Acrylic Landscape Painting Tutorial | Tropical Koi Pond Step-by-Step

How-To Guides

Layering • Texture • Blending

Learn how to paint a vibrant tropical koi pond in acrylic while exploring essential landscape painting techniques. This step-by-step tutorial demonstrates layering, blending, glazing, texture and brushwork to create depth, atmosphere and rich colour.

Designed for art teachers, students and artists, this demonstration is ideal for GCSE Art, A Level Art, BTEC Art & Design and Higher Education, providing practical techniques that can be adapted for classroom projects or independent painting.

Throughout the tutorial you'll discover how to build an acrylic painting from the initial composition through to the finished artwork, developing confidence with colour mixing, layering and surface texture.

Techniques Featured

Layering
Blending
Glazing
Brushwork
Colour Mixing
Texture Building
Highlights & Finishing Details

Materials Used

Specialist Crafts X-Range Acrylic Paints (X2, X4 & X6)
Acrylic Brushes
Stretched Canvas
Palette
Water Pot
Artist sponge
Palette knife

Discover more painting tutorials, artist techniques and classroom resources from Specialist Crafts to support creative teaching and inspire confident painting.

Step by step - Let's Create

Sketch Your Composition

Lightly sketch out your composition using a graphite pencil or permanent fineliner. Concentrate on the key shapes and most prominent elements rather than adding lots of detail. This initial drawing is simply a guide for positioning the main features of your painting.

Cut the Stencil

Use a knife to carefully cut out the stencil. Keep all pieces intact, including both the positive and negative shapes, as both will be used later in the process.

Establish Light and Dark Values

While working on the underpainting, begin identifying the main tonal values within your reference image. Paint into the darker areas and wipe paint away from the lighter areas to establish a simple pattern of light and shadow

At this stage, concentrate on the overall tonal structure rather than fine details.

Build Texture into the Water

For the water, use a purple underpainting beneath the blues. Allowing small amounts of this contrasting colour to remain visible through later layers can create greater depth and luminosity in the finished water.

Experiment with different underpainting colours to see how they influence the layers applied over them.

Use the SCUMBLING technique to apply some of the underpainting, working the brush quickly and loosely across the surface to create broken, uneven marks. This begins to introduce texture and movement before the main water colours are added.

Mask the Fish

Mask the fish before building up the surrounding layers of water. Apply masking tape over each fish and trace the outline onto the tape.

Carefully remove the tape and place it onto a cutting board. Cut around each outline, then position the resulting shapes back onto the canvas, covering the fish. This will protect these areas while you paint freely over and around them.

Begin the Second Layer

Start building the second layer using the main colours you want to see in the finished painting. For the water, combine a bright blue with a darker blue and apply them using CROSSHATCHING.

Build up short, overlapping and intersecting brush marks rather than blending the colours completely. The variation between the two blues will help create the uneven surface, texture and movement of water.

Build the Darker Areas

Look closely at your reference image and identify the darkest areas within both the water and surrounding foliage. Begin blocking these in with the darker blue, paying particular attention to the shapes created by shadows and reflections from the trees.

Keep these shapes loose at this stage – they will provide the deeper values needed to give the painting contrast and depth.

Develop Light and Texture in the Water

Identify the lighter areas of the water and use a WATERCOLOUR-STYLE acrylic technique to build transparent washes over these sections. Thin layers allow the colours and marks underneath to remain visible, helping to create a sense of depth.

In the darker areas, return to SCUMBLING, using broken, uneven brush marks to create contrast and introduce more surface texture.

Add Reflections

Look for reflected colours within the deeper areas of the water. Here, green from the surrounding foliage is reflected across the surface.

Use SPONGING to apply the green, lightly building irregular areas of colour rather than creating solid shapes. This produces a broken texture that suggests reflections sitting beneath and across the surface of the water.

Build the Foliage

Begin blocking in the darker and lighter green areas of the foliage. Use a PALETTE KNIFE to create varied leaf textures without concentrating too heavily on individual leaf shapes.

Change the length and direction of your movements to reflect the foliage you are painting – use shorter marks for small leaves and longer, sweeping movements for larger or elongated leaves.

Switch back to a brush where needed to establish the broader shapes of the foliage before continuing to layer texture over the top.

Add Texture to the Foreground Leaves

Use COLOUR DRAGGING to build texture into some of the larger foreground leaves. Drag the paint across the surface so that the colour catches unevenly, creating stronger marks and giving the foreground foliage a heavier, more substantial appearance.

Layer Different Leaf Textures

Use a fan brush to introduce more foliage shapes throughout the forest. The separated bristles are particularly effective for creating the fine, wispy marks found in longer palm leaves and grasses.

Keep switching between the fan brush, other brushes and the palette knife as you work. Varying your tools, marks and direction will prevent the foliage becoming too uniform and help build the impression of overlapping leaves and vegetation.

Introduce Highlights

Use the DRY BRUSH technique with gold paint to begin introducing highlights across the foliage.

Load only a small amount of paint onto the brush and lightly work it across the surface so that it catches the raised texture and existing brush marks. These flashes of gold add warmth, luminosity and contrast without covering the layers underneath.

Build the Final Foliage Layers

Begin adding the final layers of foliage, introducing lighter colours to create highlights and define selected leaf shapes.

Avoid highlighting everything equally. Concentrate lighter colours in areas where you want to draw the eye, allowing the darker layers underneath to provide depth and shadow.

At the same time, continue adding another layer to the water, gradually building the depth and variation needed for the final surface.

Create Movement Around the Fish

To suggest movement through the water, cut a rough template that follows the area behind the fish. Rest the template loosely against the canvas to protect the surrounding area.

Using SPLATTERING, flick small amounts of light-coloured paint around the tail of the fish. Keep the marks irregular and concentrate them closest to the tail to create the impression of disturbed water and movement.

Add the Final Water Layers

For the final layers of water, return to the WATERCOLOUR-STYLE acrylic technique. Apply thin washes over the lighter areas, allowing previous colours and textures to remain visible underneath.

This helps unify the different layers of the water while creating a base for the final ripples and surface details.

Reveal the Fish

Carefully remove the masking tape covering the fish. Use a craft knife where necessary to lift the edges cleanly without disturbing the surrounding painted surface.

The protected canvas underneath will give you a clean area on which to add the final colours and details.