Now let’s make the lake look more like a lake. Begin just under the shoreline where the trees are on the right. With your blending stump held sideways, pull in a downward direction so the graphite from the stump gets smeared onto the paper. This gives the illusion of a reflection. Try to match the length of your pull to the length of the trees directly above. Keep working your way around the shoreline.

Okay, since I already made the mistake of putting this dark “tall grass” here (as I will call it), I might as well make the reflection darker so it matches. If you didn’t put any grass or trees here in your picture, then this step is unnecessary, but you can do it on other parts of the lake if you feel a darker reflection is needed.

Use the blending stump in a downward direction just like before to blend any new darker tones into the reflection of the lake. Let’s also pull some reflection of the mountains into the lake. Since the mountains are more distant, they will not have a reflection as strong as the trees and land closer to the shore.

Form your kneaded eraser into a wedge shape. Similarly to what we did with the strata on the mountains, make a few short horizontal streaks across the surface of the lake. Make sure to cut across some of the pulled-down reflections so they show through.

Then, with your pencil, lightly sketch under some of these horizontal streaks to help make the appearance of ripples in the water.