Misty Glacier Mountain Lake Water Color Bkgrnd Tutorial Painting for a Beaver
Misty Glacier and Mountain Lake Water Color Background Tutorial Painting for a Beaver Floatplane
Thur July 30 2026 post 1 of 2
I wanted to paint a pic of my 30" Beaver, but I needed to find a good landscape scenery background tutorial, on the web, first, for water color painting.
I followed this beginner tutorial, which has all blues and greens for coloring. First, I printed out the final pic of the tutorial, and I went step by step, using the final pic as a reference, and pausing the tutorial playing on my Computer screen. This was really easy. There are many of these tutorials on the web.
I also cut out a Beaver pic for the painting.
Watercolor Painting Tutorial | Misty Scenery | Easy Watercolor Painting For Beginners 10:50 min
AhmadArt
Sep 22, 2021
https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=how+to+water+paint+LANDSCAPES+for+beginners&&mid=FB467F81AC64C2DE8290FB467F81AC64C2DE8290&churl=https%3a%2f%2fwww.youtube.com%2fchannel%2fUCuzuuA9F-UAKf9w5-DUtmBw&FORM=VRDGAR
Pic #1 4267 I am trying to paint just like the tutorial final pic above. I have just shaded in the light blue sky on my blank printer paper canvas below.
Pic #2 4269 Starting on the mountains.
Pic #3 4271 Shading in the light blue down to the bottom.
Pic #4 4272 Starting on the green foliage.
Lastwoodsman
Richard
cont
Misty Glacier and Mountain Lake Water Color Background Tutorial Painting for a Beaver Floatplane
Thur July 30 2026 post 2 of 2
Pic #1 4275 Progress on the trees.
Pic #2 4276 Test fit of the Beaver cutout placement. I looked for a flying beaver on the net, and this was the right size to print and cut out, and use, to find a good spot for it.
Pic #3 4278 And here is my result. The trees need more greenery, and there could be more definition to the misty glacier. Maybe I will search water color painting of glaciers. But, I do like how it turned out. There are great tips in these videos.
Pic #4 4281 Voila! ;D :) Closeup.
Lastwoodsman
Richard
Misty Glacier and Mountain Lake Water Color Background Tutorial Painting for a Beaver Floatplane
Sat Aug 1 2026 Reply #2
Mountains and Glaciers
Well, I kept looking at that 'misty glacier mountain lake' water color painting pic, and decided to make my own design, with a much better design for the mountains and glacier(s). I decided to go with a huge glacier flow, retreating glacier, instead of a misty glacier, while also keeping the trees and the mountain lake, left in the foreground.
I went down the rabbit hole of glaciers and snowy mountains, and found some good artists versions of monochromatic blue mountains, and lots of videos on watercolor painting. Even coloring books and paint by numbers were scrolled.
Here are a few pics I used as reference. It's a fascinating story. In order to draw a glacier, it is good to know the terms and names of the different parts of the anatomy of a glacier.
Here are some good water color pics I used as a reference. I ended up choosing a retreating glacier.
I will be using monochromatic blue color schemes which consist of various shades (add black), tints (add white), and tones (add gray), of blue color, thus creating a cohesive and calming aesthetic.
Blue hues evoke feelings of confidence, wisdom, and calmness. ;D :D
Some Glacier Terms
Snout or tongue or terminus or toe
Tributary glaciers and snow tributaries
Snow Streams
Avalanche runs
Snow accumulation zone
Pic #1 Glacier 2
Pic #2 Glacier 5
Pic #3 4288 Four pic collage - two types of glacial terminus toe. This was a lot of thinking on how to incorporate the retreating glacier, into the place where the misty glacier is.
Pic #4 Artist painting a glacier in the olden days. He went to a lot of trouble to get to that view point in order to paint from. The good ol' days.
Lastwoodsman
Richard
Misty Glacier and Mountain Lake Water Color Background Tutorial Painting for a Beaver Floatplane
Sat Aug 1 2026 Reply #3
Mountains and Glaciers
Pic #1 GLACIER SIMPLE OUTLINE WITH MOUNTAINS Glaciers are like a river, going through the valleys between the mountain peaks.
Pic #2 GLACIERS FIVE TYPES In my painting, it will be numerous valley glaciers or tributary glaciers, coming down into forming a Piedmont Glacier.
Pic #3 RETREATING GLACIER TERMINOLOGY My glacier should sort of look like this.
Pic #4 GLACIER 1 Look at that big terminus wall!
Lastwoodsman
Richard
Misty Glacier and Mountain Lake Water Color Background Tutorial Painting for a Beaver Floatplane
Sat Aug 1 2026 Reply #4
Pic #1 GLACIER 3 Another nice watercolor painting.
Pic #2 GLACIER 4 Rivers of melt water, under and through a glacier.
Pic #3 GLACIER MENDENHALL IN ALASKA This glacier is "calving", into a lake. Note how small the trees are right beside the glacier face on the left. I don't know if I will have ice boulders floating in lake water right beside the face, or, just have braided streams through the eskers, drumlins, and moraines, and kettles of an ice boulder field.
Pic #4 GLACIER CALVING The snow and ice on the outside is dirty, but inside it is monochromatic blue in color where it broke off.
Lastwoodsman
Richard
Misty Glacier and Mountain Lake Water Color Background Tutorial Painting for a Beaver Floatplane
Sat Aug 1 2026 Reply #5
Pic #1 GLACIER BLUE This pic is awesome. It has yellows and browns also.
Pic #2 GLACIER FACE Beautiful calving edge splintering crevasses of lateral and longitudinal cracks.
Pic #3 RETREATING GLACIER 3 Before and After. You can see how the tongue on the left pic, is almost gone in the right pic.
Pic #4 RETREATING GLACIER 4 Ice Field of Ice chunks and ice boulders left over, on the outwash plain.
SCIENCE TREK Glaciers
https://sciencetrek.org/topics/glaciers
Lastwoodsman
Richard
Misty Glacier and Mountain Lake Water Color Background Tutorial Painting for a Beaver Floatplane
Sat Aug 1 2026 Reply #6
Pic #1 RETREATING GLACIER 1928 2002 2024 If that mountain is 10,000 feet tall, then the glacier thickness is 5,000 feet - that is a mile thick!
Pic #2 Glacier Anatomy a good diagram description.
There is a very very famous guy (Van Life U-tuber) on the Internet, who climbs mountains and glaciers (mostly walking/hiking up - not loads of rock climbing equipment), and bags summits big time, and I mean big time! He has the greatest pics and videos, of National Geographic quality, and the greatest pics and videos, and the most spectacular drone footage, of mountains and glaciers, on the web. I have been watching him for years now. Real and authentic. The very best.
His name is Foresty Forest and his little Jack Russel Terrier dog, lady "Rocco" and him, climb all of these mountains together. Truly amazing. Unbelievable! The videos he gets of the mountain ranges into the distance, are unreal. He mostly does big time mountains (eleveners - ie eleven thousand feet), in the Rocky Mountains areas, of British Columbia (BC), province of Canada.
Website:
https://www.youtube.com/@forestyforest
Pic #3 APE LAKE BC
Pic #4 ROCCO SUMMIT 2 They are sitting on top of that crag, with their backs to us, looking out over the vast expanse of mountain tops ...
Lastwoodsman
Richard
Really nice YT channel!! Thanks for sharing!!
Misty Glacier and Mountain Lake Water Color Background Tutorial Painting for a Beaver Floatplane
Sun Aug 2 2026 Reply #8
After playing around with dimensions and proportions a long time, here is my new sketch of the mountains and glacier.
Pic #1 4293 I will try to fit a combination of these three glacier pics, into and replacing the misty fog and mountains of the lower right pic.
Pic #2 4300 Here is the sketch now inserted beside the three glacier pics for comparison.
Pic #3 4304 Here is the sketch by itself. Eleven mountains and ten trees. The tree locations are small vertical slashes at the bottom.
Pic #4 ROCCO SUMMIT And one more pic of the glacier mountain dog "Rocco". One quick story - she comes up to this wide creek, short look to size it up, crouches down for solid footing with her short legs, then "BOING !!" she catapults herself so fast, up and out, on a long high arc, through the air like a missile, and then descends, and lands perfectly, down on the bank on the other side of the creek! and keeps going ... This dog is all solid muscle. It is on one of the recent episodes I think. Her and 'Foresty Forest' keep a running total of their mountain summit peaks bagged ... it is a very large total ... ;D
Lastwoodsman
Richard
Misty Glacier and Mountain Lake Water Color Background Tutorial Painting for a Beaver Floatplane
Mon Aug 3 2026 Reply #9
I started out with a new sketch. The first thing, the hardest thing, is to sketch the mountains out, in good rough, on printer paper. The blue "wash" on the rear far distant mountains will be the most diluted blue color (almost very light gray), and then it becomes less diluted "blue wash" towards the front, finally to no dilution of the blue color, for the very front mountains. I should have three tints of blue, for each of three rows of mountains, to define the distance look.
I think I have all of the proportions figured out now, in the following pics. I ended up with ten foreground trees and eleven mountains. I now have a huge retreating glacier and tongue (no mist) and I have those all new mountains, eleven, all with connecting tributary glaciers and snow streams and snow tributaries. Plus I still have my tree trunk locations. I hope to fade the trees out, from the front ten trees, and on downwards, to the front ice boulder field, outwash plain. I don't think I will have a lake on the washout plain - just the meltwater braided streams on the washout plain, maybe, and a couple of ice boulders ... ?
I numbered all these pics for reference lower right corner.
Pic #1 4308 SKY IS TOO LOW ORIGINAL PENCIL NO 1
Pic #2 4311 GOOD MASTER SKY IS LOWERED TEN TREE TRUNKS ARE MARKED IN NO 2
Pic #3 4316 PAINT THIS TREES ARE ERASED SKY IS LOWERED NO 3
Pic #4 4320 YELLOW BEAVER ON SKY IS LOWERED TEN TREE TRUNKS ARE MARKED IN NO 4
Lastwoodsman
Richard
Misty Glacier and Mountain Lake Water Color Background Tutorial Painting for a Beaver Floatplane
Mon Aug 3 2026 Reply #10
I made a lot of progress on the glacier(s) and mountains, and these pics are printed and listed here, so I don't get lost on the different revisions.
When you pencil in the final sketch on your canvas, it must be of the faintest lines, so that the lines don't show through the diluted watercolor paint. I have nice thick outline pics, to use as a side by side visual, while painting the good slate.
I will post these last four pics, and then get started !!
Pic #1 4325 GRAY BEAVER ON SKY IS LOWERED TEN TREE TRUNKS ARE MARKED IN NO 5
Pic #2 4328 PAINT THIS COLOR TRIBUTARIES MOUNTAINS ARE NUMBERED ONE THROUGH ELEVEN NO 6
Pic #3 4332 PAINT THIS TREES ARE NUMBERED ONE THROUGH TEN AT THE BOTTOM MOUNTAINS ARE NUMBERED ONE THROUGH ELEVEN HEAVY PENCIL NO 7
Pic #4 4336 PENCIL PRINT THIS MOUNTAINS ARE NUMBERED ONE THROUGH ELEVEN TREES NOT NUMBERED NO 8
Time to finalize the fading of the trees, out from the front ten trees, and on downwards, to the front of the ice boulder field, outwash plain. Reference the pic FLYING BEAVER 4 , with a yellow Beaver above a river valley, with treed forests on both sides of the valley, fading off into the distance. Something like that. I'll see how it fits on a photocopy.
Time to start some watercolor experimenting on a couple of photocopies.
I hope to fade the trees out, from the front ten, and on downwards, to the front ice boulder field, outwash plain.
Lastwoodsman
Richard
Misty Glacier and Mountain Lake Water Color Background Tutorial Painting for a Beaver Floatplane
Mon Aug 3 2026 Reply #11
I started painting up a rough picture photocopy first.
Pic #1 4340 Ready to start painting.
Pic #2 4343 Progress on the mountains.
Pic #3 4347 I added the beaver cutout to the painting.
Pic #4 4350 The calving face of the glacier has pencil detailing added in. I am trying to emulate the calving face of the Mendenhall artist's painting.
Lastwoodsman
Richard
Misty Glacier and Mountain Lake Water Color Background Tutorial Painting for a Beaver Floatplane
Tue Aug 4 2026 Reply #12 Post 1 of 2
Well, there is no more mist, and there is no more mountain lake. I had to cut the bottom lake part, out of the pic, plus another 1/4" of pic bottom greenery had to get cut out too, and now it all looks more or less proportional.
The mountains are done. I tried painting the calving off of a piece of the tongue face, to no success. I completed the snow tributaries, painted them white, and blended them in to the main glacier. There are a few ice boulders and some meltwater streams that come off of the glacier face, into the outwash plain.
So now, I just have to paint the final, by combining two pics into one, now that the trees are fitted to the overall glacial pic. Plus, I did everything in rough, so it should go a lot quicker now ...
Pic #1 4354 More progress. The top mountains are done, and the glacier face is done in light pencil.
Pic #2 4356 More Beaver positioning.
Pic #3 4359 The glacier face is now colored in, and mountain #1 on the right is completed. Details in the outwash plain are added. The outwash streams give perspective as to the height of that ice face.
Pic #4 4362 Here I am just testing the size and placement of the foreground trees that have had the bottom cut off.
Lastwoodsman
Richard
Misty Glacier and Mountain Lake Water Color Background Tutorial Painting for a Beaver Floatplane
Tue Aug 4 2026 Reply #13 Post 2 of 2
Pic #1 4365 And the yellow Beaver goes right about here. I still need to cut 1/4" of greenery off of the bottom, to fit the trees better.
Pic #2 4368 So, this will be the final pic sizing, after cutting out the lake water at the bottom, and cutting out that 1/4" of greenery.
Pic #3 4371 Here are the final two pics to go with. Lighting is everything ...
Pic #4 4372 Same pic, different lighting. The trees and the green of the top pic, will be incorporated into the bottom pic, for the final painting. Plus the Beaver at the end.
As I contemplate the secret vast expanse of ice in these glaciers, "The Setting Sun", by Peter J Malmsjo, plays thought provokingly gently, and furtively, in the background. On 'loop' repeat, of course, for hours of uninterrupted modeling concentration, every day. :)
"The Setting Sun"
by Peter J. Malmsjö
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tln3V-Itqw&t=13s
Lastwoodsman
Richard
Congratulations. It takes a talend for such an artwork!! Bravo!
Misty Glacier and Mountain Lake Water Color Background Tutorial Painting for a Beaver Floatplane
Reply #15 Sun Aug 30 2026
Speaking of flying over Glaciers and Mountains, here are some realistic examples, in this latest and best, Nepal Disaster video of the Glacier River Ice Bedrock Failure, by Prof. Shawn Willsey. Fascinating and intriguing detective story with all of the skillfully organized and displayed, satellite images, and especially the comments input also, as these geology experts continue to piece together exactly how it all happened.
"Nepal Disaster Update: Where Did All the Water Come From + A Second Landslide?"
Aug 30 2026 26:18 min
Shawn Willsey: Geology Explained
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILngACgq4w8
Here you can see the gray shadow 'face' of the glacier, then the flat white 'top' of the glacier, then becoming the gray shadow "hanging glacier" extending a fifth up the mountain.
Pic #1 GLACIER ON BEDROCK COLLAPSE 1
Pic #2 GLACIER ON BEDROCK COLLAPSE 2
Pic #3 GLACIER ON BEDROCK COLLAPSE 3
Lastwoodsman
Richard