Draw from Imagination : Environments Techniques Concept Art

1. Intro: As it happened that when you're trying to draw something from imagination, you just don't know what to draw or how to start that idea. In this tutorial, I'm going to show you some techniques that I learned, and they help me multiple times when doing environment work for clients throughout my career. Hi. My name is Petro. I am from Argentina, and I have been working as an environment concept artist for games and animation for the last nine years. Whether you are an aspiring artist or an experienced illustrator, you will learn how to sketch your ideas into real drawings. This course will cover the process from initial composition examples, different exercise for you to design an environment from scratch. And finally, I will demonstrate how to pitch an idea for a client presenting a polish final composition. Join me on this course and let's start drawing environments that captivate and inspire. 2. Compositions : What I want to show here is that when you're joining environments, you need to be aware of this type of composition. For example, this one is the rule of thirds, which is pretty common. Then this one is pretty common also for architecture or things going into the punishing point, normally here would be the horizon line. The S shape for making rivers or roots like roots going into the mountain with cars, diagonal, the circle, Normally, for example, for a circle, you could have a mountain here, then a mountain here far away with some small mountains also, then another maybe some rocks here, and that's how you slowly create this shape. But the circle doesn't have to be in the middle. The circle could be exactly here, and then you start building your composition based on that idea. But it doesn't have to be exactly a circle. That's just an idea. The L shape, the golden spiral. Also again, you can follow this path, but it doesn't have to be 100%. And the steel yard composition where you can have a big object, and then if you wouldn't have this object, then the composition would be falling on that direction. So in order to restore the balance, you can just add a smaller object or maybe a couple and that's going to help to restore that balance. So In the project files, I'm going to add these images, so you can see, this is like the diagonal composition, and also we have a cross composition here. You can see how we add balance to the image here, adding these clouds on the right. Like adding these clouds following this direction to the sun, it can help the whole composition to have a balance. So that's the diagonal rule of thirds here. A quick tip, if you want to see the rule of thirds here in photoshop, you can just select the image, press Control T, and when you press Control T, then just click here, one click and you're going to have the rule of thirds. Or if you want to have that rule of thirds on the entire composition, you can just press C in the keyboard to go into crop mode. Then you just click here one time, and you're going to see the rule of thirds. And also you're going to be able to see many different compositions here. But for example, I can go to golden spiral, and I will have that one. If you want to use the Rule of thirds and every time you go outside of crop mode, then you're not going to be able to see it. You can go ahead to go it again like crop mode, then you go into rule of thirds and then actually one click. Now I can press Control R to bring the rules. From here, I will click and drug, click and drug. One more time, one more time. Now I can just press enter on the crop. You don't have to press enter, you can just press escape. Like if I do it again, a click and escape. That's okay. Now you have those guides for the composition. But if you don't want to see this, you can just press Control H in the keyboard and you're not going to see them. Every time they appear, control, control. If you don't want to see them ever again, you can just press B to go into this move tool and now you click and you track and then this is how you remove them. Here you have the cross, different compositions, the S shape, the steel yard composition, just a quick example. Yeah, I would suggest you to check these images on the protecto files so you can have an idea before you start sketching. 3. Excercise : Hi, everyone. The first lesson would be to actually try to understand what are we going to do when we start sketching circles to make an image from imagination on the next video. In order to understand, what are we going to make? First, I think it's a good exercise to just take some photos from the Internet. I mean, try to download photos that are different landscapes. Normally, when drawing circles, which is the thing that I'm going to show you on the next video. When drawing circles, I don't usually use it for making architecture. I mean, this is not a rule. If you draw circles and that's good for you to create architecture building from imagination, then that's great. But normally the circles, I will use them for the nature landscapes, which is more because it has a more natural feel rather than making a square or something like this, which is more like for buildings. First, I would just take five photos to show myself how this exercise works. I would just lower the opacity. Now I will start I will start tracing the image, trying to make the same image, but only based on circle. If I were you, I wouldn't sing too much on the photo, try to keep it from this distance, maybe even less. If you don't see the image too much, then you can just increase the opacity and start drawing. For example, for this one, by the way, I'm just using a round brush, just a normal round brush with some pressure here, just a little bit. Then the transfer may maybe a little bit less. I don't have to put a lot of pressure. We have a mountain. That would be the old time, which is a circle like this. We could use, like that. You can see the circle is going outside of this line. That's okay. We can erase that later. Now I'm going to make another circle for the foreground, then another circle for these rocks. Don't try to make too many circles. Here I have a big rock, that's okay. One circle. Then maybe there on the back another circle, and then you can erase if you feel that this should be on top or below, like this, like this. Then one shape here. Then you will have another one going into perspective like this one. But actually, that one is a little bit confusing so I'm not going to draw it. Maybe I would just draw one here. Then another circle falling from here. And now something like that, which is there. You don't always have to finish the circles like this because otherwise, if I finish this circle is going to be too many lines, so I just do a half circle like that. You also don't have to make small circles for the pine trees, but if you do it, that's going to help to gain some scale on all the image. To feel how big all these things are. This circle of the big mountain is actually on the back, so I'm going to delete it. Then maybe for the lake, just two circles like that. That's going to be enough, one more here, actually this rock on the left on the right. Then for the background, I'm going to make one more circle, one like that, like this, one more. You can see the photos, you can see how I make the image based on circles. I'm going to make the same exercise with all of these images. I can understand better how to create this from imagination on the next exercise. See how I'm drawing just like super simple circles for making these huge islands. Just try to remember that in every moment that you're doing this exercise, and also for the clouds, si, as the same. Remember that sometimes you can make half circles, like for these kind of islands. And if you want to give scale to the image, just adding small elements is going to help having that feeling. If you want to make a building to look huge, then you need to add small windows, small people, small cars, and that's how the building is going to look more bigger. So once you finish the exercise, you're going to end up with something like this. If I turn off the photos, you can go ahead and try this and once you're after doing five images, that probably is going to take you like less than 10 minutes. But it's going to help you to understand how these shapes and how this thinking works in order to make an image from imagination. 4. Sketching : Now we did that, and we can start doing sketches from imagination. I will just make this quick square like this. If you don't know how to make a straight line with photoshop, you can just left shift in the keyboard, and by pressing that, you can make straight lines going horizontal or vertical. If if you hold a shift, then you can do things like this. I will choose this composition, but if you want, you can just do vertical, you can do square, it depends on you. Or you can try different ones like horizontal vertical, square, maybe I don't know, maybe if you want to make an illustration that is inside a circle, then you can also do it. It depends on you. Now that I make the drawings on top of the photo. I know how to make work to make my brain start thinking when doing these designs. If I want to make some islands from imagination, then I would just make the horizon line here. You know that when you have an image like this one to find the horizon line, you just need to follow the perspective, which are these lines going like this, and then this building, this roof, going like this. And that's where the punishing point is going to be. But for this one, I'm not going to make the ans of perspective. I just want to know that the horizon line is going to be there. I'm going to lower the opacity and now I'm going to start drawing circles. Let's say this is going to be an island. I have a circle here. Try the less you think, the better because the more you think, then you can just get lost inside your own ideas. I know that sounds really deep inception, like the movie, but it's not. Right now at this stage, you don't need to think how these are going to be islands or how these are going to be rocks in the mountain or just doing the circles is going to be enough because later we are going to gather some photos in order to give the detail that we don't have on this skate. Like this, You can try to think how this is going to be read by the viewer. We're going to go like that. And then if I flip the image, image horizontal flip comas horizontal. Then I know that I have a empty space here, so I can just go and add some smaller islands. This one is enough. I know the horizon line is going to be there, and then these are going to be islands or maybe rocks, or maybe trees. It can be anything. I'm going to make three more. No, I'm going to make two more. If you want, you can make three, four, five, you can choose how many. Once we are done with this, we are going to add some detail on top of the sketches. You should know that right now, I have no idea what is this. No idea. I'm just drawing circles without thinking what they are. You can see how in this cage, I start adding small circles just to create the feeling that this could be some path, going like this, this would be a huge mountain. This would be small pine trees. If the pine trees have size, then the mountain here on the bag is going to be u. That's a good way of adding scale. 5. Define Shapes: So once you finish the sketches, then you can choose one, like if you did three, four, five, six, you can choose one, and then you can start adding detail based on one of the images. It doesn't need to be the images that you use to make the exercise that we did on the video on the first video. You can just choose a landscape image from the Internet that you like. And based on that image, you're going to start adding detail on one of these sketches that you did. So for me, I'm going to choose this one. I'm going to just put it here, I'm going to lower the opacity and I will choose one of the images that I used before from the exercise. Let's say I was going to choose this one, but actually, I think I will go with rocks. On this new layer, I will just start sketching on top. I have a big circle here, so this probably can be just like a rock. I can just draw seeing the image. It doesn't need to be exactly like the image, but just use it as reference. You can see that we have that small rock. Maybe I can just throw something like that here and maybe adding a small cave opening here, that's going to be like a cave opening. Then here you can also complete these circles adding more rocks. The rocks don't need to be too detail, but just try to make something similar to the image that you're seeing on the left. Also, don't try to make every circle that you draw to make it look like a rock. Like for example, here, this circle is not going to be a rock. My idea is going to be more like sand, like a tune of sun going like this. Then this is also going to be sand. This is going to be s. Maybe here on top of these rocks. I'm going to have more sun going like this, and maybe here we could have some character. Or maybe like many characters, it depends on what you want to do. Here, just like small rocks. Instead of doing pine trees on these shapes that I did before, maybe you can just put small rocks that you don't have to put a lot of detail. Maybe here below behind this tune, there's going to be another rock. This one is going to be on the front. You can just make the line a little bit more thick. Now you can see that we have a big circle here, so how can I feel that? Maybe these ones can be more huge rocks, like mountains mountains, like rocky mountains. So maybe for this part of the sketch, I should look for a new image, or if you want you can just keep copying this one, the one that you have. But the thing is, if you want this to be like a rocky mountain, maybe like the mountains from Jordania maybe would be nice to have one more image for reference. But still at this stage, you're not adding too much detail because you're still not painting with color or anything. So this would be enough. Later, you can just add more refined details. So here, there's going to be another mountain but more far away, so you cannot see it, maybe here like a small rocks. Sometimes when you're making the sketch, just try to flip the canvas. Like going here image, rotation, flip cavas horizontal, you're going to be able to see which area of the drawing is looking a little bit empty or maybe not balanced. That's why I flip it. Now I'm seeing that here, maybe it's a little bit empty, so I could just add actually maybe like a rock here on the distance, but the ones are going to be clouds. For this clouds, I would also look for reference images. But right now, I would just draw them like this or maybe just keep them with the circles, and later if I want to add details when I'm doing the color, then maybe I can just go ahead and paint using the reference. Now if you don't know which is the size of this sketch, then you can just add a small guy here. And then you start drawing based on that perspective. Maybe this rock will finish here and then we have the sun going up and then here, this is going to be the size of a character, and then here, this is going to be the size of the character. You follow those ideas and then if this is the size of one character, then there are going to be a lot of small rocks next to that character. So we can see the actual size of this one and the actual size of this one. Now I'm going to start doing the same process with all the other sketches I did with the circles, just like drawing on top. Because of course, like many things, the more you do them, the better you're going to be a doing those things. Don't don't expect to make a really nice sketch on the first t. That could happen. But if you make a good sketch on the first try, imagine if you make ten or 20 sketches. You're going to start seeing you're going to start focusing only on the big shapes and not on super super tiny details, like you normally would do on the first catch. Sometimes it's like that unless I inspire when I start doing the first catch. Normally I grab my pen too strong. After a couple of tries, I just get a little bit more relaxed. Don't be afraid to change the composition if you see something that you like, for example, right now, I'm seeing clouds. So I just made the conversion a little bit bigger on the top area. Always try to play with them medium and big shapes. For example, here I have the big one, medium, and then smaller shapes next to the medium and bigger one, and then also small shapes next to the big one. Try to play with that at all time. Ba sometimes if you make all the shapes big, then everything is going to look like the image is not going to flap like a feeling, like a dynamic feeling. So this is what I end up having after sketching on top of my on top of three sketches that I did. If you have the problem that I had here, that the sketch, it looks a little bit similar to the image that I was using as reference. For example, here, we have the big rocks in the foreground, then we have a lake, then we have a mountain, then we have more mountains. Mine is quite similar, but not the same. The lake is bigger, then we have a small mountain here, like rocks, huge rocks, mountain here, then mountain, and then we have a huge mountain, which is going to be the focal point. And then here on the foreground, I put some pine trees. Like here, the pine trees are on the background here on mine are in the foreground. But still I feel that it looks similar. Like I said before, the more you do this, the better you're going to get at it drawing from imagination. For this one, if you don't have to, but if you want, you can just create a new layer here below the liner, and you can just paint with gray, lower the opacity. Now you start painting and this is going to help you to see which area is going to be the sea. Because on some drawings, it's more easy to establish which things are what things. But on some other, it's a little bit more complicated. You can just do a quick black and white sketch like this. You don't have to pay everything, but with this, you're going to know where is going to be separate by land or by sea. Like that. We have a little bit here. Maybe if I didn't paint this with gray, then you didn't know that this is going to be part of the sea. This is helpful. But don't go too crazy with this. You don't want to lose too much time. You can see here, I change. My sketch actually was everything nature, like islands. Here, I don't like that, so I'm going to erase that, and I'm going to make the sea to be like this. Right now I'm painting, I'm making the sketch with painting and not with liner. You can also do this sometimes if you want if it's easy to visualize the idea. I'm joining an island here. But by painting or erasing, not by drawing. So now that I have this, I can just lower the opacity a little bit more, and now it's more easy to see which is the sea on the islands. So here you can see that I did one more because I didn't like the ones I did before too much. So I just went ahead and I draw one more just to be happy with the last sketch I did. On the rough sketch, I added some quick characters that you can see here. My idea was like something like this image, but also to add some camels walking into a distance, next to the rocks. I add those camels because I want these rocks to have the real feeling that they're really huge. To be able to give that sense of scale, I add these small rocks that you can see that really help on the scale, but also adding a character, which is something that we are familiar with because we know the size of a human being and we know the size of a camel. So if you put these three characters here, then suddenly these rocks are much more huge. So it's not only adding small rocks, you can also add characters. You could also add some tens here. Maybe this is where they sleep at night. You can choose which things you can add. So to finish this lesson, I would tell you like my advice, it would be to just draw at least two sketches based on your circle sketches. So two circle sketches and two drawings on top of those circle sketches with images that you take from the Internet. You don't have to use only one, that would be the best, but if you need to use one for the rocks and one for the rocky mountains, that's okay. But try not to use too many reference like only one maximum two or three. 6. Black and white sketches: So in this lesson, I will show you the black and white technique, which is quite simple. Basically, you take the composition that you want to make, if you want something really white like this or maybe more like vertical. Maybe I can use one like this right now. Put it here. So you can fill it with black. I normally don't like to use black because I feel that it kills the painting. Even if it's black and white, I would just use a little bit more like a gray not a gray but not so black. Fill it. Now I create a new layer clipping and on that layer. Actually, that's not necessary. But if you want to erase the white more easily, then it's going to help you. I put the clipping with pressing left out and click, click. Now painting with white. I will just draw some shapes. I don't try to think too much here. I just go with the flow, see what happens. Now because I have this on a new layer, I can just move it around if I don't want it there because it's kind of in the middle and I don't like that. So I will just put it here on the left side. Once I have something like this, then I can go ahead and create a new one. Late and hide that one, then I will create a different composition for this one because normally I don't like vertical compositions. I really like white. Now I will go again. I will just change my brush because that one didn't like it too much. You can play around also. You can just take a texture brush like this one and do this. For example, if you want, I can just fell everything with this. Let me erase those shapes outside there. Yeah. I create a new layer clipping. Now, if I go ahead and I play around with these shapes, for example, I make the brush a little bit, like this. Right now I have some interesting shapes. I can play around with the transfer. If you want, you can just go ahead, take this control T, and now I will just play around with the perspective a little bit. If you want also, you can play around here. Know how you call these two, but is this one. Yeah, p then you can play around with the shape of these things. Maybe here it will go like that and maybe duplicate flip horizontal. Then play around again with the perspective, making it a bit smaller. For this one, this is enough. Now, for example, if I want like the key on this type of exercise, which you are drawing with black and white, I would say not looking at reference. I mean, you can try is your choice. You can use reference. You can just draw from imagination completely from imagination. Then based on the shapes you have, you start drawing things looking at your reference if you want. But right now, for example, I have an idea like if I group those, I lower the opacity, and I start drawing, for example, you could say that these are country fields, right? Instead of drawing a lot of tiny details like with trees. Instead of doing like this with each tree, I will just draw you can go with the technique that I showed before, which is circles, and those are going to be trees. It is going to be a square like I showed before on the other technique. Circles circles. Remember that sometimes if you want to achieve a lot of scale on your image, you just need to draw some tiny things. For example, here, I'm drawing like a tiny house. Actually, you don't have to put too much detail, just doing a small squares too much. Doing a small square, it would be enough. Then try some circles for the trees. Here we could have the road where the cars drive. Here, we have an intersection. Actually here, they should turn to the left, like that. Then you could continue with this road going like this going to the horizon. Maybe here you can have the sea, this is like a hue beach. One advice, it would be to not try to fill every shape that you did on the black and white sketch with align. If I have ts shape here, then don't try to make t with every single shape. Like As you, to try to give some functionality to your sketch. Like for example, here, I draw the road where the cars are going to go. Here you have the house and here you're going to have a small country road where they can enter this barn or I don't know, whatever this place is. And then later we can draw some clouds. Like the best thing would be to see some reference. Maybe if the vanishing point is here, then all the clouds are going to go on that direction. Then lastly, you can just frame your sketch because you didn't make that line at the beginning, maybe like me. Then you can just turn off the sketch. But you can use it later if you want to start painting the sketch, you can use this as a guide for how the lighting is going to work. Like maybe the strongest light is going to be on the light area, like I did on the black and white sketch. Then as you move far away, there's a lot of clouds in the sky. That's why you have the shadows on the floor. But you can play around. You don't need to be stick 100% to the to the black and white sketch. Here you can see that I draw the horizon line just to know the idea of how the perspective could be, where are going to be the banishing points. For this one, maybe the banishing point will go far away in the distance. It's not going to actually the other way. We are not going to be able to see it here on the horizon line is going to be far away. Right now, the squares that I'm drawing. These are supposed to be statues, which I'm not going to draw in detail right now because I don't want to lose too much time. You can just go like this. First I make the square, then I make the quick shapes. Maybe they have some s pointing out. Then here we have another punishing point going inside like this. And we have some columns, or maybe it's just like a gate where you can go inside the temple and here we have the columns. Then here we have a big statue with two babies or something like that. P. This is the size of the people. Sometimes it's good to know how it's going to be the size of this character, for example, in perspective. If this is the size of the character here, then which one is going to be the size of that same character but placing here? Is it going to be like this, like this, like this or like this? A good way to know that let me just change this horizon line. I think it's too low, I would just put it here. Now, actually, I would put it on the face of the character. Because that's normally when we take a picture with our cell phones. Normally the faces are going to be on the horizon line, crossing the horizon line like perpendicular. That's why I'm putting the horizon line on that part. Like If you see photos, many times this thing happens. Now I have this duplicate control T. You can check here. You have the pivot point, and now I will put the pivot point here and now pressing left out. I can scale the character and know which is the size of the character here. Now I have that and I can start sketching based on that character here. Maybe these are going to be some stairs going up and then here, we have the same thing like more stairs. You can notice that this shape that I'm doing right now is part of the stairs, of the architecture, but also is an arrow that is pointing the character. That it is helping the viewer to see what we want to show. For example, here is first, the character, and then we go to the big temple. You can think when you're drawing that these type of things are a good way to show the viewer things that we want them to see on the drawing. The reason why I'm adding some small elements here, like some rocks that you can see on many photos of Egypt, maybe there's like blocks of I don't know what is the material, but there's different blocks through the landscapes of Egypt. Maybe there are like ruins or something. But I add that because I felt that the composition was falling on that direction because here it was empty. So that's why I put that. Maybe here we can have some guy, which is sitting here just selling some stuff, right? And here you have a carpet where he puts all his products, and this guy is actually trying to buy some of those things. So we have the seller here, which is like a second secondary focal point here, a primary focal point, and then on the background, the huge temple. Et's see these circles I'm drawing here, it would be like some trees on the side of the big temple because I don't want to make everything like a desert. You see on the photos of Egypt, there's no grass. I want this temple to be I really good temple. That palm trees, they have water, they have developed things. Development structures. They have a big market, a lot of people. A lot of life here, they could have more sellers with with the things. But of course, for that, you should see some reference photo reference of street markets, so you can draw all of these things. And if you don't like the sketch, then you can just start a new one because as you can see, I'm not adding any detail. I'm not trying to put too much detail. I'm just trying to figure out which ones are going to be the big shapes, the smaller shapes, the position of each thing. If I have that, if I'm happy, then I can just continue adding and keep adding a lot of detail. Pantries like these pantries are going into perspective, and that's going to help to make this structure more big and also to lead the eye. Remember that I was saying before, the eye is going to this guy, and then it's going here. But if you are going this direction, you're going to be following the shape of the paltres, like the position of each paltry, going again into the focal point. And maybe here that we have this empty space, we could have maybe some clouds in the background just to feel that thing which is falling to the left. And then just some clouds here. That's it. On this one, I did the same technique, but I use reference just to have an idea of what kind of shapes could be the black and white sketch. If I show you quickly, the black and white sketch, would be this one, which I put the opacity at. But yes, something like this. You don't have to make all the texture that I did here on the background. I did that after I finished the sketch, the linear sketch that I did on top, I just put that just to make the sketch a little bit nicer, but that's really not necessary. 34%, 32, 34 is the same. And then start drawing some lines, some trees based like seeing the reference that I have here. Also, I did the lines of composition, this ones, the rule of thirds. Because when I did the sketch at the beginning, everything was looking in the middle, like this rock, This one, it was like here. If I wanted to add a character or something like a focal point, it would be better to just trow it on these points of interest of interest. Then these two are going to be a more secondary focal point, where you can see all the big rocks and the trees among these rocks. Then just to finish the sketch, I put a small character, then add a highlight. Not a highlight, but just like a light on the character because I can see that here, there's a lot of shadow on this area. If I put light here, then the silhouette of the character is going to pop up. It's going to be more easy to read by the viewer. Also to help with the focal point to help the viewer see this character. I put these plants which are like an arrow like pointing to the character, like this one, you see, like the crack on the rock and the leaves. They are all going to the character. Not only that, the shadow here is like an arrow, also going to the character. This rock is going in that direction. Everything is following a direction through the forest. Through the rocks. You can have that in mind when you sketch and when you start designing your own ideas. 7. Steal perspective from photo: Okay. So in this lesson, I will show you how to quickly steal the perspective from a different photo. So first, I would just take the picture that I want where I have, like I have buildings going in perspective. Going to the right, going to the left. The reason why I choose this photo is because we have the building here. Then we have a bigger building going to the top. Then we have a post here, which is in front of the buildings, like the buildings are in the back. Then we have this type of this bench that is also in front of this post, and this post is in front of the buildings. And this bench is in front of this telephone post. And this thing is in front of everything. I like when photo has these type of things because we can play with the deaf much more than if we didn't have any of these things and we only would have the buildings, then this empty would be too this space would be too empty. If we put some things in the foreground, that's good. Now I'm going to start setting the perspective because if later I turn off this photo, I still want to see where the picture is going from, like the banishing points. So going there. You can see how this street is like turning. The banishing points are going to be different. For this building, the banishing point is here, for this building. The punishing point is here. For this one should be similar. Yeah, I think it's almost the same. Once I have that, then I will just lower the opacity of both layers, maybe a little bit more of the perspective. There, 16 21 for the photo. Now I'm ready for start drawing. I put these three photos here just to have an idea of how the buildings are going to look because my idea is that this environment is going to be medieval. I'm going to start drawing some ideas here. I will start maybe with a little bit like a rectangle that we have here the line of the roof where the roof ends. You can also play Like right now, the perspective is going that direction. You can play around and take something from the roof, which is going this direction to to make the shapes more interesting. For example, I have something going like this. Now this could be because we have the window here. Maybe instead of being a straight window, maybe it's going to be something like that. Then because I have this line in the photo, then I can just follow that same thing for making second window. Remember that this line that I'm doing right now, this one is following one of these punishing points. Not exactly which one, but almost the same. So I'm not going to start putting details right now. I only want big shapes, so we can our building here. You can see how I'm drawing the people here pretty quickly. Just to have a sense of perspective. Actually, I'm going to draw a quick one here again because we also have people there walking. This thing, I don't have a reference, but a good way would be to just go to the Internet. If I go, for example, to Bing, I could just write medieval assets, which I write here. And you will have different things. For example, I already have one here. It's a medial market or something like that. I have more here. You can just check in the Internet. You will have plenty. Then based on that reference, you can start drawing this thing, which is maybe place where the people is selling stuff. Don't be afraid to duplicate. We have a chimney here and I can just put it here to save time. Also, don't be afraid to play with the height or, for example, this chimney, maybe is a little bit lower. You can just put it here, and it's going to be a different chime actually looks weird, but you can play with the height. You can play with the height, for example, in the photo, the buildings have the same height. This one, two, you can play with that and this one is going to be higher than this one. Also the same with this one. Otherwise, it's going to be like two like a city, for example, this one could also be a bit more lower. I can play with that. During the entire drawing, don't try to draw try to draw drawing like this. I'm not trying to make them draw like this with two lines. Normally, when I have those wooden planks or details, then I will just draw a simple line like this one. That's going to be enough because if I start drawing with two lines with a lot of detail and trying to make it perfect, and then I realize that this house is not what I like, then I just have to erase and I lost a lot of time building that detail. You don't want to do that. At least not now. Right now, for example, you can see these horses. We don't have a lot of detail on them. It's just like a simple silhouette. You have a clue that here the people will put the horses. Here, we have a set, I'm not doing the small things that the guy is going to sell, just like illusion of detail. Just pay attention. Sometimes right now, I was drawing from here, and this is too big. This is a sketch, so try to keep it a little bit far, so you don't focus on tiny details. But still, you will see me later that I start umm in a little bit on the image. That's why because the buildings that are going in perspective, they are getting smaller and smaller and they have tiny details. But my advice is that always when you're doing rough sketches, just try to keep it far away. So you can see the whole image. Also, you can see how sometimes I draw outside of the composition because the photo is just a reference. But if I want to make the composition much more wide, then I can do that, or maybe I can just erase this part and then start drawing like a much more wide composition on this area because I like that this horse is on top is on the front, and these houses are on the background, and maybe I can play with the shapes and create something interesting here. I don't feel stuck to the photo. But for now, here is okay. Remember to follow the perspective when things are going away, you can see on the photo. When they are going into perspective, all the windows are starting to look like much more stick to each other. You can try to pay attention to that in detail when you draw sketches from imagination. There's a big difference between drawing the window like I did right now, or if I start doing these same windows like this, then everything will start losing the sense of perspective. It's going to look like these windows are huge in the horizontal shape. Be careful with that. Remember to add smaller objects like the one I'm doing right now, for example. Maybe this is some restaurant or something where they put the menu outside, or maybe I don't know, it could be a restaurant, it could be anything. Just play with your mind. Don't get stuck with one idea. Because sometimes seeing the ph that we use to steal the perspective, it can be a bit tricky. Sometimes the best thing would be to hide the photo and you can keep seeing the reference that you have. I was thinking that here the photo was a little bit empty. This part. Even if I move everything, I can see that there's only one sign here, and then all of that area is empty. So I just like the sketch of a market, which I don't like because it's all going the same direction. Maybe some of the houses could be going like this when horizontal, and that's going to look much more interesting. Anyway, this is just a sketch to get the idea, like the rest, once we are from here, we can just start looking for more reference and start adding detail. Sometimes when you don't want to add too much detail to an area, a good way to save the time to do that is adding things on top of the place where you don't want to add detail. For example, here, I have this building, and I don't want to start adding more windows because I already have a ton of windows. Maybe Here, they have some kind of chimi because they are cooking something. So maybe from here, we are going to see some kind of smoke, which is going to cover some of that detail. And maybe here farther away, they have the same thing. So we have more smoke, and that smoke is going a little bit here. On this area. So we don't have to add all of the windows. It can be just like a more sketchy way of making the windows, you don't have to put so much detail like I would do on this house here or for example, this ones. This one, I would call it done, I would call it finish. Just the last touch I did, it was adding this outline to things that are in the front. That's it. If there are places where you think you should do a better rough sketch. Like the one I did here, like this thing, I don't like the shape. I think it's two square and then suddenly it go like this. So if you don't like something, Then you can just erase it completely. You can just take this layer out, then take this thing, erase it and start drawing again because it's so rough, so you don't have to put a lot of detail. 8. Pitch idea for client: So for this lesson, I decided to go to Ju KPT I get one idea. I mean, you can think of an idea yourself or you can just go to Judge PT and for me, it was like I went to Judge PT and I wrote if I have it here. Yeah, concept art idea 30 words. And I gout this one. Actually, first one, I got This one here, but I didn't like it, so I just click here on regenerate, and when I did that, I got the second one, which is this. Now, what is the process? Once I have something like this? You can see that is a towering castle perch on a click. I would gather images from cliff, just like going to Google or Bing or Pinterest. You can choose whatever where do you want to search for the images. I got this two. Now, the thing is that I didn't like it. Too much this one because it has the sea. The description of my idea is in the sea. I don't want that. I got a second one just to create some interesting shapes, not something so simple like this one. For example, I will like my idea is to use this and then to use this one here. The foreground of this one, put it here and then start using this cliff. But also here in the sea, I don't like that, so I'm going to use something like this. I'm not going to copy exactly as this photo is. I'm not going to start tracing doing a line art on top of this. I mean, I'm going to do that, but it doesn't mean that it's going to look exactly like the photo. I'm just going to use the photos to make the idea come alive, and then from the photos, I'm going to start modifying the shape. For the twisted trees that you can see here, ancient twisted trees line the path to the gate, I will use this ones, which I just went to being and I wrote twisted trees, and this is the first thing that appear and I really like it. And then for the sky maybe something like this. I will start from this. The first thing, it will be to cut what do I want from this image, and that's the cliff. For cutting the cliff, I will just select the sky. I'm pressing W in the keyboard to go to the magic one tool, and then here, I can go with 25 maybe, you can play around with that number. If you only want to select the thing in the photo, you can check the sample layers and it's not only going to select the thing in the photo. I want the sky and also I want the some of the C. I can erase it later, but still maybe I can make this better if I select it if I selected right now. Now I'm going to control shift I to invert the selection and now control x control C, control. Now I have that. It doesn't need to be perfect, just have the cliff. It doesn't need to be perfect. If I have something like this, then it's enough, then I will cut this one. To cut the forgon I can first select the C and then invert a selection like I did before, selection, control C, control B. Now I have that, and I will put it here. I will flip it. Remember while doing this thing, remember that you need to think also about the composition. Right now I'm thinking about the rule of thirds, how everything needs to be in those points of interest. My idea is that here there's going to be the twisted trees going up, and then here we will go to a focal point. Maybe also I'm going to have not only the rule of thirds, but also the golden radio composition. Now that I have this, and I will go with the sky. Just duplicate pressing left out and the click in the mouse. So it's going to look maybe like that. That's going to be the horizon line there maybe a bit lower, it could be also good. Then the trees. I think I can go around with this one. Don't think that you need to choose the right photo on the first try. Sometimes you would have to try a couple of different photos until you reach the one that you really like. I think maybe this one is a bit far, can erase with a round brush here. I can make the edges a bit softer. Here we are going to have more trees. Trees going up from below. These ones are going to be a little bit more close to the foreground. Or also I could just use this ones, which on the photo, they are already close. I don't have to scale them up like I just did with the other photo. Trees, trees, then we have the mountains that they are going far away in the distance. Maybe I can use this here. We also have the horizon lines, so we can play with that when we put it here. Now I can just place that same thing there. But I feel that maybe it's a bit too low, so I will put it here and I'm going to cut the sky. If when you press W and you go to the magic one tool and you selecting too much, you can just lower here the tolerance. Now with this, I could start sketching ideas. I'm going to try one more thing with these trees. For selecting, I have two ways. I can I can press W in the keyword and will go to the Magic one tool, and I can play with the tolerance here to select more or less. But for example, if I want to select all the white, hold this white, and I press here and I don't have this check, then it's going to select everything that is similar inside this whole layer. But if I want to select only this area, then I can check that and I will only select this one. If I want to select less, then I can put this at two, for example, and it's going to select less. This is pretty good to making quick selection. Now, let's say that I want a different way to extrude to extract these trees. I can go ahead here, double click. Now I can play around with the white. If I want to erase the white from the photo and only keep the dark, which is the trees, then I can go ahead and move this slide. And you can see the background that I paint. I just paint like a quick just paint this quick background. So I can see how the selection is being made. So I I move the slide. That's how it's going to look. But you can see that now if I press left control and click, I can swim in, and if you press left out, you can swim out. You can see that the edge is a little bit too sharp. You can press left out and move one of these slides to make the edges much more soften. Now, if I'm happy with the result, right now, we have a white edge here, and I don't want that, so I will just move the slide a bit more going in this direction. But also I want these trees in the background, maybe. I can just move the slide like that. That's how it's going to look when you cut it. If I press okay, I can still have that information. For example, I go here, double click, and I move this light again, then I have all the photo again. If you want this, then you can just go and create a new layer and merge these two layers. Now you have all those silhouettes. If you want to play with a graphic shape, you could just make everything dark, for example, just to give you an example, and now you have those silhouette. I could also play around with a banishing point. I can imagine that there's a banishing point coming from below. So everything is being seen from the top for the trees, which is not necessarily right because before I was saying that the castle was going to be on the top more on a higher ground. But also I could just make the trees to go to the right, just to have the idea of a punishing point coming from below. A bit. Maybe sorry. I can go like this. Then I take these same trees. Yeah. Maybe these trees, they are not going to be exactly on the same height. They are going to be a little bit more low in the ground, they're not going to reach so high, so we can play with the perspective going that direction. Yeah, I think this would be enough. Later, I would just grab everything like all these photos like this and I can create a group. Now I will make a selection that I want for the composition, which is going to be this one. On that group, I'm going to create a mask. When I create a mask, everything is inside. One quick thing, if you want to go into black and white, like I just did, pressing only one key, which is control y in the keyboard. You can go here because that's the CM IK mode. But to change it, you can go to w proof setup custom and here when you hit custom, you can just go here on the bag to stimulate and you can put it on 15%. If you put it on 2025 30, I think is exactly the same. If I put it right now 30, you can see nothing change. Now I can just do it really easily. Now that I have the sketch 5% opacity, I can start sketching the idea. What I'm doing right now, it's not completely necessary because like I showed you before, I cut this image, the trees, the shape. So I already have all of them on a new layer. I mean, it's not a perfect layer because if you see there's broken things from the image from the image that I cut before. But it's already enough. If I want to start painting with this, I have the silhouette. Then the only remaining thing it would be to start to start erasing all of those things that look ugly. The thing is that if these are trees, then probably they should have some branches. For the branches, I think the most easy way would be to just take a brush like a branch. Let me see if I have one here. That branch. Yeah, this one could be. Let's say that I want to use the same value and I could just go ahead and do something like this, or maybe a little bigger, like that, and then take that branch that I did. For example, let me use another one. You can create a new layer, put the branch, then rotate it, put it here. And then start duplicating or even cut it because maybe it's going to be the same, but you can just go ahead cut this. Put it here. Now you have flip it, then distort it a little bit, and now you have a new branch, and then you put it Here, you make it a little bit darker, and you start having the idea that all of these trees are full of branches. You continue doing that until you have all of the branches where you want it to be. Then if you want, you can just take the trees like the layer of the trees, the layer of the branches, you merge them, and then you start duplicating and putting them here with the cooler trees going far away. If you want to start visualizing how this could look as a paint sketch, I calling black and white, you can start playing around with the values like the levels right now. I'm trying to see how I can make this look better. Right now, all of these looks too bright. I can go press Control L and lower all the values to make it more darker, but not so dark because it is also on the distance. The more far away, the the less dark is going to be. Usually it's going to be like that. Now the sky looks too dark for myself. I would just go again, Control L to play with the values, make the darks not so dark and make the bright not so bright. Just try to make everything a little bit more flat on the sky. The silhouette, the most important silhouette would be here, the cliff with the castle that I still didn't design. You can see how when changing the values, I can start feeling the image much more. Right now I can feel the trees. Here on the group, I just put the opacity at 100% and I started changing all the values. I can start seeing the trees like the silhouette, the moon behind. Everything started looking more like a concept mode and not like before. Now I can play with the values on these mountains, which are super bright. Play with the dark. Here you can see that I'm start adding branches using different brushes, just trying to mimic the same value. If it's dark, then the branch has to have the same value, otherwise it's going to look weird. Just keep in mind every time you add a new branch. Don't be afraid to just rotate the branch and play around with the shape. Also, sometimes you can refine the trees like I'm doing right now because when I cut the image, there was some parts that they were broken. I was just using a round brush to fix that shape. Here I'm looking for an image of misty Forest, which was the same thing it was saying on the description from the text that I took from Jad JBT. Like I was missing that on my composition. So now that I added, I was much more happy with how the result was going. Also to play around with the perspective and death of the image, I started putting some fog between the trees. That's a really good way of playing with death. If you have many trees, maybe some of them they are going to be hided behind the mist. I was also using this brush that you're seeing right now. I'm going to put that brush on the resources so you can download and use it yourself. It's a pretty nice brush for making fog or smoke, and then trying to keep duplicating branches and always trying to mimic the value of the tree. 9. Castle and last details: For the castle, normally, I would just start drawing on a different layer like I'm doing right now, not worrying about the perspective, just trying to paint something that it looks completely from the front view. Because if I worry about the perspective and I try to draw it on top of the composition, is going to be it's going to be more complicated. Here I can just worry about the shape from the front view, and then just put it on top of the sketch and try to make it on three dimensional shapes with perspective. You can see that I'm only using a reference that you can see on the left. Always try to keep playing with the medium small and big shapes. You can see the trees that are a little bit smaller, then the tower is big, then the house on the front is smaller. If you're not happy with one of the castles that you made, then just go ahead and try another one. Here, I'm just focusing on the front view and then slowly start adding more shapes. Again, playing with the medium, and big shapes. That's why I add a small tower and then a big tower, small windows, big roof, Sometimes adding a small road or path to the entrance, it can help you to get more perspective. Now with that idea, I was able to get a new idea of a tower on front of everything like close to the entrance. Only draw the building, but also things that are outside of the building going into the environment, that maybe is going to help you to make the idea more believable. So now you can see that I was doing like a black and white sketch, playing a lot with the lasso tool. And every time I was doing a roof with the lacotol, then I was painting a gradient behind just to create the sense of death because I was not feeling the sense of death when I was doing the liner. I was just not happy with the designs, or maybe they were good designs, but I was just not feeling the mood, if it's a fog environment, if it's a sunset, a night, and painting in black and white, it can help you to believe more on your design. That's why I switched from liner to black and white. Once I was happy with all the sketch that I was doing because I was not adding any detail, as you can see, it's just a sketch. I start doing a liner on top to add an extra layer of detail. Once you have something like this, you can just paint really quickly with just a simple brush here. If I put 100%, you will see that it's not perfect. But it's already working as a silhouette. If I put the silhouette on top of the cliff, I will just copy that layer. Actually, no, I will copy the linear because I'm going to paint like lights coming from here, from here, just to give a little bit of three dimensionality to the shapes, and I could put that silhouette. If you don't like how it looks on one way, you can flip horizontal the shape like I just did to make it look better. Now I could start playing with the value a little bit just too much the value of the mountain, a little bit more dark. I think that would be no. You can see that this is just a simple photo and then I start using a cloud brush to play around with this fog coming from here. But let's focus on the silhouette now. This wall that I paint, it doesn't need to be like this, like the sketch I did. That was just an idea, but now I'm going to erase that. I will keep it like that. Then I'm going to play around with the silhouette a little bit. If you feel that it's a little bit too small, then you can just make it bigger. It's more easily to be read by the viewer. From now, I'm going to start painting gradients or just trying to make this castle to look a little bit more finished because right now it's just a silhouette with a liner and it's not looking completely natural. I can play around a little bit here with the def also because this mountain it feels like it's being cut all of a sudden and it doesn't look natural. Maybe I can add 11 more mountain in there in the back. Now maybe it looks a little bit more natural. I feel that this is completely flat. I think I'm going to add some trees here. Then here I am adding some detail inside the castle, some light with the gradient tool just to have the feeling that there's a lot of people living inside that castle. These small towers, my idea was just to add some security system to the whole castle. That's why I put those. Don't try to only draw a pretty castle. Also, try to gp some ideas to make the castle more real. Maybe the towers are Protecting the castle from the people that comes from the misty forests. The misty forest is full of part people. That's why they have that security system. The more you do this, the real, the more believable your design is going to be. Now I'm switching to this last to the polygonal lassoto, because I'm going to only work on the shapes of the roof, so I can have the light of the moon being hit on top of each one of these roof. If you don't know how the lighting is going to work because you don't know what kind of shadows is going to be casting like the moon on the structures, then you could just search for reference. For me, I'm not going to do it. I would just do it by like ible, to see how it looks to see how I do it. If it looks too ugly, then I would just look for reference. You can see here I'm adding some small shapes and my idea is that those shapes are going to be trees, but I didn't add any diesel. It was just a brush stroke and that's it. Here, I'm trying to break a little bit with the symmetry because before like, when I was starting to paint the castle, I was having a tower here and two towers here. So if you go here, you have a tower and also two towers. So I don't want that. I want to break with that symmetry. Otherwise, it's going to look weird, it's not going to look natural. So what I'm going to do now is going to paint here to delete. You can see that I'm just painting with the color of the cloud, like I'm just taking the color of the cloud. Just remember that I'm always using the control. So everything is in color, actually, but I'm just working on black and white because I don't care about the color for this design this concept. Now the last thing would be to add some windows, that's it. Here, the last thing is that I changed how the clouds were being positioned. They were too low on the horizon line, so I just moved them a little bit more high. This is how the image end up looking at the end. For the trees, like I showed before, it was just a quick brush stroke, no detail, just the illusion of detail because we are seeing from here, adding some different shapes is already feeling like there's something going on here. But I don't want to add too much detail. The biggest amount of detail that I want is here. On this contrast between the moon and the trees. That's why this is more dark. The dark that I have here, if I use the color picker is around here. If I go here, you can see that it's more bright. That's because this area is more important, like the silhouette of the trees with the branches and the moon, and then the second focal point would be the castle. The secondary focal point would be like the forest with the mist, but that's not the most important for me. That's why I make this part darker and also the castle darker than the other parts of the composition. Other thing that I add is the quick shapes, quick brushtrok that I did, just to have the illusion of tit. You can see that they don't have any title. But when you put them here, this instantly looks a little bit more title. And one more thing is that I changed. And one more thing that I changed is these mountains in the background, like before I was having those and I didn't like it. It was looking a little bit, I know, too pixelated, you can see. So I took another image from the Internet and I put it and I was thinking that it was looking better because it has more depth and also more mist between the mountains. 10. Outro: Hey, so you made it to the end. I really hope that you learn something new on this tutorial, I really hope that this is going to help you to create environments from imagination and help you on your career, every every time a client comes to you and ask you to design something from zero because I know that sometimes to see Cvas and have a complete blank cavas. I'm not having any idea how to start the idea. It can be a little bit challenging. So if you have any question, if you want, you can go to these tab discussions, and here you can start a conversation, ask a question, or share your project. You can also do it here, project and resources. You can go here, submit project. If you can leave a review, I would really appreciate because that would be helping me to keep creating tutorials to help people how to design art for concept art and for their careers. Also, if you want to find the files from the project, the PST that I use on the composition, like the black and white composition, and all the JPTs, all the sketches, all the image reference that I use. You can also the brushes, like the branches, brushes, and the trees. You can go here on project and resources, and you're going to find the files here to download. Any question, let me know, if you want to if you want to stay tuned on future tutorials that I'm going to apload, you can follow me on my different accounts in Sam, R Station, Diviar, and you will see when I apload it, or you can just follow me here in Skillshare. So thank you for everything. Just stay creative. Keep trying new techniques. Don't stay only with one, and I will see you on the next one. Cheers.