How to Draw a Desert Landscape: The Backside of the San Bernardino Mountains

Today I finished sketching my desert landscape of the San Bernardino Mountains. Some people prefer sketching in charcoals, but I enjoy drawing out pictures with a plain number two writing pencil. These are cheap and plentiful in my art supply, and I do not feel bad if I have to erase my markings or sharpen my pencil frequently. Yes, I love budget crafting and art materials, and I truly believe the most beautiful art can be created when you are inspired, not necessarily because you purchased the most expensive supplies. Illustration drawing consists of laying out all of the details of your sketch in pencils and then filling it in with colored pencils. Botanical drawings of plants in the desert can have scientific value if you are looking to classify the flora and fauna of the region, but I simply enjoy looking at and drawing the beautiful vistas of the San Bernardino Mountains. Create your own desert landscape by taking a digital picture, and then go home and begin to sketch.

Drawing landscape designs is a creative way to create art for the walls of your home. As you can see in this photograph of the backside of the San Bernardino Mountains there is no clean horizon line in the distance, which has to do with my having taken the picture on a high pinnacle looking down in altitude. The back side of the San Bernardino Mountains is a high desert mountainous environment with chaparral bushes, yucca, and many hills. There are few flat valleys here, and as such, the horizon line will not be as clean. To focus on the large boulders and bushes in the foreground and made the mountains in the way distance mostly barren. The mountains directly in front of this will have a few more details, but the majority of details are reserved for the center and the foreground of this scene.

Here I continued to add the bushes, boulders, and the smaller rocks of the landscape. In this drawing, I sporadically added details as I went along, and one nice thing about sketching as opposed to painting is that you can put it aside, and work on it whenever you have a little bit of spare time.

Keep your eyes on the photograph as you sketch the desert landscape, but feel free to improvise. For instance, a peculiar shaped boulder that is in one part of the photograph might look more interesting in another part of the the drawing. Use your artistic license and the essence of the photograph to create boulders in places where they might not have been.

Begin to add the details of small bushes and boulders in the distance, but keep in mind these will be smaller than the ones in the foreground.  This is because things look smaller when they are far away, even if these objects are monster truck size boulders.

I continued to add chaparral brush and boulders until all of the desert landscape was filled in. Eventually the entire sketch of the scenery will be filled to capacity, and then comes time for adding the colored pencils.

Coloring in the sky on a desert landscape drawing is the beginning of making your illustration come to life.  A deep blue sky with puffy white clouds is very inviting and alluring, and takes you back to the day when you captured the photograph with your camera.  Remember what you felt on that day as you glimpsed at the sky, and the desert landscape in the distance.  Be one with the page as you shade in the sky of illustration.

I used various shades of colored pencils to bring my desert landscape illustration to life.  Layering colors upon each other makes for interesting textures and hues.

The completed desert landscape showcases the beauty of the backside of the San Bernardino Mountains.  I enjoy drawing and coloring this picture, and as you can see from the photo and video below it looks quite nice on my wall.  Creating your own art work for the walls of your home is an ideal way to decorate on a budget.