Misty Glacier Mountain Lake Water Color Bkgrnd Tutorial Painting for a Beaver

[Lastwoodsman]

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

[Lastwoodsman]

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!          Closeup.

Lastwoodsman
Richard

[Lastwoodsman]

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.       

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

[Lastwoodsman]

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

[Lastwoodsman]

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

[Lastwoodsman]

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

[Lastwoodsman]

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

[Spiros]

Really nice YT channel!! Thanks for sharing!!

[Lastwoodsman]

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 ... 

Lastwoodsman
Richard

[Lastwoodsman]

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

[Lastwoodsman]

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

[Lastwoodsman]

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