Live Lessons: Landscape Painting with Oils
Lessons
About This Lesson Series...
In Landscape Painting with Oils, you’ll embark on a richly guided painting journey to create a serene landscape featuring trees, a flowing river, and distant mountains—all rendered in water-mixable oil paints. With 9 video lessons totaling over 9 hours of instruction, this course walks you through every phase of the process, making it ideal for intermediate artists who want to deepen their oil painting skills.
You begin with Lesson 1, where the instructor introduces the required materials and sets up your composition by sketching contour lines with graphite. From there, you’ll gradually build your painting, starting with the sky washes in Lesson 2, then moving into the mountains in Lesson 3.
Once the background is laid in, lessons 4 and 5 turn your attention to the trees in the middle ground, establishing tonal structure, contrast, and the forms of trunks, branches, and foliage.
In lessons 6 and 7, you push your painting forward: adding rocks in the foreground, developing texture and solidity, and then painting the river as it flows over and between these rocky elements.
In Lesson 8, you continue refiniÂng the rocks in the foreground, enhancing light, shadow, and subtle shifts in value. Then in Lesson 9, you bring the entire painting to its finish. Here you unify the composition, refine edges, adjust color harmony, fine-tune contrast, and ensure that all parts work together in balance.
What makes this series especially valuable is how it combines structural planning with expressive oil handling. By using water-mixable oils, the approach is cleaner and more accessible to artists who may be wary of traditional solvent-based oils. You’ll observe layering strategies, brushwork techniques, and color handling that preserve light and depth throughout. The course also demonstrates how to manage transitions between distant and immediate elements in a landscape, helping you unify focus and atmosphere.
By the end of Landscape Painting with Oils, you'll not only have a finished landscape painting you can be proud of, but you’ll also gain a deeper understanding of working with oils: how to plan your work from background to foreground, how to build depth, and how to direct focus through value and color. It’s a rewarding path for artists ready to step confidently into the world of oil landscapes.
Lesson 1 (1:10:55)
In lesson one, we discuss the materials and sketch the contours of the subjects with a graphite pencil.
Lesson 2 (1:15:46)
In lesson two, we begin applying oil paint, starting with the sky.
Lesson 3 (1:10:15)
In lesson three, we begin work on the distant mountains.
Lesson 4 (1:07:35)
In lesson four, we begin painting the trees in the middle ground.
Lesson 5 (1:15:27)
In lesson five, we continue painting the trees in the middle ground.
Lesson 6 (1:14:49)
In lesson six, we begin painting the rocks in the middle and foreground.
Lesson 7 (1:09:49)
In lesson seven, we begin painting the small river that runs through the rocks.
Lesson 8 (1:04:54)
In lesson eight, we continue painting the rocks in the foreground.
Lesson 9 (1:20:41)
In lesson nine, we complete the painting.
Resources for this Lesson...
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References
Here's what you'll need...
- 8" by 10" Linen Canvas
- Assorted Brushes
- Water Mixable Oils
(Disclosure: Links to art materials are affiliate links which means we make a small commission if you purchase at no additional cost to you.)
I cannot tell whether you have said in the first part of this video or in the latter part about whether you can use both the oil and the water together in the same painting. Is that possible?
Hi Linda,
You can use water mixable oils and traditional oils together at any point. You cannot use use water-based paint (like acrylics) with any type of oils unless the water-based paint is applied first and allowed to dry completely before applying oils over the top.
Yes, I agree, about using at the same time water mixable oils and just oil paint together, but the medium used for both would have to be compatible? For example only using linseed oil with both types of oil paint without the water ever. Right?
I am new to this live stream you have. I love it. How does one read other comments in the lesson? Second thought maybe I’m the first comment on this video.
I love what you are do?
Linda Foote
Hi Linda,
There is a chatbox when the lesson airs live. These are the comments and questions we are addressing in the video.
When is the fourth module of coloured pencils plus coming out?
Hi all ,
was Lesson 2 out live last night (Dec 11th) ? I fell asleep as I’m UK side , too late to watch live for me , so missed it lol but the recording isn’t uploaded yet , looking forward to giving this a go
Trevor
I don’t know I have been looking for the recording as well as like you I live in the UK too and never get to watch live
Have you received the drawing I sent for critique I understand there are hundreds of pieces of artwork that are sent to you for critique and you can’t do all of them but I was just worried it hadn’t been scent in.It is a ballpoint pen drawing of a cat laying on a sock in a living room.
I do not do oils but have acrylics. would it be advisable to try this lesson series with acrylics? If so, I will work on catching up by next week.
Hi Teresa,
You can certainly use acrylics, but acrylics dry very quickly so blending on the canvas may present a challenge.
I can only find getting sketchy videos up to season twelve, where could I find the rest?
Ashely and Matt: I am really enjoying this course as it nicely complements the Oil Painting Master Course that is here on the website. As I near completion of an oil painting course on another website, I am returning here to find once again the comfort of your teaching styles. It is a welcome relief. The use of a limited palette is also much appreciated. The other course uses Old Holland oil paints which are very expensive and do not make as much sense as the palette established in the Virtual Instructor course with warm and cool color selections. I have not seen anywhere online the level of technical skill and teaching style that is so enjoyable. Thank you!
I too am enjoying this “class” on the landscape by Ashley. His mixing style of the water soluble oils is very exacting and I appreciate this tremendously! Thank you for that sharing Ashley.
I started with oils on the sky and clouds and tried to add water soluble later but oils were mostly dry in spots and so did not blend well. I later waited till fully dry and painted over with water soluble oils and doing the rest with this medium. It is so nice for clean up and my brushes thank you for this new paint!
Love all I learned from these courses and from the valuable lessons elsewhere on you TVI courses!
Thank you Matt for doing all these hours of work for us…and we know it is HOURS! !!
Matt,
I listened with interest to the discussion in lesson 5 about your experience with internet changes through the years, and the changes in which consumers access information.
What was it about your free videos that made me want to sign up for your courses? Yes, it was the reasonable costs, but more especially, it was the careful instruction geared towards the novice I was, with a big helping dose of what I could become. Your friendly frankness and candid conversation with Ashley eeks out art instruction in an easy-to-grasp manner. Also, the platform structure itself is user-friendly. It is obvious you earn every penny!
I have learned immense and can sense your love for teaching art.
Thank you.
I hope Google doesn’t take away this opportunity from people like me and teachers like you and Ashley.
God bless you richly!
Rhonda Smith
I painted it with oil paint. Not so good
I only have traditional oils…may I substitute these for the same result
Hi Kay,
Yes, absolutely. The process is exactly the same.