Whether you craft white-capped ocean waves or a calm, picturesque pond, follow this drawing tutorial to master the art of drawing water.
How to Draw a Lake scenery Step by Step
How to Draw a Lake scenery easy with this how-to video and step-by-step drawing instructions. Scenery Drawing tutorial for beginners and kids.
Please see the drawing tutorial in the video below
Step 1
Start by drawing a long and curved line. This outlines the lake shore.
Step 2
Draw another long curved line parallel to the first one. This gives the shore a three-dimensional appearance. Draw some inverted, overlapping “V” shaped lines in each corner of your page. This is the grass and trees at the water’s edge. From a set of trees, draw long straight lines. Draw a small oval at the top of each line, followed by a shorter line. This shows the seed heads of the cattail plant. Next, draw wavy lines to create ripples for the water surface of the lake.
Step 3
Draw a line through the top of the artboard, just above the shoreline. This is the horizon.
Step 4
Draw a pair of pine trees, erasing existing lines if necessary. For the upper part of each tree, enclose a triangle using short lines that meet at points. Extend parallel lines to form the trunk, and join them at the bottom.
Step 5
Draw additional pine trees, which are behind and partially obscured by the first pine.
Step 6
Draw more pine trees on the opposite side of the figure. Again, enclose the quasi-triangle shape using short lines that meet at points. Use parallel lines for the trunk, and join them at the bottom.
Step 7
Use a long and curved line to draw the mountains in the background.
Step 8
Use some overlapping curves to draw more mountains in the background, higher than the first image.
Step 9
Draw fluffy clouds in the sky. Create the bottom of each cloud using a horizontal line. Then layer “U” shaped lines on top of it to enclose the shape of the cloud.
Step 10
Color your lake scene.
You can set the setting for other stories, including fall scenes, woods, sunsets over the ocean, winter scenes, beaches or deserts found among the botanical and miscellaneous drawing tutorials ours.
How to Draw a Lake
In this lesson, you will learn how to draw a lake. In the future, you will definitely need the useful skills that you will receive in this lesson.
Continuing the theme of natural objects, I will show you how to draw a lake. This lesson is designed for children and beginners, so the simplest elements are used here, which you can easily repeat.
In the picture you see a small lake on the shore of which a tree grows, there are hills in the background. This corner of wildlife looks very beautiful. In this tutorial, arbitrary lines are allowed, for example, you can slightly change the shape of a hill, a lake, or the shape of a crown on a tree.
Memorize the sequence of steps and use your creative imagination. You can use all the acquired skills in your next works when you want to draw a landscape.
- Pencil
- Paper
- Eraser
- Coloring supplies
Time needed: 30 minutes
How to Draw a Lake
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Draw the crown of the tree. With the help of a wavy line depict the crown of the tree.
Depict the tree trunk. Below the crown, draw the branches and trunk.
Add the outline of the lake. Draw an oval shape with a smooth line.
Sketch out the coast. Add another smooth line along the outline of the lake.
Depict the hills. Draw two smooth lines in the background.
Add more hills. Sketch out small smooth lines to add relief.
Draw the surface of the water. At this stage, draw an oval shape.
Add details. Detail the crown of the tree and add a reflection on the surface of the water.
Color the lake. Choose blue and green for the drawing.
As usual, I prepared a PDF file with a short version of the lesson in advance. Download the file so that you can return to this lesson at any time, even when there is no Internet access.
Drawing oceans, lakes, seascapes, and ponds.
When you draw water as part of a landscape, first determine what’s happening on the water’s surface. Is it a calm ocean with gentle waves beneath a cloud-dotted sky? Is it a placid lake with the barest of ripples? Is it a storm-tossed sea? Regardless of the state of your waterscape, remember that it is always dynamic.
Even the calmest and most peaceful lake or ocean will have some movement and play with light in some way. When you draw water, you also draw how light plays on water. “Know your light source and stick to your light source,” says artist and illustrator Alyssa Newman. With water, that light source will usually be the sun or moon, but it can also be the lights from a ship, city, or lighthouse. Remember what direction the light is coming from, how intense the light is, and how the light bends and plays over the water’s surface.
Keep reflections in mind.
“If you’re illustrating an ocean or other body of water,” says Newman, “often you want that body of water to reflect the sky a little bit.” A bright blue sky obviously won’t have a dark ocean beneath it. Rather, an ocean under a summer sky will be only slightly darker than that sky, but still vivid. If your watery surface reflects elements like trees or people, think about how the water moves and where your light source comes from. The relative stillness or motion of the water will inform how distorted your reflection is, and the direction and intensity of the light source will affect any flares or flashes on that reflection. Reflections in water are transparent and shadowy, so use more muted colors to show that.
Almost any ocean or lake has waves. Sometimes those waves can be small, a few bits of motion upon a surface. “It’s almost like fabric blowing in the wind,” says illustrator and comic artist Jonathan Case. “That’s what the surface tension of water looks like.” That surface can flow gently or rapidly, but as it flows you can use bubbles and water ripples to communicate the motion. “If you want to communicate the flow of water, you need to pick areas where you have these nice, soft blowing lines interrupted by these shorter, bubbled areas,” says Case.
A calm, rippling surface, though, is often interrupted by waves and splashes. Those waves and splashes are not singular geometric shapes. They are complex, temporary, and always unique. “One of the most important things is to use a variety of shapes,” says Case. “Big shapes and little shapes. Whether it’s water pouring onto something or water on the surface, you want to find ways of organizing small and large forms to make things look more organic.” Avoid uninterrupted lines. Straight lines are products of architecture and engineering, but natural shapes tend to bend, develop, and branch into other things. Wavy lines are more the norm, and if a single line continues unimpeded, add in something to interrupt it and make it more organic.
While you avoid straight lines and defined forms, remember the general shape and flow of your drawing. “All of these forms as they interact with each other are going to flow into one another,” says Case. “But the smaller ones are going to be superseded fairly quickly by the larger ripples.”
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Water and color.
Water is not simply blue. It is clear, sea-green, dark, or even white. What’s more, when coloring water, you’re not going to use just one blue hue, but a whole variety of them to show motion, flow, and atmospheric distortion. Water will also contain some of the palette around it. A river that snakes through the Amazon will have trace amounts of green, and an ocean of icebergs will have frigid white within it.
If you’re starting from a graphite pencil drawing or drawing over a stock photo or other source, you can use that image to inform how you shade the water. “You can always use the marks of your underdrawing for what the color is going to do,” says Case. Knowing how to translate pen-and-ink sketches or photographs into colored-pencil drawings or watercolors is important when drawing water. Usually, this means you translate dark and light sections of the water into vivid or paler hues, respectively.
