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Anne Holt's step-by-step basics for creating a landscape oil painting

¤ Put a background tone on the canvas.

For a river and mountain scene that includes a lot of earth tones, Holt chooses a tan tint for her painting's background. "Some artists use cool colors, some artists use warm," Holt said. "I like warm - it just feels more natural."

¤ Look at the scene or picture you're painting from, and pick out the different color shades and tones.

Holt mixes all the colors she plans to use in her landscape before she starts painting and decides what those colors will be before she starts mixing them. "I tell everyone they should look at the picture they're drawing from and pretty much make a color list of all the different colors they see, because otherwise you can get overwhelmed," she said.

¤ Place oil paint in primary colors on a palette. Use other paints, such as earth tones or white, later, as needed.

Holt uses the first class in her five-part series to focus on color mixing. "I really like working with beginners because it's a great way to start them off on the right foot with color mixing," she said, adding that she prefers to start beginning painters off with a limited palette of red, blue and yellow. "I mainly only have them do primary colors," she said. "I think it's really important to have a really strong base in just mixing from the basics."

Holt is willing to add other colors to her palette to save time, but she never uses pre-mixed black paint. "You can pretty much mix black from the other colors you have on your palette," she said.

¤ Make sure all your tools and brushes are clean, and keep colors separated on the palette.

A palette knife is the most effective tool for mixing paint, Holt said - it keeps colors from running together and getting muddy, is easy to clean, and allows you to scrape paint off the palette to mix shades. Holt keeps colors separated on her palette and is careful to mix paints with stronger pigments last.

¤ Use a brush to generalize shapes on the canvas from the scene. Use a neutral color, such as brown or gray, to sketch.

Holt recommends finding a visually impacting area - a big feature, such as a mountain - as a starting point for the sketch.

¤ Start to fill in generalized shapes with light and dark tones.

"Now I'm just taking all the colors I've mixed, and you can pretty much place them in the areas that you see them," Holt said, filling in trees with a dark green from her color palette. Holt blocks in the main elements and shapes first.

¤ Once the main elements are filled in, paint around the canvas to build up color tone, shadows and light.

"Work all the way around the canvas, not just in one area," Holt said, shading in some sky, then some river. "Otherwise, all of your colors will be dictated by just the place that you're painting them and not by the whole area."

¤ Keep fleshing out the landscape with your color palette until the painting is done.

For Holt, oil landscapes are not about getting every blade of grass and every leaf into the finished product. "It's more about - when you're painting the landscape - just getting everything in perspective," she said. "Really generalizing the shapes helps."