A foggy landscape in five bands

Set up your study

Download the Morning Mist palette below, or copy its six hex colors. Use a comfortable sketch canvas and a familiar brush; no premium brush is required. The featured illustration is a visual starting point, not a result you need to copy exactly.

Try it in four steps

1. Fill the sky with the lightest gray-green. Place a low hill using the second-lightest swatch.
2. Add three overlapping hill bands, making each nearer band darker.
3. Put a single dark tree or fence post in the foreground. Give distant hills no comparable fine detail.
4. Soften the silhouette of only one distant band with a lighter overlapping shape, then compare.

Check your result

The foreground should feel closest even without a path or perspective lines. If every band has a dark outline, remove the distant outlines.

Change one thing

Reverse the lightness order deliberately. Use the result to see which depth cues the original relied on.