ABSTRACT This study analyses graphic representations of landscapes, produced by 46 Spanish 10th-grade secondary students and 92 teacher-training students in the last year of their course at the Faculty of Education, and the descriptive power of these drawings in connection with questions posed on the systems being represented. The constituent parts of a suitable description of a landscape as a natural system should include geological, as well as biological, elements. The absence of geological elements makes it difficult for students to build an environmental model. Few of the students who produced drawings represented rocks or geological aspects of the landscape. In general, the students represent the environment as an accumulation of elements, which may or may not be shown as ordered. In only a few cases do the drawings provide a description of the landscape that can be used subsequently, for example, to answer questions about environmental management. Causal relationships are hardly shown in either the drawings or the descriptions. This study uses a tool to analyze students' drawings that can be used to promote the learning of models by producing drawings.