How to Draw Mongolian Art

What You'll Need

• •Smooth cotton, watercolor paper, or a primed wood panel; a traditional painting can use prepared cloth or panel, while digital artists can use a textured canvas.
• •Graphite, charcoal, or a fine dark drawing brush for the initial contour and layout.
• •Opaque watercolor, gouache, egg tempera, or acrylic in mineral-like colors such as cinnabar red, ochre, malachite green, lapis or ultramarine blue, chalk white, and carbon black.
• •Metallic gold leaf, shell gold, or a muted gold paint for halos, borders, tack, jewelry, and selected ornament.
• •Small round brushes, a pointed liner, a flat brush for broad color fields, and a soft dry brush for restrained texture.
• •Digital tools such as Krita, Procreate, Photoshop, or Clip Studio Paint with textured opaque brushes, vector guides, layers, clipping masks, and a limited-color palette.

Step by Step

1. 1

   1. Choose a narrative from steppe life

   Begin with one readable event rather than a collection of unrelated symbols: a rider crossing grassland, a family preparing a ger, a ceremonial meeting, a horse herd beneath a vast sky, or a devotional scene connected to Buddhist imagery. Write a one-sentence story and list the three most important figures, animals, or objects. Research clothing, saddles, ger construction, landscape, and ritual details so that ornament supports the subject instead of becoming generic fantasy decoration.

2. 2

   2. Build a spacious composition

   Divide the surface into a low or middle horizon, a broad sky, and a grounded foreground, leaving generous open space around the main action. Arrange the figures along a gentle S-curve, diagonal travel route, or shallow frieze so the eye moves through the story. Keep the largest shapes simple and readable before adding any pattern. Use distant hills, clouds, and tiny riders to establish scale without filling every empty area.

3. 3

   3. Block the major silhouettes

   Create the figures, horses, yurts, rocks, and banners as clear flat silhouettes using a restrained dark or midtone color. Check the pose at thumbnail size: a rider should read as a rider, and a horse should have a convincing weight-bearing stance before details are added. Use long, controlled contours for robes, horse necks, reins, and windblown fabric. Keep anatomy stylized but structurally sound, especially at the joints, hooves, hands, and faces.

4. 4

   4. Establish flowing clothing and movement

   Layer deel robes, belts, sleeves, scarves, saddle blankets, and banners with broad angular planes softened by flowing contour lines. Indicate folds with grouped bands that follow the body, rather than scattering many short wrinkles. Repeat a few curves across garments, grass, clouds, and reins to connect the composition rhythmically. Let wind direction or riding direction unify the drapery so the scene feels active without becoming chaotic.

5. 5

   5. Apply mineral-inspired color fields

   Mix or select opaque colors that feel dense and earthy: red, ochre, blue, green, white, black, and warm brown are a strong starting palette. Place the most saturated color on the narrative focus, then echo small amounts of it in clothing, tack, landscape, or ornament. Build color in flat or gently modulated passages instead of relying on smooth atmospheric gradients. Reserve pale sky tones and unpainted space to preserve the open-sky light and spaciousness.

6. 6

   6. Organize the surface with ornament

   Add borders, cloud bands, flame-like forms, lotus shapes, geometric textile motifs, floral scrolls, and steppe-inspired animal patterns only where they clarify hierarchy. Repeat a motif at different scales so the design feels intentional, but vary its spacing and direction to avoid mechanical wallpaper. Use Buddhist symbols only when they belong to the subject and context, and avoid combining sacred emblems as random decoration. Keep ornament flatter and more patterned than the narrative figures so the focal action remains legible.

7. 7

   7. Model forms with selective contour and shadow

   Strengthen the outer contour where a figure overlaps the sky, and soften or simplify internal edges where forms turn toward the light. Add a few opaque shadow planes beneath sleeves, saddles, horse bellies, hats, and architectural edges rather than rendering every surface realistically. Use the same shadow family across the scene to make the figures belong to one world. A narrow light edge on a robe or horse can suggest the bright, exposed quality of steppe daylight.

8. 8

   8. Add gilded accents and final storytelling details

   Place gold sparingly on halos, sacred objects, jewelry, bridle fittings, saddle decoration, borders, or important textile patterns. Make gold support the focal point by concentrating it near the main figure and reducing it in the distance. Finish with small narrative clues such as hoof tracks, smoke from a ger, a tether, a bird, a distant herd, or a gesture between figures. Finally, inspect the image from a distance and remove details that compete with the main story.

Going Digital

Work with separate layers for sketch, silhouettes, background, figures, ornament, gold, and texture. Use an opaque brush with slightly irregular edges, lock alpha on color layers, and clip shadows to the flat shapes so the contours remain clean. Create a limited palette from sampled mineral colors, then use a low-opacity textured brush to break up overly smooth digital fills. For gold, combine a warm ochre base with a few pale yellow highlights and a dark orange-brown edge; avoid using a uniform metallic gradient. Keep a large low-contrast sky layer behind crisp foreground shapes, and periodically flip or thumbnail the canvas to check narrative clarity.

Common Mistakes

FAQ