracotta,Yellow Ochre,Turquoise,Sandy Cream

After a canyon full of rock, give yourself an open prairie with nothing but sky and grass. Lay the horizon low, about a third up the page, so the towering white clouds above get most of the room to do their work.

Paint the sky first in a flat dusty blue, then press in the clouds with thick white gouache using the side of a flat brush so each cloud edge stays crisp rather than fuzzy. Once dry, block the prairie in a warm ochre-green, then drag a thin curving line of pale dirt track from the bottom edge toward the horizon.

If this is your first time painting clouds this large, keep every cloud shape simple and rounded rather than wispy, since gouache reads best as bold flat forms. If white paint looks chalky over the blue, let the sky dry fully first.

Without white gouache on hand, mix titanium white with a touch of the sky blue instead of leaving clouds pure white, which also helps them sit into the scene rather than float on top.

Palette: Dusty Teal,Ochre,Sage Green,Titanium White

Move from open prairie into a valley seen through morning mist. Stack three or four hill shapes behind each other, each one a slightly paler, cooler blue than the one in front, and leave the furthest hill almost the same tone as the sky so it seems to dissolve.

Work back to front: paint the sky and furthest hill wash first, let it dry, then paint each closer hill shape over it in a deeper blue-grey mix. Keep every hill shape smooth and rounded with no hard texture, since mist flattens detail.

The valley goes wrong when every hill ends up the same value, so the layers stop reading as distance. Fix it by checking the lightest hill against the darkest one before you paint the foreground; there should be a clear jump.

Finish with one thin pale river shape winding between the nearest hills. If you only have one blue, add white for the far hills and a touch of black or dark brown for the near ones instead of mixing a whole new color.

Palette: Payne’s Grey,Dusty Teal,Soft Sky Blue,Sandy Cream

Try this one on toned paper rather than white; a warm grey or cream ground makes the misty blue layers read as soft without needing extra blending.

Give the wide savanna a single landmark so the eye has somewhere to land. Place one flat-topped acacia tree off to one side rather than dead center, with its trunk as a thin dark line and its canopy as one wide flat umbrella shape in olive green.

Paint the sky and golden grass first in broad flat passes, then add the acacia last so its silhouette sits cleanly over the dry background. Add two giraffes grazing near the tree as simple long-necked shapes in warm tan with a few dark patches, kept small so the tree stays the main event.

Giraffes go wrong fast if the neck gets too thick or too short, so sketch the neck as a line first and check it against the height of the body before you paint it solid. A pencil underdrawing saves you here more than on any other idea in this list.

No olive gouache means mixing green with a touch of ochre and a speck of black. Keep the grass one flat warm tone rather than streaky to keep the whole scene calm.

Palette: Olive Green,Warm Tan,Ochre,Soft Sky Blue

Trade the savanna’s single tree for a whole hillside of pattern. Paint rolling Tuscan hills as a series of soft curved bands stepping down the page, alternating sage green and dusty ochre so the stripes read like a patchwork seen from a distance.

Start at the top of the page and work down, painting each band slightly darker than the one above it so the hills feel like they are rolling toward you. Keep every curve smooth and unbroken; a single wavering line across the whole width of the paper reads far better than several short choppy ones.

The composition gets flat if every stripe is the same width. Vary the bands so some are thin and some generous, and let one or two cypress-like dark green verticals break the horizontal rhythm near the top of a hill.

Without a second green on hand, shift the same green warmer or cooler with ochre or a touch of blue rather than reaching for a different tube.

Palette: Sage Green,Dusty Ochre,Deep Olive,Sandy Cream

Light does all the work in a desert of dunes, so decide where it comes from before you mix a single color. Put the sun low off to one side so each dune catches warm orange on its lit slope and falls into a long cool shadow on the other, with shadows all pointing the same direction.

Block in the lit faces first in a bright orange-ochre, let that dry, then lay the shadow shapes over the top in a muted plum-brown, keeping every shadow edge a single clean diagonal line rather than a soft gradient.

Consistent light direction is what sells a dune field; if one shadow points left and its neighbor points right, the whole scene looks broken. Pencil a few light arrows on your sketch first if you need the reminder.

Swap plum-brown for a mix of burnt sienna and a touch of blue if your shadow color runs out mid-painting; matching the undertone matters more than the exact pigment.

Palette: Orange Ochre,Plum Brown,Burnt Sienna,Soft Sky Blue

After a dune field full of dry shadow, cool right down with a fjord. Paint the steep green walls rising on either side of the page first, then paint the water as an almost exact mirrored copy of them underneath, just slightly softer in tone.

Work the sky and rock walls in flat dusty teal and deep green, let the paper dry completely, then flip your reference (or your mental image) upside down to paint the reflection so you copy the shapes rather than inventing new ones that will not match.

The mirror breaks if the reflected shapes do not line up with what sits above the waterline. Keep a faint pencil line marking the true horizon on both halves before you paint either one.

No second teal mixed and ready works fine; thin the same green with a touch of white and more water for the reflection so it reads as calmer and paler than the rock above it.

Palette: Deep Green,Dusty Teal,Soft Sky Blue,Sandy Cream

Try a narrow vertical format for this one; a tall thin fjord with its mirrored reflection fills the page more dramatically than a wide horizontal crop.

Push the mirror idea from the fjord to its extreme with a salt flat that reflects the whole sky. Leave the composition almost entirely open: one flat horizontal line splits the page, with the identical sky painted twice, once right side up and once as its reflection below.

Paint the sky first in whatever mood you want, soft blue with a streak of cloud works well, then repeat the exact same shapes underneath the horizon line, slightly muted, so the flat sits like glass. A few thin cracks drawn with a fine brush across the lower half remind the eye it is ground, not more sky.

This idea goes wrong if the reflection gets busier or more detailed than the sky above it, which breaks the illusion of flatness. Keep both halves equally simple.

If you want more interest, add one tiny dark shape, a distant rock or figure-sized mark, right on the horizon line itself; it anchors the whole mirror and gives the eye a place to rest.

Palette: Soft Sky Blue,Sandy Cream,Pale Grey,Dusty Teal

Bring some life back into the scene with a marshland full of reed and silver water. Paint winding channels of pale silvery-blue first across a base of soft green, letting the channels curve and split rather than run in one straight line.

Once that dries, add clusters of reeds along the banks as simple vertical flicks of a round brush loaded with dark green, varying their height so they read as a loose group rather than a fence. Drop in two white egrets last, each one just a curved neck and a simple oval body, standing where a channel bends.

Reeds look stiff if every stroke is the same length and angle. Vary the pressure and tilt of your brush stroke by stroke, and let a few reeds lean into each other.

Without white gouache for the egrets, a tiny unpainted shape left as bare cream paper works just as well, outlined afterward in a thin grey line.

Palette: Sage Green,Silver Blue,Deep Green,Titanium White

Switch the gentle marsh mood for something darker with a heather moor. Lay a flat stormy grey-blue sky first, heavy and low across the top half of the page, then paint the moor below it in a deep dusty purple that covers most of the lower half in one even wash.

Scatter a handful of grey boulders across the purple ground as simple rounded shapes, each with one flat shadow side, placed unevenly so none of them line up in a row. Keep the storm cloud edge soft against the horizon but crisp everywhere else, since that softness is what makes it look like weather rolling in rather than a flat grey ceiling.

The purple can turn muddy if you mix it straight from red and blue on the paper. Mix it fully on your palette first, test it on a scrap, and only then commit the wash to the page.

Short on purple gouache, mix a dusty violet from ultramarine blue and a touch of red, lightened with white.

Palette: Dusty Purple,Storm Grey,Warm Grey,Pale Sky

Trade the storm for a warm evening instead. Paint the sky first as a soft gradient of pink into peach, working wet-into-wet while the gouache is still workable so the two colors blend without a hard line between them.

Once the sky dries, paint two or three tall saguaro cacti as simple dark silhouettes, each with one or two curved side arms, standing at different heights so they do not read as a repeated pattern. Keep every cactus a flat, nearly solid dark green so it reads clearly against the pink sky.

Saguaros go wrong when the arms get too curly or too many; stick to one or two arms per cactus and keep the main trunk the tallest, straightest shape in the painting.

No pink-to-peach blend on hand works fine as two flat bands instead of a gradient; the saguaro silhouettes will carry the scene either way.

Palette: Dusk Pink,Peach,Deep Cactus Green,Sandy Cream

Give the page one simple drama: a field of rippling wheat under a sky that is mostly deep blue except for a single dark cloud. Paint the sky first, flat and saturated, then drop in the cloud as one solid charcoal-grey shape near the top, keeping its edges crisp rather than wispy.

Paint the wheat below in a warm gold base, then use a dry, barely loaded brush dragged sideways across the dry gold to lift thin streaks of a paler yellow, suggesting the ripple of wind through the field without painting every stalk.

If the dry-brush streaks disappear, your brush is too wet or your paint too thin; blot the brush on a cloth first so it skips across the texture of the paper rather than laying flat.

No second yellow mixed for the highlights, a few strokes of straight white over the dry gold gives the same ripple effect.

Palette: Deep Sky Blue,Charcoal Grey,Gold,Pale Yellow

Circle a bright lake with a ring of dark trees for strong contrast. Paint the water first as one flat turquoise oval filling most of the page, then build a dense tree line around its edge using simple triangular pine shapes in a near-black green, packed close together with no gaps of sky showing between them.

Keep the lake perfectly flat and unbroken in color so it reads as still water against the busy, textured tree line. A thin pale reflection line just below the treeline where it meets the water sells the stillness without needing a full mirrored reflection.

The pines flatten into a solid dark band if every triangle is the same size. Vary the height of a few trees along the ring so the silhouette has a rhythm rather than a straight edge.

Without near-black green mixed, a dark mix of green and a touch of red does the same job and feels less harsh than true black.

Palette: Turquoise,Near-Black Green,Deep Green,Sandy Cream

Step the composition down the page this time rather than across it. Paint a wide river as a flat pale blue band across the bottom third, then build terraced vineyard rows above it as a series of narrow curved horizontal bands, each one following the slope of an imagined hillside.

Work top to bottom, painting the furthest, highest terraces first in a cooler green, then warming and darkening the green slightly as the terraces come forward and closer to the river. Keep each terrace line crisp and slightly curved rather than ruler-straight, since real terraces follow the contour of the land.

Terraces collapse into mush if you paint every row the same width. Narrow some rows and widen others, and let a few cypress-shaped dark marks punctuate the rows for scale.

If you do not want to mix a full gradient of greens, two greens alternated terrace by terrace reads just as convincingly from a normal viewing distance.

Palette: River Blue,Vineyard Green,Deep Green,Sandy Cream

Let one bold shape dominate the whole page with a flat-topped mesa. Pencil its silhouette first: a wide base, straight near-vertical sides, and a perfectly flat top, sitting slightly off-center on a wide red plain that stretches to the horizon.

Paint the plain and sky first in flat passes, then paint the mesa itself in a deeper red-brown so it reads as the darkest shape in the scene, adding one lighter stripe partway up to suggest a band of different rock without painting individual layers.

Compare the mesa’s width to its height before committing the pencil line to paint; most mesas read better wider than tall, and a mesa that is too narrow starts to look like a tower instead of a landform.

No red-brown premixed, layer a wash of red over a dry wash of burnt umber instead and let the two show through each other.

Palette: Red Plain,Mesa Red-Brown,Pale Stripe,Soft Sky Blue

Fill the page with verticals for a change, after so many wide horizons. Paint the background first as a soft hazy green-grey wash standing in for deep shadow between the stalks, then add the bamboo itself as tall straight lines of green and yellow-green, varying their spacing so some stalks sit close and others further apart.

Once the stalks are dry, drag a few diagonal strokes of pale warm yellow across the composition at an angle to suggest light breaking through from one side, landing only on a handful of stalks rather than the whole scene.

Bamboo reads as a fence if every stalk is perfectly straight and parallel. Let one or two lean slightly and vary their thickness, since even a few degrees of tilt reads as natural rather than drawn with a ruler.

Without a second green for variation, add a touch of yellow to your main green for the lit stalks and a touch of blue for the ones in shadow.

Palette: Bamboo Green,Shadow Green,Warm Yellow Light,Hazy Grey Green

Take a bird’s eye view this time instead of a horizon-line view. Paint a wide flat green floodplain across the whole page, then draw the river as one continuous looping line that curves almost back on itself in a tight oxbow shape before continuing on, exactly as a river bends when it has nowhere to go.

Paint the floodplain first in a flat warm green, then paint the river shape over it in a cool pale blue, keeping the width of the river consistent along its whole length so the loop reads clearly as water rather than a random squiggle.

The loop collapses if it gets too tight or too wide compared to its own width elsewhere; trace your pencil line slowly and keep checking it against the rest of the river before you commit to paint.

No aerial reference to work from, loosely sketch a cursive lowercase “e” shape as your starting guide for the loop, then refine it into a river.

Palette: Floodplain Green,River Blue,Deep Green,Sandy Cream

Bring the eye back down to a walking-height view after the aerial oxbow. Paint rolling green downs across most of the page under a wide pale sky, then leave a winding path unpainted or lifted back to bare cream paper, cutting diagonally from the bottom corner toward the horizon.

Paint the green hills first in two or three value steps, lightest furthest away, then use a damp brush to lift color back off the dry green along your path line, or paint the path directly in a chalky off-white if lifting feels fiddly.

A straight path looks planted by a ruler rather than walked by feet. Let it curve gently and narrow slightly as it heads toward the horizon, which also helps the sense of distance.

Without the patience for lifting, masking fluid applied before the green wash protects the path shape and peels away clean once the paint is dry.

You Will Need

• masking fluid or a damp brush for lifting the path

Palette: Downs Green,Pale Chalk,Soft Sky Blue,Deep Green

Go dense and layered after the open downs. Paint the canopy as several overlapping rounded tree-top shapes in different greens, darkest at the edges of the page and gradually paler toward a soft patch of mist rising in the middle distance.

Work the darkest trees first around the border, then work inward with progressively paler, cooler greens, finishing with a loose wash of pale grey-white for the mist itself, applied last so it sits visibly over the tree shapes beneath it.

The canopy turns into a flat green carpet if every treetop is the same size and rounded the same way. Vary the shapes, some tall and narrow, some wide and low, and overlap their edges so the silhouette has real rhythm.

No grey-white mixed for mist, a thinned wash of plain white gouache over the dry greens gives the same soft veiled effect.

Palette: Deep Canopy Green,Mid Green,Pale Mist Green,Misty White

Try painting this one on a slightly larger sheet; the layered canopy shapes need room to overlap several times before they read as a believable depth of forest.

Move from forest green into a field of hot color and steam. Paint several irregular pool shapes scattered across a pale sandy ground, each pool a different warm color at its center, from deep orange to teal, ringed by a paler mineral-crusted edge.

Paint the ground first, then the pools, working center outward in each one so the hottest color sits in the middle and cools slightly toward the rim. Add loose soft-edged steam shapes rising from two or three pools last, using very thin white gouache dragged upward with a dry brush so the steam stays wispy against the sky.

Pools look like flat stickers if every edge is hard all the way round. Soften just the outer rim where the water meets the mineral crust by touching it with a clean damp brush while still wet.

No teal and orange both mixed, alternate pools between just one bright color and a neutral grey-blue, since the contrast between pools matters more than using every color at once.

Palette: Hot Orange,Teal,Mineral Cream,Steam White

Pillars give you a chance to paint real height after a field of flat pools. Paint a handful of tall narrow limestone towers rising at different heights against a pale sky, each one a slightly irregular column rather than a perfect cylinder, clustered loosely rather than lined up in a row.

Block the sky and river first, then paint the pillars in a cool grey-green stone color, darkest on the shaded side of each column, and finish with a flat band of bright green vegetation clinging to the lower slopes where the stone meets the river.

Pillars start to look like fence posts if they are evenly spaced and the same width. Cluster two or three close together and leave gaps elsewhere, and vary each column’s width along its own height.

Without a cool grey-green ready to mix, a touch of blue stirred into your regular green and softened with white gives a convincing stone tone.

Palette: Stone Grey-Green,Deep Shadow Grey,Bright Green,River Blue

Balance the vertical pillars with a simpler horizontal scene next. Paint a dark solid wall of pine forest filling the left or right third of the page, its edge cut by one clear diagonal line where it opens onto a meadow of tall pale grass filling the rest of the composition.

Paint the meadow first in a warm golden green, then the forest edge in a near-black green, keeping that boundary line the crispest edge in the whole painting since it is doing most of the compositional work. A scatter of a few individual tall grass strokes right at the forest edge helps the two areas meet naturally rather than butting against each other flatly.

If the forest edge looks like a ruled line rather than a treeline, break it with two or three small triangular pine shapes poking slightly into the meadow side.

No near-black mixed and ready, your darkest green straight from the tube, used thick and undiluted, reads dark enough against a pale meadow.

Palette: Golden Meadow,Near-Black Pine,Warm Green,Soft Sky Blue

Scatter a lake with islands instead of ringing it with trees. Paint a calm flat lake covering most of the page, then drop in four or five small rocky islands of varying size, each one a simple rounded grey shape topped with a single pine tree silhouette.

Paint the water first, then the islands once it is dry, keeping every island shape low and simple so the single pine on top reads clearly against the sky rather than getting lost in a busy landform. A thin pale reflection beneath each island, slightly stretched and softened, ties them to the water below.

Too many islands the same size reads as a pattern rather than a real lake. Make one island noticeably larger than the rest and let the smaller ones cluster off to one side.

Without grey mixed for the rock, a neutral mix of your blue and your brown stands in perfectly well.

Palette: Lake Blue,Rock Grey,Pine Green,Sandy Cream

Return to banded hillsides, this time with mineral stripes instead of farmland. Paint a series of rounded low hill shapes layered across the page, each hill made of several thin horizontal bands of color: deep red, pale cream, dusty rust, repeated in a loose rhythm from base to summit.

Paint one hill at a time rather than banding the whole page at once, since each hill’s stripes should follow its own curved contour rather than running flat across the composition. Let the bands vary in thickness within a single hill for a more natural, eroded look.

The stripes flatten the hill into a flag if every band is the same width and perfectly horizontal. Curve each band gently to follow the hill’s silhouette and let a couple of bands taper off before reaching the far edge.

No rust color mixed, a touch of burnt sienna added to your red gives a convincing warm variation without a whole new tube.

Palette: Deep Red,Rust,Pale Cream Band,Soft Sky Blue

Warm the palette right up with a lagoon flushed pink at sunrise. Paint the water first as a flat soft pink-orange wash covering most of the lower half, then paint a pale peach sky above it that echoes the water’s color so the two halves feel like one warm moment.

Once the lagoon is dry, add a small group of flamingos wading in the shallows near the bottom edge, each one a simple curved neck, an oval body, and two thin stick legs, kept small so they read as a flock rather than individual portraits.

Flamingos get awkward if the neck curve is too sharp or the legs too thick. Paint the neck in one slow continuous brush stroke rather than building it from several short ones, and use the very tip of a round brush for the legs.

No pink gouache on hand, mix white with a small amount of red and a touch of orange rather than reaching for a premade pink, which often runs too cool.

Palette: Lagoon Pink,Peach Sky,Flamingo Rose,Dark Leg Grey

Strip the color right back down for a dry, eroded badlands scene. Paint a pale neutral sky first, then build the ridges below it from several overlapping triangular and wedge shapes in close sandy tones, varying only slightly from each other so the whole landform reads as one eroded mass rather than separate hills.

Work from the furthest, palest ridges toward the nearest, slightly darker ones, and keep every ridge edge a sharp jagged line rather than a smooth curve, since erosion carves hard angles rather than gentle slopes.

Badlands turn muddy if you reach for too many different browns at once. Mix one base sandy color and shift it only with small additions of white or a darker neutral, keeping the whole palette tight.

Without several close sandy tones premixed, add water to thin the same base color for the palest ridges instead of mixing a separate lighter paint.

Palette: Sandy Base,Pale Sand,Dark Ridge,Pale Sky

Soften back into farmland green for a wide valley with a stream running through it. Paint the valley floor as one broad flat green shape, then let a pale meandering stream cut across it from one side to the other, widening slightly as it nears the bottom edge of the page.

Paint the valley and stream first, then add two or three grazing horses as simple rounded bodies with a short neck bent down toward the grass, scattered loosely across the green rather than lined up together. Keep each horse small and simple, more a confident silhouette than a detailed animal.

Horses look stiff if every leg is drawn individually and straight. Simplify the legs to two thicker shapes per horse, front pair and back pair, and let the grazing head-down pose do the work of making them feel alive.

No second brown ready for variety among the horses, paint one or two in warm tan and leave one in a cooler grey-brown instead, which reads as a small herd rather than identical copies.

Palette: Valley Green,Stream Pale Blue,Warm Tan Horse,Cool Grey-Brown

Close the list with one of the starkest contrasts in the whole set. Paint a low flat sky in heavy cloud grey first, then fill the ground below with two interlocking shapes: a bright acid green moss carpet and a black lava rock field, their edges meeting in an irregular, jagged line rather than a straight split.

Paint the green moss first in one confident flat layer, then the black lava second, letting its edge push and dip into the green in places so the two shapes feel like they are genuinely interlocked rather than simply side by side.

The scene flattens if the black lava reads as a solid silhouette with no texture at all. While it is still slightly damp, dab a dry stiff brush lightly across parts of it to lift tiny flecks of texture without losing the overall flat shape.

No true black gouache to hand, mix a very dark green-blue instead; it reads as black from normal viewing distance while staying slightly richer than flat ink black.

Palette: Acid Moss Green,Lava Black,Cloud Grey,Pale Sky

Look at reference photos of actual lava fields for the texture of the broken rock; even a quick glance helps you place the dry-brush flecks with more confidence.

What to Do Next

Pick one terrain that matches the mood you are in today, pencil the big horizon and shapes first, and keep your palette tight before you start mixing. If gouache is new to you, the gouache painting ideas for beginners guide is worth a look before you dive into canyons and salt flats, and the easy landscape painting for beginners step by step lessons cover the basics of fields and hills if you want more practice first.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the easiest terrain to start landscape painting with in gouache?

Wide open ground with a flat horizon, like a prairie or a valley, is easiest because it needs only a few big flat shapes and a simple sky, with no tricky perspective or fine detail to manage.

How do I stop my gouache landscapes looking streaky instead of flat?

Mix enough paint before you start so you never run out mid-shape, and load your brush generously, working in one direction across each shape rather than scrubbing back and forth, which is what causes streaks.

Do I need to sketch the whole landscape in pencil before painting it?

A light pencil sketch of the main shapes and the horizon line helps enormously, especially for mesas, canyons and anything with a specific silhouette, and it washes away or hides easily under gouache.

What paper works best for gouache landscape painting?

Heavy cold press watercolor paper, at least 300 gsm, holds up to flat washes and repeated layers without buckling, and its slight texture helps dry-brush effects like wheat or lava grip the surface.

How do I keep the colors in a gouache landscape looking cohesive?

Limit yourself to a tight palette of four to six colors per painting and mix variations from those rather than reaching for new tubes, which is also how the terracotta, teal and ochre palette across this whole list stays consistent.