Windmill painting gives you a subject that is both simple and endlessly changeable: one sturdy shape, turned by light, season and setting into something new every time you pick up a brush. Gouache suits it perfectly, since its flat matte color and crisp edges let the sails, the sky and the little scene below sit together like a modern print rather than a fussy photo study.
Below are 28 windmills from tulip fields to Greek hillsides, canals to sunflower rows, each with its own small human or animal moment and enough detail that you will finish one in a single sitting. Work down the list from the simplest shapes to the more layered scenes, or just scroll until one grabs you.
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Start with the windmill you already picture when you hear the word: a Dutch mill standing over rows of tulips. Block in the cream sky first, then paint the mill’s body as one flat trapezoid shape with a darker cap, keeping the sails thin and evenly spaced like spokes on a wheel.
The tulip field goes in last, as repeated short dashes of red, pink and yellow gouache over a flat green base, getting smaller as they near the mill to suggest distance. Work largest shapes to smallest throughout: sky, field, mill, sails, tulip dashes.
The common mistake is cramming tulips edge to edge so the field looks like a carpet with no air in it. Leave visible green between dashes, especially near the horizon, and the rows will read as a field rather than a pattern.
If you want tulip technique on its own before tackling the whole scene, this guide on tulip painting is worth a look. Today’s tip: paint the sails in one go with a loaded brush so each one stays a single flat color.
Palette: Cadmium Red,Sap Green,Cream White,Sky Blue
Move from field to water with a windmill set along a canal, a small wooden rowboat drifting near its base. Paint the canal as one flat band of blue-green running the width of the page, then place the mill on the far bank so the water has room to breathe in the foreground.
Get the proportions right by measuring the mill’s height against its width with your thumb on the brush handle before you commit to the shape: most windmills are taller than they are wide, and getting that ratio wrong is the fastest way to make it look like a toy. Paint mill, then water, then the boat last as a simple curved hull with two flat dashes for oars.
If the water looks flat and lifeless, drag a dry brush loaded with a slightly lighter blue across the surface in one horizontal stroke to suggest a ripple line under the boat. Swap the rowboat for a single duck shape if boats feel fiddly.
Finish by adding one or two thin reflection strokes beneath the mill, matching its colors but softened.
Palette: Payne’s Grey,Teal,Cream White,Burnt Sienna
Trade the canal for sun with a white windmill perched on a Greek hillside above a blue sea. Paint the sky and sea as two flat blocks of blue first, separated by a simple horizon line, then build the hill as a pale warm shape beneath the mill.
Here the light comes from one strong direction, so decide early whether the sun sits left or right and keep every shadow on the same side: the mill’s cap, its stone base and even the scattered white houses below should all darken on that one edge only. This single decision does more to make the scene feel sunlit than any amount of extra color.
Painters new to strong directional light often shade both sides evenly out of habit, which flattens the whole picture. Check your shadow side twice before moving to the next shape.
Dot in a few flat white cube houses along the hillside last, each with one blue door, to anchor the Greek setting.
Palette: Cerulean Blue,Titanium White,Ochre,Cream White
Look at reference photos of Mykonos or Santorini mills for the squat round shape and small door, quite different from the tall Dutch style.
Shift continents again for a skeletal farm windmill standing alone on flat American prairie. Unlike the solid Dutch mill, this one is mostly open framework and a small fan wheel on top, so paint the sky and the wide flat land first, then add the tower as a thin vertical lattice of pale grey lines over the finished background.
Keep the horizon line low, no higher than the bottom third of the page, so the sky and open land do most of the talking the way they do on a real prairie. The fan wheel at the top is the trickiest part: paint it as one small flat circle shape rather than trying to draw individual blades, which reads cleaner at a glance anyway.
If the thin tower lines wobble, switch to a smaller round brush loaded fairly dry and steady your hand against the edge of the paper.
Add a short strip of golden grass in the foreground and one fence post for scale.
Palette: Payne’s Grey,Golden Yellow,Sky Blue,Cream White
Give the prairie windmill a quieter cousin: a mill standing beside water so still it doubles the whole scene. Paint the real windmill and its sky as normal in the top half of the page, then flip the same shapes upside down in the bottom half for the reflection, using slightly muted versions of the same colors.
The trick that sells a still-water reflection is keeping its edges sharper and its colors a touch greyer than the original above, since even calm water dulls color slightly. Paint the real scene fully first, let it dry, then build the reflection below in one continuous session so the two halves feel like one painting.
If the reflection ends up looking like a messy smear instead of a mirror, you likely softened the edges too much: gouache rewards a steady, deliberate line here rather than a wet blend.
Leave a thin pale line at the waterline to separate the two halves clearly.
Palette: Sky Blue,Payne’s Grey,Sap Green,Cream White
Freeze the canal from earlier into ice and send a few tiny skaters across it below a snow-dusted mill. Paint the pale winter sky and white ground first, then the mill with snow caps sitting flat on its roofline and sail tips, before adding the frozen canal as one smooth pale blue-grey band.
The quick ten-minute version stops there: mill, snow, ice. Given forty minutes, add two or three skaters as simple dark coat shapes with a single curved line for each pair of legs, spaced unevenly across the ice so they feel caught mid-motion rather than lined up.
Skaters painted too large next to the mill is the usual slip here, so keep each figure no taller than the mill’s door for believable scale.
Finish with a few thin white dashes of snow falling across the whole scene, added last with a nearly dry brush.
Palette: Titanium White,Payne’s Grey,Ice Blue,Cream White
Carry the flat-field trick from the tulip painting into purple for a stone windmill above rows of lavender. Build the sky and the pale stone mill body first, keeping its texture flat rather than fussy, then lay the lavender field as horizontal bands of two or three purples, darkest nearest the viewer.
For the lavender rows themselves, load a flat or angled brush and drag short diagonal strokes in clusters rather than painting each stem, which keeps the field graphic instead of busy. This is the one hands-on texture trick worth mastering here: a slightly dry brush dragged sideways gives you dozens of lavender heads in a few strokes.
If the rows start looking too uniform, vary the pressure slightly row to row so some read lighter and looser than others.
For more on painting fields of lavender at different distances, see this lavender painting guide. Finish with a thin dark line under the mill’s base to ground it on the hill.
Palette: Lavender Purple,Deep Violet,Stone Grey,Cream White
Bring the scene down to human size with a cheerful red windmill and a bicycle leaning against its base. Paint the mill first as a bold flat red shape with darker sails, then add the bicycle last as two simple circles for wheels joined by thin straight lines for the frame.
The bicycle is the whole challenge here: keep the wheels perfectly round by lightly pressing a coin or small cap into the paper first for a guide circle, then paint inside that outline. This small trick solves the single biggest problem beginners hit with bicycles, which is wheels that end up lopsided.
Once the bike sits confidently, you can vary this idea next time by swapping it for a wheelbarrow, a watering can, or a pair of wooden clogs leaning the same way against the wall.
Keep the bicycle smaller than you think it should be, since it needs to read as leaning against a tall structure, not standing beside a small one.
You Will Need
- small coin or cap to trace circles
Palette: Cadmium Red,Payne’s Grey,Cream White,Sap Green
Soften everything for a windmill caught at sunrise, its base wrapped in low mist. Paint the sky first as three or four horizontal bands blending from pale yellow through pink to soft lavender, then add the mill as a dark flat silhouette against that glow so its edges stay crisp even though the light is soft.
Mist is best suggested rather than painted in detail: once the mill and ground are in, mix a thin, chalky wash of white gouache and drag it horizontally across the base of the mill with a dry brush, letting the paper’s cream show through in patches. This is the quickest way to fake atmosphere without losing the flat, graphic finish.
If the mist ends up looking like a solid white block instead of a haze, your mix was too thick: thin it further and apply in a single light pass.
Keep the whole palette low in contrast except for the dark mill silhouette, which should be the only truly dark shape on the page.
Palette: Soft Pink,Pale Lavender,Payne’s Grey,Titanium White
Turn to late summer with a windmill standing over a golden wheat field ready for harvest. Lay the sky and a flat gold field first, then the mill as a warm brown silhouette, before adding texture to the wheat with short upward flicks of a drier brush in two tones of yellow.
Ten minutes gets you sky, mill and a flat gold field, which already reads well in this graphic style. The forty-minute version adds the wheat texture flicks across the whole field and perhaps one small figure with a scythe or a few stacked sheaves near the base of the mill for scale and story.
Overworking the wheat texture until it looks fuzzy rather than crisp is the main risk, so limit yourself to two tones and keep each flick short and deliberate.
If gold paint runs thin, mix your own from yellow ochre and a touch of white rather than relying on a single tube.
Palette: Golden Yellow,Burnt Sienna,Payne’s Grey,Cream White
Multiply the mill into a row of several standing along a dike, each one smaller than the last as they march toward the horizon. Paint the long flat dike first as a simple green-grey strip across the page, then place the nearest mill largest and fullest in detail, repeating the same basic shape smaller and paler for each one behind it.
Measure the spacing with your brush handle held at arm’s length before painting, marking a tiny dot where each mill will sit so the row stays evenly spaced rather than clustering accidentally. This single measuring habit prevents the most common mistake with repeated elements, which is uneven rhythm that draws the eye to the wrong place.
Keep detail only on the front one or two mills; the rest can be flat pale shapes with barely any sail detail, since distance naturally softens things.
A thin strip of water beside the dike, painted last, completes the classic polder view.
Palette: Sky Blue,Sap Green,Payne’s Grey,Cream White
Zoom close for a more intimate subject: just the lower half of a windmill with a small flower box bright under its one window. Paint the mill’s wall as a flat warm shape filling most of the page, add the window and door as simple dark rectangles, then bring the flower box to life last with small dabs of red, pink and white gouache.
Since this composition sits close to the subject, light direction matters more than usual: decide which side the sun comes from and shade the window frame and box only on that one side, which gives the flat wall enough depth to feel three-dimensional without extra detail.
Painters new to close-up architecture sometimes shade evenly all around a window, flattening it again, so check that single shadow edge carefully.
If a window box feels too fussy to paint small, swap it for one hanging lantern or a single potted plant on the sill instead.
Palette: Ochre,Cadmium Red,Sap Green,Cream White
Frame the whole scene behind a blossoming branch for a spring windmill painting with real depth. Paint the windmill and its field small and complete in the background first, then once dry, add the branch and blossoms large and close over the top, crossing the page diagonally.
The branch should feel closer than the mill, so give it the boldest, darkest line of the whole painting and the most saturated pink in the blossoms, while the windmill scene behind stays a touch paler and softer by comparison. This contrast in boldness is what pushes the mill convincingly into the distance.
If the blossoms end up looking like scattered dots rather than clusters, group them in small groups of three to five along the branch instead of spacing them evenly.
A few fallen petals dotted near the base of the composition finish the spring feeling nicely.
Palette: Soft Pink,Payne’s Grey,Sky Blue,Cream White
Add a quiet human moment with a small figure in a wide sun hat walking along a path toward a distant windmill. Paint the sky, field and windmill first as the background, then place the figure last, keeping her small enough that the mill clearly remains the main subject.
Build the figure in three simple shapes: a triangle dress, a circle head topped with an oval hat brim, and two thin lines for arms, no more detail needed at this scale. Painting her from the back rather than the front also saves you from having to paint a face at all, which keeps the whole figure easy and quick.
If she ends up looking stiff standing straight up, angle her slightly forward from the ankles, as if mid-stride, and add one small shadow beneath her feet to root her to the ground.
A single flower held loosely at her side is an easy extra touch if you want one more detail.
Palette: Cream White,Sap Green,Soft Pink,Sky Blue
Move the mill to a dramatic coastal edge, standing on a cliff with the sea stretched out below. Paint the sea and sky as two large flat blocks of blue first, then build the cliff as a simple pale or warm-toned wedge shape rising from the water, with the mill placed right at its highest point.
Getting the cliff’s angle right is the main challenge: sketch a light guide line from the base of the page up to where the mill will stand before adding any paint, checking that the slope looks steep enough to feel like a real drop rather than a gentle hill. This one proportion check saves most cliff paintings from looking flat.
If the sea looks too plain, add two or three thin white dashes near the cliff base for breaking waves, kept small so they do not compete with the mill.
A single gull shape in the sky adds scale without extra effort.
Palette: Cerulean Blue,Stone Grey,Payne’s Grey,Titanium White
Bring in some gentle animal life with a windmill overlooking a slope where sheep graze. Paint the rolling green hillside and the mill first, then add the sheep last as simple white oval bodies with tiny dark heads and legs, scattered at different heights on the slope rather than in a straight line.
Vary the sheep in size according to their distance from the viewer, since even a few at clearly different scales is enough to suggest a whole flock spreading across the hill without painting dozens of them. This is an easy way to extend the idea further next time: more sheep, a dog among them, or a shepherd figure added to the same basic scene.
If the ovals look too much like clouds, add one small dark triangle ear and two thin stick legs to each, which instantly reads as a sheep rather than a blob.
Keep the flock loosely clustered rather than evenly spaced, the way real sheep actually gather.
Palette: Sap Green,Titanium White,Payne’s Grey,Cream White
Shift the season again for a windmill standing beside a row of tall poplar trees turned gold for autumn. Paint the sky and mill first, then the poplars as simple tall narrow oval shapes in two or three warm tones, spaced unevenly along one side of the composition.
If this is your first time painting a line of trees, resist making them all the same height and width: vary each poplar slightly so the row feels natural rather than stamped from one shape repeated. A thin dark trunk line at the base of each one is enough detail, no individual leaves required at this scale.
The ground beneath the poplars is a good place for a scatter of fallen golden leaf dashes, added last with the tip of a small brush.
If gold and orange gouache run low, mix extra from yellow and a touch of red rather than stopping to buy new tubes.
Palette: Golden Yellow,Burnt Sienna,Payne’s Grey,Cream White
Travel to a drier landscape with a white Spanish windmill standing on a sun-baked hilltop among others like it. Paint the warm pale sky first, then a dusty gold-brown hill shape, placing the mill’s round white tower and dark conical cap at the highest point of the slope.
These mills are shorter and stockier than the Dutch type, so check your proportions against the hill rather than against habit: the tower should look almost squat, roughly as wide as it is tall at the base, tapering only slightly toward the cap. Getting this shape right is what separates a Spanish mill from a generic one.
Dry, scrubby ground benefits from a few short dashes of darker green-brown scattered loosely rather than a flat wash, suggesting sparse vegetation without overworking the hillside.
One or two more mills, smaller, further along the ridge, complete the classic La Mancha feel.
Palette: Ochre,Burnt Sienna,Titanium White,Payne’s Grey
Add a small architectural detail with a windmill set just behind a little wooden bridge crossing a narrow stream. Paint the mill and background field first, then the stream as a thin curved blue band, and finally the bridge as a simple arched line with a few short vertical dashes for railings.
The bridge’s arch is the one shape worth slowing down for: sketch it lightly first as a gentle curve, checking that both ends sit level on the banks before you commit to paint, since an uneven arch is the fastest way to make a bridge look collapsed. Keep the curve shallow rather than steep for a believable countryside crossing.
If a wooden bridge feels fiddly, a flat stepping-stone path across the stream works just as well and takes less time to paint.
A single reflection of the bridge in the water, added last in a slightly muted tone, ties the whole scene together.
Palette: Burnt Sienna,Sky Blue,Sap Green,Cream White
Pair the mill with a cottage garden bursting with tall hollyhocks along its base. Paint the mill and sky first, then build the hollyhocks as tall thin green stalks topped with small stacked dabs of pink, red and white gouache running up each stem.
Vary the height of each hollyhock stalk and stagger them rather than lining them up evenly, which is the detail that makes a cottage garden feel wild and lived-in rather than planted in a row. Work from the back stalks forward so the nearest ones can overlap the others slightly.
If the little flower dabs start looking messy rather than stacked, slow down and apply them from the base of each stalk upward, getting smaller as you near the top the way real hollyhock blooms do.
A low stone or picket fence line at the very front, painted last, frames the cottage feel nicely.
Palette: Sap Green,Soft Pink,Cadmium Red,Titanium White
Swap the pink garden for bold yellow with a windmill standing beside a field of sunflowers all facing the same direction. Paint the sky and the mill first, then the field of sunflowers as rows of simple flat yellow circles with a small dark center dot, slightly smaller toward the horizon.
Since sunflowers famously turn to follow the sun, keep every flower head angled the same way across the whole field, which does more to sell the subject than any amount of petal detail. Decide the light direction before you paint a single flower and stick to it for all of them.
If painting dozens of identical circles feels tedious, press a small round object like a coin into wet paint lightly for the base shape of each flower head, then add the dark center and a few petal dashes by hand.
A thin strip of green leaves at the base of the stalks finishes the field.
You Will Need
- small round object to stamp flower heads
Palette: Golden Yellow,Payne’s Grey,Sap Green,Sky Blue
Give the mill some weather with a soft spring shower falling across the whole scene. Paint the sky, field and mill first in slightly muted, cooler tones than usual, since rain softens color overall, then add the rain itself last as thin diagonal lines across the entire page using a nearly dry brush.
The quick version stops at a damp-looking scene with just a grey-green palette shift and no rain lines at all, which already reads as overcast. The fuller version adds the diagonal rain streaks plus one or two small puddle shapes reflecting the mill faintly at the base of the composition.
Rain lines painted too thick and too dark is the usual mistake, turning gentle weather into a storm; keep each line thin, pale and angled consistently in one direction.
A single furled umbrella shape near the base is an easy optional extra if you want a human touch.
Palette: Payne’s Grey,Sage Green,Sky Blue,Cream White
Add a touch of wildlife with a stork’s nest perched near the top of the windmill’s cap. Paint the mill as usual first, then build the nest as a simple flat brown tangled oval sitting on or beside the roofline, before adding one or two stork shapes last in white with a black wing edge and thin red legs.
A standing stork is mostly long straight lines: two thin legs, a long neck, a pointed beak, so sketch these as simple geometric strokes rather than trying to round out a realistic bird body. One stork standing in the nest and one flying nearby is plenty of story for this scene.
If the stork ends up looking stiff, angle the neck slightly rather than keeping it perfectly vertical, which instantly adds life to the pose.
For more practice with simple bird shapes before tackling the full scene, a quick browse through animal sketching ideas for beginners can help loosen up your approach.
Palette: Burnt Sienna,Titanium White,Payne’s Grey,Cream White
Step away from red and white for a windmill painted entirely in soft mint green against a warm cream backdrop. Block in the cream background first, then paint the whole mill, sails and all, in a single mint tone, reserving only a slightly darker shade of the same green for shadow edges rather than introducing a second color.
Working in one dominant hue plus its own shadow shade is a good way to vary any windmill idea on this list once the basic shape feels comfortable: try the same trick next time in dusty pink, soft yellow or pale blue for an entirely different mood from the same simple composition.
The flat mint color can look thin if applied in one pass, so load the brush fully and paint the mill’s body in two confident layers, letting the first dry before the second.
A single small red door or window breaks the monochrome just enough to hold the eye.
Palette: Mint Green,Deep Mint,Cream White,Cadmium Red
Shrink the whole idea down to an ornamental garden windmill standing beside a small pond with lily pads. Paint the pond as a flat round or oval shape of blue-green first, then the tiny windmill on its bank, no taller than a garden gnome, followed by a few flat lily pad circles floating on the water.
Since this windmill is a garden ornament rather than a working mill, keep it noticeably smaller and simpler than the others on this list: a plain cylinder body, a small cap, and only two or three short sail lines is plenty of detail at this scale. Overbuilding detail on a deliberately tiny subject is the main thing to avoid.
If a lily pad reads as too flat and plain, add one small dot of white or pink gouache for a flower sitting on top of one pad.
A single frog or dragonfly near the water’s edge is an easy finishing touch.
Palette: Teal,Sap Green,Soft Pink,Cream White
Give the mill some neighbors with a village scene where its tower rises just above a cluster of small rooftops. Paint the sky first, then the rooftops as a row of simple flat triangles and rectangles in varied warm tones, with the windmill standing taller behind or beside them as the clear focal point.
Keep the rooftops lower and smaller than the mill at every point in the composition, since the whole point of this scene is the mill rising above the village, and a roofline that competes in height undercuts that story. Check this relationship before adding any window or door detail to the little houses.
A single chimney with a thin curl of smoke on one house adds life without much extra work.
If painting several different roof colors feels like too much, limit the village to two tones total and let the mill be the only shape with a third, distinct color.
Palette: Burnt Sienna,Ochre,Sky Blue,Cream White
Bring people back into the scene with a small picnic spread on the grass in front of a windmill. Paint the mill and green field first, then add a simple checked blanket as a flat rectangle with a light crosshatch pattern, followed by two or three small rounded shapes for a basket, plate and jug sitting on top.
A checked blanket pattern is easier than it looks: paint the flat rectangle first, let it dry, then add evenly spaced thin lines in one direction followed by thin lines in the other, rather than trying to paint individual squares one at a time. This two-pass method keeps the grid even without much effort.
If the picnic items look too cluttered together, space them with clear gaps of blanket showing between each one, which reads as more relaxed and realistic.
One small figure sitting beside the blanket, built from the same simple shapes as the walking girl earlier in this list, completes the scene.
Palette: Sap Green,Cadmium Red,Cream White,Ochre
Close the series by letting the sky do most of the work: a small windmill sitting low on the page beneath a tall, dramatic arrangement of clouds. Paint the clouds first as large flat soft-edged shapes stacked and layered across most of the upper page, leaving the windmill and ground to occupy only the bottom quarter or so.
This composition works because of scale contrast, so push it further than feels comfortable: make the sky genuinely enormous compared to the tiny mill below, since a sky that takes up most of the page is what gives this piece its drama. Paint the clouds in two or three values of blue-grey and white before adding the small dark mill silhouette last.
If the clouds end up looking like a flat grey blanket, vary their edges, some soft and rounded, others flatter and more stretched, for a more natural sky.
For more ideas on skies carrying a whole composition, the easy landscape painting for beginners guide covers similar sky-led compositions in depth.
Palette: Sky Blue,Payne’s Grey,Titanium White,Cream White
What to Do Next
Pick one windmill that matches the mood you are in today, sketch its basic shapes lightly in pencil, and work largest to smallest: sky, field, mill, small details last. A smooth sheet of gouache paper and your five or six core colors are all you need to finish it before the light changes outside.
Frequently Asked Questions
What kind of gouache works best for windmill painting?
Student-grade gouache in tubes works well, since it covers flat and opaque in one or two coats. Look for a basic set with a strong red, yellow, blue, white and a dark neutral like Payne’s grey, enough to mix every color used across these scenes.
How do I keep the windmill’s sails looking even?
Paint all four sails in one sitting with the same loaded brush so the color stays consistent across each. Space them by eye around a lightly sketched center point first, checking that opposite sails line up before you paint any of them in full color.
Should I sketch the windmill in pencil before painting?
Yes, a light pencil sketch of the main shapes helps enormously, especially for proportions like the tower’s height against its width. Keep the pencil lines faint, since gouache is opaque enough to cover them but visible graphite can show through pale colors.
What paper suits this flat, crisp gouache style?
A smooth or lightly toothed watercolor or gouache paper around 300gsm holds flat color well without soaking it in unevenly. Smoother paper gives the crispest edges, which suits the modern print look these windmill scenes are going for.
How do I stop the windmill from looking flat and lifeless?
Commit to one light direction and shade consistently on that side of every shape, from the mill’s body to the clouds and figures. A single clear shadow side does more for depth than extra detail, and it keeps the flat, graphic style intact.