20 Landscape Painting Ideas and Where to Find Them

Landscape painting ideas are easy to find. If you know how to look, they can be found everywhere.

Just look at some of the great artists. Van Gogh painted some of his finest scenes from the window of his asylum room where he tragically spent his final years. Ivon Hitchens painted his garden curated as a paradise away from London. For many others, their homes and gardens have been their greatest sources of inspiration, or their children playing at a picnic.

I’ve put together some of my favorite landscape painting ideas and tips for easy landscapes that you can do in the sketchbook, on the go or in the studio.

And for those of you who really want to get stuck into landscape painting but don’ t know where to start, you can download my 30 Days of Landscape Painting Prompts for less than a cup of coffee. Some prompts are more specific than others, and cover a range of different themes. You can pick and choose them in any order, and even repeat some prompts if you want to. This is your starting point.

I’ve divided this into sections with different landscape ideas in each, so you can choose the ones that suit you best. And if you’re never painted landscapes before, then it’s completely up to you which direction you take.

Easy landscape painting ideas you can do at home

1. Paint the scene from your street and your own front door.

2. The view from your window

3. The sky outside

4. Your garden, yard or balcony

5. Get inspired by your travel photos

6. Make a landscape collage with magazine scraps

7. Paint your dream garden with seasonal flowers

8. Draw or paint your favorite landscape from memory

9. If you have children, ask them to paint a background for you, then turn it into a landscape

Especially if you’re a beginner, you don’t need to go far and find great complex views to start landscape painting. Just look at the interesting cloud shapes beyond your window, or get inspired by the colours of your windowbox flowers or even just the colours and patterns of your street’s front doors.

Your photos can also be a treasure trove of ideas, but again, don’t think about realism or copying, you can combine several photos or change things around as you prefer.

You don’t have to paint exactly what you see, but use these easy ideas to spark your imagination.

Easy landscape painting ideas to do outside

Going beyond your own garden now, the best advice I have for any landscape painter or artist is to get outside and just walk, observe, use all of your senses. Do this enough and you’ll start to see colours, patterns and textures you didn’t notice before.

10. Explore the local gardens or park

11. A river or lake, or even a small stream near your home

12. A churchyard

13. The view from your car window whilst you’re parked somewhere new

14. Visit local museums and galleries and sketch from life

15. Go and sketch somewhere new

16. Join a Plein air painting group and paint with them

Easy landscape ideas for your sketchbook

17. Try a blind contour or single line drawing, where you draw loosely and try to keep your pencil on the page at all times.

18. Paint a landscape with less than 10 brushstrokes

19. Divide your paper into four and paint the same landscape with a different colour palette each time

20. Paint a forest without using any green or green mixes

Inspiring reads about landscape painting:

If you’re looking for more in depth inspiration, here are some of my favorite books about painting, the British landscape and different ways artists have connected to the nature around them.

Where Poppies Blow, John Lewis-Stempell

The Unquiet Landscape, Christopher Neve

A Sense of Place - Joan Eardley, Patrick Elliot

I hope this guide was helpful. Let me know in the comments!

Chloe