How to Draw & Shade Realistic Mountains for Beginners

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Learn to sketch and add details to make beautiful mountain ranges

Co-authored by Kelly Medford and Hunter Rising

Last Updated: July 3, 2026 Fact Checked

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Drawing the Outline

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Shading

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Adding Scenery & Details

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More Drawing Resources

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Video

Whether you’re creating a landscape scene or designing a fantasy map, mountains make a visually striking addition to your drawing. If you want to level up the look of your mountain drawing, it’s easy to turn it into a dynamic composition! We’ll guide you step-by-step through sketching a mountain and adding details to make it pop. We also spoke to professional artists for advice on shading your drawing to make your mountain look more realistic.

Easy Mountain Drawing Tutorial

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An illustration showing the step-by-step process to drawing a realistic mountain range.

Lay out the mountain’s shape with triangles.
Add points and dips along the edges of the triangle.
Sketch a ridgeline through the middle of the mountain.
Draw in diagonal directional lines to show the mountain slope.
Choose the light direction and shade the opposite side of the mountain.
Add darker shadows and highlights to the shaded side.
Finish your mountain drawing with trees, clouds, or a landscape.

Section 1 of 4:

Outlining Your Mountain Drawing

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1
Start with triangles to make the basic shapes. Whether you’re drawing mountains on paper or for digital art, the process always starts out the same. Lightly sketch a large triangle or upside-down V onto your paper. If you want to make a mountain range, draw multiple triangles of different sizes and make them slightly overlap.
- For mountains that are further away, make the triangles smaller. If you want the mountains to feel closer, then draw them bigger.
- Try making one side of the triangle longer than the other to give your mountain a leaning or uneven appearance.
- Artist Mark Weiser says you don’t need any special tools when you start drawing, so a regular pencil will work fine.^{[1]
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  Mark Weiser
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Meet the wikiHow Experts

Kelly Medford is a professional artist who studied classical painting and drawing and founded Sketching Rome Tours in Italy.

Rebecca Schweiger is a professional artist and the founder of The Art Studio NY, the #1-rated art school in New York City.

Mark Weiser is an artist and the gallery manager for DKW Art Gallery in Marion, Iowa.
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Add random dips and points along the outline. Mountains in real life don’t have a lot of perfectly straight edges, so draw a darker outline to carve different shapes from the outline. Imagine you’re cutting pieces from the triangle to make a unique profile for your mountain. Then, add a couple of areas that jut out from the outline to add random crags and peaks to the outline.^{[2]
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- The look of your mountain is totally up to you, so continue customizing the look and outline until you’re happy with it.
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3
Draw a jagged or wavy line from the peak of each triangle for the ridgeline. The ridgeline is where the slopes of the mountain meet at the highest point. Start at the peak and draw the ridgeline coming down at a slight diagonal. Just like the outline, give the ridgeline random dips and points to give the mountain a unique look.^{[3]
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- Draw the ridgeline of mountains in the distance so they go behind mountains in the foreground so it looks like they flow together.
- To give a little more depth to your mountain, flatten out some sections of the ridgeline so they’re more horizontal.
- If you want to make the mountain look really steep, make the ridgeline near vertical.
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Sketch in directional lines to show the slope of the mountain. Directional lines are diagonal lines that show changes in direction and make your mountain look 3D. Sketch in a few light lines coming off of points along the ridge line and along the edges of the outline. This is where you can really customize the look of your mountains, so keep adding directional lines until you’re happy with their appearance.^{[4]
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- Only add enough lines to give the sense of the mountain’s shape. The lines can be short, sketchy lines or long, darker lines to add more definition.

Section 2 of 4:

Shading Your Mountain Drawing

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With a mountain scene, your light source is probably the sun, so choose where you want it to be. You don’t have to add the sun to your drawing, but it may help to sketch in a small arrow in the direction you want light to be coming from so your shading stays consistent throughout your drawing.^{[5]
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Shade the entire side of the mountain opposite of your light source. If your light source is coming from the left side, then shade in everything on the right side of the ridgeline. If the light is on the right side, then shade everything left of the ridgeline. Professional artist Kelly Medford suggests using a soft 4B or 6B pencil and turning it on its side to uniformly shade the area.^{[6]
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Kelly Medford
Professional Artist

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- If you want a unique way to shade your drawing, Medford mentions hatching or cross-hatching marks. For hatching, just draw thin lines going in one direction. For cross-hatching, overlap the hatch marks with another set of lines.^{[7]
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  Kelly Medford
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  Expert Interview} Space the lines further apart for lighter shadows and closer together to make them darker.
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Darken the shaded areas around the ridgeline. The darkest parts of your shadows are actually right where both slopes meet at the ridgeline. Professional artist and art school founder Rebecca Schweiger says, “When you vary the pressure of your pencil, you vary how light or dark [the shadows are].”^{[8]
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Rebecca Schweiger
Professional Artist & Art School Founder

Expert Interview} Medford suggests using the side of your pencil to help make smooth transitions between the different shades.^{[9]
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Kelly Medford
Professional Artist

Expert Interview}
- Adding darker shadows makes the lighter areas pop out more and give your mountain drawing a realistic 3D look.
4
Erase along some of the directional lines to add highlights. “To make the drawing lighter in areas, you can use a kneaded eraser,” Medford states. “Just dab at the areas where it has gone too dark to pick up some of the excess graphite.”^{[10]
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Kelly Medford
Professional Artist

Expert Interview} Focus on areas along the directional lines to give your mountains more shape.
- Remember that the brightest part of your mountain is still the same side as the light source. Make sure that the highlights are still darker than the light side of the mountain.
5
Add color to the mountains if you want to make them pop. If you want to take a step up from a black and white drawing, use colored pencils to bring your mountains to life. Schweiger recommends layering the different colors to mix them into unique shades. To make the color blends even smoother, she recommends using a blending stump in a gentle circular motion.^{[11]
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Rebecca Schweiger
Professional Artist & Art School Founder

Expert Interview} The colors you use depend on the mountain aesthetic you want:
- Rocky mountain: browns, blues, and grays,
- Snowy mountain: blues, grays, and whites
- Grassy mountain: greens, yellows, and oranges

Section 3 of 4:

Adding Details & Scenery to Your Mountain Drawing

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It’s pretty rare that a mountain juts right up from flat land, so draw some upside-down curved shapes to make some hills in front of your mountain. The rolling landscape adds a lot of perspective to your drawing so the mountains look further away and more natural in the environment.
If you want your mountain set in a forest scene, add a few tree drawings around the base. Remember that trees are really small compared to a mountain, so make the ones right next to the base or on the mountainside really tiny. For trees in the distance, just draw the overall shape and only add details like leaves and branches for ones closer to the foreground.^{[12]
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Draw a lake or river in front of your mountain. Nothing is more serene than seeing a mountain from across a lake or a river leading to it in the distance. Make the edges of a lake near horizontal so it looks like it’s closer and the mountain is in the distance. If you’re drawing a river, make it taper and disappear as it gets closer to the mountain.^{[13]
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- Blend some shadows into the water to add reflections of your mountain and trees.
4
Add clouds to the sky behind your mountains. To draw clouds, sketch out the basic shape you want with your pencil. Remember where you set your light source, and add shadows to the other side of the cloud. Use the side of your pencil and a blending stump to give the cloud soft shadows and edges so it looks light and fluffy.
- To add even more depth to your drawing, draw a couple of clouds covering the front of the mountain so it looks even taller.