#drawing mountains

[peamarmelade]

Painting of mountains made with my finger on my phone lol <3

[davidbeck80]

drawing, Mountains, David Beck, © 01/06/2026

David Beck, Mountains, 2026

© artists rights society (ARS)

New-York, USA

[20rockets]

Some of my older drawings... still struggling with faces but I’ve been working on it since I drew this

[lesillusionsdeleah]

Mashup montagneux improvisé avec Thida-Lise

Improvised mountainous mashup with Thida-Lise

Léah & Thida

Léah Fontaine

[thighstats]

People in the hills

photocopy of ink drawing

[copperbora]

Eeee, thank you! <3 I really appreciate hearing that! :D

As for an answer: I kind of do both, although I don’t look at photos very often (kind of a bad habit of mine maybe?) Having spent so much time actually in places that look like the environments that I like to draw certainly helps (although I probably spend more time in forests yet my forests are still leaving much to be desired in my opinion - probably because when I’m in a forest I’m spending about 60% of my time staring at the ground watching where I’m stepping so I don’t actually look too much at the trees! I love technical hiking and rough terrain haha.) 

Having been up close and personal with scree slopes in particular has been helpful with drawing mountain anatomy because it has given me a much better idea of the angle that scree tends to slope at, although I still groan at drawing all that loose rock up close. Getting up close and personal with high altitude mountains over the years has also repeatedly given me lessons in geology, such as that most high mountains are composed of sedimentary rock, so the layers in the rock are usually pretty obvious when you look across the valley at the exposed faces of the mountains. 

This is also true for canyons, although I have been to few of those; this one is inspired somewhat by the Grand Canyon, a place that’s definitely on my bucket list of places I want to visit. Certain geological events in history (such as formation of rivers,) have either cut down through rock, exposing its layers (such as in canyons or waterfalls,) or thrust it sky high in unimaginably cataclysmic tectonic events (as in non-volcanic mountain ranges such as the Rockies.) This is what I’m thinking of mostly when I go to draw mountains, because that’s the anatomy of a mountain (or canyon!) The one type of mountain I haven’t really drawn is a volcano, which is silly, because Rimer definitely has them but I have never personally met one, besides the few extinct ones that are around where I live. (And they are absolutely dead, thank goodness.) 

I do look at photos sometimes, but mainly just for general shape ideas of the mountain(s) or canyon(s) itself. I put down a rough sketch of the environment, turn down the opacity of the layer (to make it easier to draw on top of,) and slap a layer over top on which I do the actual ink. When I’m inking I pretty much just follow my instincts and mountain anatomy knowledge - (now, please forgive me here Everskye, I know very well that as a fellow outdoorsman you’re  acquainted with mountains so the vast majority of the following is mostly for everyone else reading this,) - if the face looks really craggy or vertical, then I define it in more detail; if it is a little gentler in its angle, then I define it less, because that’s where the scree would be, sitting on top of cliffs and stuff. On the lower flanks of the mountains that is also where trees and alpine meadows hang out (presence of either can depend heavily upon the altitude of the environment. Alpine is, of course, not present at lower elevations. The altitude also changes the species of tree which may be present and their anatomy!) 

The upper flanks where scree might be is also where snow and glaciers would generally be. Glaciers also like hugging the shoulders of mountains and hanging off of them like slugs. They’ll even stick on top of them; after all, glaciers come from snow. They slowly grind down mountains and create valleys - the valley that I live in, which is over 200 kilometres long was carved out by a glacier! Glacier carved valleys are always U-shaped. The glacier in this photo is still carving its valley. In my piece ‘Thundarican Explorers,’ I drew this variety of glacier. They’re more common in the north these days, so if you’re considering putting snow or a glacier on your mountain always consider its geographical position on the planet and its altitude - glaciers are not usually found at low elevations south of the arctic.

For painting in snow, just keep in mind that it has trouble sticking to vertical surfaces - it needs at least a slight angle to adhere to a surface - you’ll notice this especially on fence posts in winter. That’s also why snow doesn’t stick to the sides of houses obviously, so it will not stick to a cliff either unless there is a ledge. With sedimentary rock, there is always tons of ledges, although much of it would not be considered ledge-like to your average, non-climber human up close. Snow load on a peak will vary greatly by season. For an example, here’s a Canadian matterhorn, Mount Assiniboine in summer and here’s it in winter. 

Other things I keep in mind are stuff like where ridges and passes are (generally between two peaks, having been the resilient former victims of glaciers,) and where winter avalanche slopes might be - important if you’ve got trees in the picture and your mountain is high altitude. An avalanche slope is basically a treeless swathe through a mountain flanking forest where winter avalanches regularly annihilate any trees that dare to grow there. Instead meadows or low growing brush will grow in that spot. At the base of mountains there may be moraine (fields of loose rock which have been ground up by an extinct glacier then left behind) and in any sort of bowl, or sitting at the bottom of a glacier, you’ll often find an alpine lake. Because alpine lakes are full of rock flour (more ground up rock, courtesy of glaciers,) they are never clear (unless they are very shallow) and they are always a brilliant shade of blue or turquoise. If the lake is directly glacier fed than it may have icebergs floating in it, which are bits of ice which have calved off the glacier itself.

Another thing... you don’t see really well defined ruler straight looking snow lines on mountains and they’re never round shaped like chocolate chips unless they are a volcano, like Mount Fuji or Mount Kilimanjaro. 

And - one more note - clouds will hug the tops of really high mountains, often obscuring them completely. Clear weather around the super high peaks, like Mount Everest, K2 or even shorter peaks (like Mount Robson and Mount McKinley,) can be extremely rare. At sunset there’s also a phenomenon called ‘alpenglow’ where the mountain is turned a beautiful coppery orange for a short period! 

Okay, just one more note, I promise (I know I just said that, but well, I obviously lied,); objects - and mountains - grow less defined the further away that they are, so it’s okay to be impressionistic/slack off a little on far away stuff. The colours will also be more faded; I use a atmospheric solid light blue layer which I make transparent by toggling the layer opacity to give this effect in my work. :)

Anyway, I kind of ended up ranting on for quite a while about mountain anatomy there, but hopefully people might find it useful. I feel out a lot of my ink and the nice thing about inking mountains is that a steady hand isn’t really required, so it goes fast! It’s also pretty fun and lacks the monotony of a lot of other inkwork because it’s best to be spontaneous! :) 

On the other hand, if you were trying to draw a specific mountain - well, that’s a pain in the butt and I would never recommend it unless you’re drawing a specific location. If you are drawing a specific location - such as Everest, for example - then you’d better draw that thing right so that it’ll be recognizable to the viewer - and outdoorsy nitpickers! (This is something that the movie Alpha and Omega, supposedly set in Jasper National Park - hear that creators? Jasper NATIONAL Park - failed spectacularly at. The place portrayed in the movie looks absolutely nothing like the place that it is supposed to be - but I digress.)

Thank you so much for the great question Everskye! <3 For everyone else, I hope that maybe this post was somewhat educational. :) (And enjoy the horde of mountain photo links that are in this text wall haha.)

Also I added some photos of some real mountains because mountains are gorgeous and amazing. They’re all from the hike that I did to Balu Pass in August 2014 in Glacier National Park (Canada.)

[prayc]

[emulatehim]

Hey. Some person used one of my songs for a video. There is some super cool footage here. Thanks, Ian Berenger.