This simple technique relies on drawing line at various angles to create the structure of the cliff face or crevasse.

We know many different ways to draw scenes: landscape drawing has been done in many different ways for a long time. At the same time Joachim Patinir in the Netherlands developed the " world landscape" a style of panoramic landscape with small figures and using a high aerial viewpoint, that remained influential for a century, being used and perfected by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. The tip of the lead can be used for fine marks but keep in mind that filing it again on the sandpaper may be needed if further broad strokes are required within the drawing or sketch.Landscapes were idealized, mostly reflecting a pastoral ideal drawn from classical poetry which was first fully expressed by Giorgione and the young Titian, and remained associated above all with hilly wooded Italian landscape, which was depicted by artists from Northern Europe who had never visited Italy, just as plain-dwelling literati in China and Japan painted vertiginous mountains. It can be compared with the rays of the sun, which radiate from the sun into all corners and angles of the image. They can be defined as representational, impressionistic and abstract; each of these styles has its own characteristics and features.

The most obvious materials you’ll need are some pencils and a sketchbook, but there is a little more to it than that. Mughal painting combined this and the Persian style, and in miniatures of royal hunts often depicted wide landscapes. All shading adheres to this fundamental principle whether you are using charcoal or chalk or blending tones. Thus, for example, the leaves of trees are only intuitively drawn, just as the grass of the meadows, the trees of the woods, the windows of skyscrapers, and so on. Due to their attention to detail, the Pre-Raphaelites’ classical landscape drawings keep to possibly have the greatest power on the general public.

Hunting scenes, especially those set in the enclosed vista of the reed beds of the Nile Delta from Ancient Egypt, can give a strong sense of place, but the emphasis is on individual plant forms and human and animal figures rather than the overall landscape setting. Should a vertical line find its reflection in the water, you’ll mirror it with a graceful, wavy counterpart. The system of Alexander Cozens used random ink blots to give the basic shape of an invented landscape, to be elaborated by the artist. Depending on where you lay the horizon, you can either see more from the sky or more from the ground on the drawing.

Both panel paintings and miniatures in manuscripts usually had a patterned or gold "sky" or background above the horizon until about 1400, but frescos by Giotto and other Italian artists had long shown plain blue skies.

It is thought that the earliest landscape paintings were frescos (a type of mural painting) from Minoan Greece in 1500 BCE. As you browse our landscape art collection, you may well notice three main styles appearing time and time again. These were frequently used, as in the example illustrated, to bridge the gap between a foreground scene with figures and a distant panoramic vista, a persistent problem for landscape artists. Such views, extremely common as prints in the West, are often seen as inferior to fine art landscapes, although the distinction is not always meaningful; similar prejudices existed in Chinese art, where literati painting usually depicted imaginary views, while professional artists painted real views.

The sky tone gradually lightens as it reaches the horizon line, it is the darkest at the top and behind the trees.

Landscape art depicts nature at its finest by capturing the beauty of mountains, valleys, water, field and forests. One example is a famous 8th-century painting from the Imperial collection, titled The Emperor Ming Huang traveling in Shu.