Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello. I'm Nick. I'm an artist and illustrator. I love painting semi-abstract landscapes, both in acrylics on canvas and also these days in Procreate on my iPad. In this class, I'll taking you step by step through my digital process as I demonstrate two different landscape paintings with very different moods. We'll be covering all things in the class including inspiration, composition, subject matter, tricks for giving the illusion of depth to landscapes, color palettes, brush palettes, alpha lock, clipping masks, and lots of other tips and tricks for using in Procreate. When you finish the class, you'll be able to use these methods to create your own original landscape paintings. Let's get started.
2. What Makes a Landscape?: There are countless ways of painting landscapes and no wrong way to do it. Some are realistic using prospective light and shadows and true to life colors. Mine are much more abstracted in general, creating an atmosphere and just giving me a real feel of a landscape. I like using lots of layers of color and texture. In general, a landscape painting has some or all of these features. Firstly, a horizon, or at least a suggestion of one. Try not to plunk it halfway up because this usually looks a bit odd. One-third or two-thirds the way up looks great depending on whether you want to put the emphasis on the sky or on the ground. The same goes for any major horizontal or vertical lines. Dividing the Canvas in half tends to look a bit strange, whereas a third, the way across looks a lot better. Asymmetry is always good in landscapes. This is an approximation of the rule of thirds. Won't go into great detail here, but you can look it up if you want to know more. Let's look at skies. A big sky with dramatic clouds can look absolutely amazing. Remember of course, that your sky doesn't have to be blue think about gray skies, dark night skies, or even colors that you just wouldn't see in real life. Of course, you could just not have a horizon at all. You can divide your landscape into areas. Firstly, the background, this can be the horizon itself. It can be some far away hills, mountains, fields, trees and so on. Next you got a mid-ground. This is really just anything that happens in between, very far away and very near. This could just be empty space or it might have a lake or river, maybe some trees, hedges, fields, buildings, roads, paths, you get the idea. My mid-grounds tend to be fairly empty in general with plenty of texture. Then there's the foreground. This is much closer to more details. I like using plants, flowers, birds, or animals in my foregrounds. This often become the focus of the painting. Of course, if you're going more abstract, it can just be an area where there's more fills lot of texture. You don't have to have all or any of these in your landscape. Of course, rules are meant to be broken.
3. Ways to Suggest Depth: There are lots of ways to give the impression of depth and distance in your landscapes. Here are some of them. You can use perspective. For example, in this photo, the lines formed by the crops get closer together towards the horizon. Where they meet is called the vanishing point. In procreate, there are perspective drawing guides to help you. If you go to the spanner or wrench settings, choose Canvas, switch from the drawing guide, and then tap Edit drawing guide, choose Perspective. It's up on the canvas where you want your vanishing point to be, and you can move this around until you're happy with it. If you switch on assisted drawing, your lines will follow the perspective guide. I'll tuck them when I'm ready. You can switch assisted drawing off and on when you need to in the layers palette by tapping on the Layer and unchecking drawing assist. With it switched off, it means that your strokes are no longer constrained to the grid. You can also add extra vanishing points for more complex two and three-point perspective. You can even tilt the horizon. Perspective is a whole subject in itself, and that's why I don't use it very much in my artwork. I won't go into it any further here. If you want to make realistic paintings and drawings, though, it's well worth learning about. You can use horizontal lines to divide up the Canvas, giving a sense of breadth and space to a landscape. The landscape closer together towards the horizon. You can look at position. Things at the top of the page or near to eye level are just assumed to be further away in a landscape painting, even if they're actually the same size. However, you can play with the size as well. In real life, things farther away appear smaller. You can make things look further away just by reducing their size. You can also use aerial perspective, where things in the distance are hazier, they're lighter, cooler in tone, less saturated in color, less detailed, less textured, and with less contrast. For the forward, you get the brighter and more detailed object. You can overlap objects as well to show what's in front. You can use a winding path or diagonal lines to lead the viewer's eye through the painting. It's a great idea to go to a gallery and have a look at how artists over the years have used these methods in their own landscapes.
4. Finding Inspiration: Let's get some ideas. First where I find to start is to take a walk, go for a bike ride, to catch a bus or train. If you're, lucky you might be able to just look out of your window and find a view which resonates with you as a starting point. If you were unable to get us in about, you can have a look at Google Street View. Find somewhere inspiring there. I love to drop the little man somewhere random and just see what's around. Look for anything that interests you and snap some photos with your phone. Make a quick sketch or jot down a couple of notes to remind you. These don't need to be pretty that just a starting point to get your creative muscles warmed up. This is just a car park, but the trees caught my eye. Might be the colors which inspire you, or the shape of a hill will maybe a place which means something to you and brings back happy memories. You will sketches off all factors don't have to be copied exactly. We're just capturing an idea. You can edit them as much as you need to. You might all select to take some photos of something to put in your foreground as well. Maybe you can add in or leave out anything you like. You can combine different sorts pictures. You can use artistic license, change the colors and mood as you wish. You only limits are your imagination.
5. Thumbnails: Next we're going to make some quick thumbnail sketches of simple compositions to get some ideas of the direction you want us to take. You can use a pen and paper or you can go straight into procreate for this. It's make six squares for the thumbnails, and of course you don't have to work square. You can use the traditional landscape or even portrait formats if you prefer. This is how I set up my thumbnails in procreate. Press plus in the top right corner for new canvas, I'm going to work at screen size for this one. Go into the Spanish settings and choose Canvas. Social, the drawing guide and choose edit drawing guide. An interpret my thickness all the way to max to make it easier for you to see, and it's put my grid size at around 100 or they don't have to be exact about it. Then I'm going to turn on the assisted drawing at the bottom right here. I'll press Done at the top right when I'm ready. Brushes library under sketching, I'm going to choose the procreate pencil and in the color pallets, in the classic color picker, and then take the picker all the way down to the lower left to give black. If you prefer, you can take it partway down to give a gray. As a drawing assists on my lines again to be perfectly horizontal or perfectly vertical. I will draw six squares for my thumbnails. Then in the layers palette, I'm tapping on the layer and turning off drawing assist, and then in the Spanish settings, I'll turn off the drawing guide as well. If you're drawing your thumbnails directly into procreate, try and put each one on its own layer. If you want to bring in thumbnails that you've drawn somewhere else, take a photo of them and more pop them onto your camera roll, and just going to spend the settings to add and insert photo. Once it's popped it in, you can drag these corners to bring it to the right size, and it's obscured the boxes so you can either just struck that lay a dam below the box, or if you prefer, a backup, you can press a little in here, and this gives the layer blend mode, the mode is so normal if you scroll all to multiply, this means that the white parts of your drawing on now see three and the rest of these I'm going to sketch straight into Procreate to using the Procreate pencil. I'm just using dull gray. This put me just really looking at interesting and appealing ways of dividing the canvas into areas. Continues horizontal lines to give a sense of width and space. That's collides give a feeling of height. Type in the lines lead the eye through the space, and curved lines give a dynamic field and often a softer feel as well, is a very much working sketches. So just keep them simple for now. So I'm going to write who've ideas that can be interpreted in different ways. Some of these I might develop, some of them I won't. But if you carry on making these and make a number of pages of these, there should be something that catches your eye. Once you've decided on a thumbnail, it's a good idea to try out a tonal and colored variation to check out and how the different areas work together. If you do this on the thumbnail, then it saves philosophy problems later once you spend hours on the painting. Here's an example of how I developed a painting from the initial inspiration of some black from Boson, which was actually in a not very lovely cop-out list where I used to work to the thumbnail sketch with color idea notes, then a tunnel version to mapping the dark mitten light tones, and these tonal variations make a huge difference to your finished results that you need to have plenty of contrast in the areas where you want people to be looking. I've added a very quick color wash to make sure I'm happy with it, and then this is the final painting. This is another example of some pretty Bluebell woods Snake come to be in prey in spring. This is my initial sketch, then the tunnel version, and then with added color, and the final results. One more this time from a bit of a rubbish snap of our local woods, zoomed in and cropped out with distracting tree trunk. I particularly like the way the sunlit up below bushes. I also have this virtue of Medea, which I'd taken at a wildlife park. Here's my sketch, the tonal version, the color sketch, and the final painting.
6. Refining the Sketch: I've decided to develop this middle sketch on the top row. I've been meaning to paint this for quite a while. Where I live, there are lots of orchards and they look so pretty in spring with white blossom in the tiny paled green leaves. I saw some geese wandering about in an apple orchards, and I thought it'd be fun to paint. Took a quick photo on my phone to sketch from. I like to draw a lot of versions of something and that way I can pick the best ones to use, and also drawing something over and over let's you become familiar with it and really gets a feel for your subject. My thumbnail for this phone is pretty simple. It's a very basic layout to map out where I want to put everything. I've drawn in some trees which I'll refine once I make sure I'm happy with the composition. I’ve put a scribble in to represent the geese and a winding path between the trees. The sun seem to be very hazy as if it's just about seeing trees same early morning mist. I'm not going to have a horizon in this one. I'm not going to do tonal sketch because I'm just going to have darker trees on lighter background. It's going to be a bit lighter at the top and darker at the lower edge to give a feeling of distance, moves up to keep some tonal contrast with the geese which are going to be white. To make a new Canvas, my painting file by tapping the "Plus" on the top right, then tapping on this icon for custom Canvas, you'll get different maximum Canvas sizes depending on your iPad pocket. I'm going for 7,000 pixels by 7,300 DPI, which shows he gives me six layers. From careful, that should be enough. I'm leaving all the other settings as they are, and I'll press done when I'm ready. I'm going to bring in my original thumbnail. I'm in my thumbnail sketches file, I'll go to the Layers palette, tap the layer I want. This is why I pre-teach thermal its own layer, by the way, and they'll choose copy. Go back to your painting canvas and in the spanner or rent settings, choose Add and then Paste is pasting it really small due to the difference in sizes, but it's just a sketch so it won't matter. I'm using the corner handles to re-size it to fit my Canvas, and then I'm going to tap on the blue transform arrow at the top when I'm done. If you'll sketch with some paper, you can just bring it in from your photos like we did earlier with the thumbnail. I want to raise these blobby bits on here, and just bringing my geese. It's going to go to my Eraser. Make sure I'm on a nice, decent Eraser. This one is the airbrushing hot air brush. Then am going to get to my gallery, that's my goose sketch. I'm going to use these particular ones because I quite like the arrangements of them. If I wanted to cause lactose, just move them around on the page to make them in the exact position I want them but quite happy with them like this. I'm going to go to my Spanish settings to Add, and I'm going to copy the whole Canvas, then go back my painting, go to Spanish settings in the Add section, and choose Paste. Since pasting them in the size I drew them, which actually is a perfect for the working force, I'm going to leave them like that and I'll get to the last pallet and ligate layout. I'll tap on the end for the layer blend mode. Choose that to multiply so that my geese are now on the see through background, and you can see that tree is right in the way now, so I need to move him by going to the right layer, gets my Selection tool, make sure it's on freehand. Just draw around the tree, and then tap on a Transform tool and just leave it off to the sides a little bit, that's better. Tap again to de-select. Now we need to refine my sketch rather so that I can use it as a basis, my painting, so I'm just going to go into my original sketch layer, press on the end and just take the Opacity down. I want it quite pale so that I can see what I'm doing on top of it. Then I'm going to insert a new layer above the geese layer to be my refined sketch layer. I've come back to my Procreate Pencil. I think this will move a retina and events in order to get minutes through. Then switch off the layer see how that looks, that's getting better. I'm not a 100 percent sure about this trees, so I'm just going away and take a break and come back and have a look at it in a minute. Often that way you see things that weren't quite what you wanted. Another way to do this, I'm just going to group the geese together with the top layer by having the top layer selected with the trees, I'm just going to slightly move that geese layer off to the right and this is grouped them together for a transformation without actually making a group as such. Now I'm going to just go into the transform and its clutches everything on those layers, and I'm going to flip horizontal. Let's just have a look at that, so doing that often makes you see things that you wouldn't have otherwise. I'm saying that all these trees have gotten definite slope to the side, that's policy the way I'm drawing. I'm just going to choose this tree and I'm going to choose transformed tool. I'm going to flip this tree horizontal just to give it a bit of balance sake, or this one with the main direction going off here, and then this one's going off that way. Let's see if there's anything else I want to do to strengthen some of these or remove some of these, and then I'll flip it back the other way. Some next fit to tool, apple trees around here or very short, so they're easy to pick. I just flip it back the other way so that my two layers selected, let's flip it back and de-select. Just kept on refining it and get it to hopefully down to my final sketch so this time to get for another layer. In a change to heavier pencil service time, it'll be the 6B pencil which should be thicker and darker. Now I've drawn the trees in fairly accurately so that I might just use them as they are in the painting later. If I zoom in, I've done this with 6B pencils is still plenty of texture there. They're not going to look to mechanical and my painting. I'm going to see whether that's going to work or what manage to do some further work on once I get going. It's always a work in progress and you will have to make these decisions as you go along.
7. Color & Brush Palettes: As well as sketches and photos, it's useful to collect color palettes as you go to use in future projects. These can be painted in your sketchbook or written descriptive notes, photos you take to pick colors from, or just digital color sketches. To keep your color palettes harmonious. It's a good idea just to stick to three or four main colors and use lighter and darker tones of those. So I'm going to start by going into my color palettes and making new palette by pressing the plus. It's likely down here so I'm just going to bring that up to the front. I can give it a name. I'm going to go to the Classic Color Picker. The first color I'm going to use I actually go pick at the moment. Let's start with that one. I'm just using standard technical pen from the inking section. Something not too textured, anything will do like that. So I'm going to draw a circle, I'm going to tap on the color chip and just drag it over to fill that circle. Then I want lighter and darker versions of that. So I'm going to tap on the color, and then the classic color picker. I can go for a lighter version by just pulling this a little. Actually you can see that the little circle that moved up as well. Let's go for a much lighter one. Then I'm going to get back to my original color by tapping and holding on it. This time I'm going to get darker by sliding it down here, and then I want something in between. The reason I'm doing these blogs is just make sure that it should look okay. Because sometimes when you just got these tiny little squares, it's hard to see. Once I'm happy with those, I want to pop them into my color palette. So on each one I'm going to tap and hold to select that color. Then just tap on an empty well in the color palette. I like having them in order like this so that you can see totally what's happening. Mix Taiwan to much more vibrant green. I'm going to just slide the hue slider along here until it gets something roughly that I want. Then let's just move this around until I get a good color. Let's try this one. I'm looking at something that's like a crisis springy green. I definitely want that one, so I'm going to pop that in there. I've gone on and just modified that a little bit and given myself an entire color palette, which is all based on the pink, the orange, the zesty green, and miss muted Louis green. I might not use all of these colors. When it comes down to it I might be using a lot less, but this is my starting point. So to all of these colors in my palette, I've arranged them in a way that makes more sense to me, tonally from dark to light. Then I ran out of room for these, so I've just put them at the bottom there. You can rearrange them very easily by just tapping on the color and moving it to an empty space. If you tap and hold, you get the choice to delete it or set it. Setting it is what you do if you want to replace an existing swatch in a set. I use both the light and the dark interfaces while I was making this class. I hope that's not too confusing. In the latest version of Procreate, you've got lots of new brush choices along with all the old favorites. I'm going to take a bit of time to try them out, see how they work on this size of image, how the colors blend or cover each other. Then decide which ones are going to give the look am after. I'm going to make it new brush category for the brushes I like best. By pulling down the brush categories to reveal the plus at the top and then tapping it. I can rename it by tapping on the name. Go back to the set where the brush that you want to copy is. Swipe left on the brush to reveal the menu and choose "Duplicate". The new Non-Native brush has a low Procreate squiggle on it. I'm going to drag and drop it into my new category by hovering over it until category name gets a little darker and then let go. You can duplicate any brush this way. But if it's a Native Procreate brush, you can save time by just dragging and dropping the original into a new category. The original stays in its original category and the copy will appear in your new location. Making a variety of marks, I want to see how the brushes work together, how they layer and have a smudge, opaque layer, and how they react to pressure. I've put all my favorite tools in my new brush category. But there are still too many really, if I use all of these in one painting, it's going to probably look a bit of a mess. So I'm going to narrow it down to just a few by making a new layer and using the brushes in exactly the way I'm intending to do on painting, just to get a better idea of how they'll look. This is what I've ended up with. I've moved all the ones I want to use for his painting to the top by pressing and dragging them into position. I encourage you to make your own choices. But if you'd like to know the ones I'm using most are the spray paints category, the Flicks, and the Splatter. In the inking, I'm using Ink Bleed because it has nice textured edges in lines. In the artistic, I'm using the Larapuna for glazing. In the painting category, I'm using the Dry Brush for subtle texture, and the Old Brush for bolder texture. In the inking category, I'm using Dry Ink. In the painting section I'm choosing Nikko Rull, Wet Acrylic, Turpentine, and Stucco. From the textures, I'm using Grunge. So now we're all ready to start painting. Hooray.
8. Start Painting: Let's have a look at what we've got. This is the original thumbnail sketch. I added the geese. Then this is the rough sketch which was refined a little bit. These are the refined trees. Then I just pop the path and some back on another layer. We've got the color pallette ready to go. I'm just going to touch that, which is going to keep it up all the time. You can put this anywhere you like. You can swap over to different parts of the palettes, well, if you want to. We just organize my layers. I'm just going to get rid of that original sketch. We don't need that anymore. Or the slightly refined one. I'm going to keep that tree sketch on its own layer and in fact, I'm going to lock that layer so that I absolutely do anything to it. For now I'm just going to stick that down at the bottom. Then I'm going to merge together the layer with the sun and path on it and the layer with the geese on it. They are in quite separate parts of the canvas so doing so, it's not going to give me any problems. So I'm going to tap on that and choose merge down. Then I'm going to make a new layer to start painting on and I'll just leave that above the others and switch the others off for now. So it's time to get painting. I'm just going to start by dropping in a color. I'm going to choose this medium dark pink. So I'm just going to drop that in to fill the entire canvas. It looks a bit drastic, I know. But if I was going to be painting on canvas, I would be priming my canvas with a colored primer in order to have that show through and give some warmth to the finished painting. as well as that using colored base layer and adding glazes on top really harmonizes your color palette. You could also do this by filling your background layer with color. So I'm going to make a new layer to work on. I'm going to use my favorite Larapuna brush. I'm just going to check the size of it. So I'm going to zoom in a little bit. That's a good size. I'm going to [inaudible] up at the top. If you are going to be using a brush in a bigger size, then it comes normally, do just check that it looks okay if you zoom into it. Now I'm going to zoom out so that I've got the whole canvas showing because I don't want to be having to lift my brush off in order to move it. Some brushes overlay strokes better than others. So it just depends on what brush you're using. I'm going to go for this great pale, minty green. I'm just going to go in and start laying down some texture. So I'm just having a look at this, making sure that I like it as it is. If there areas that you think could work better in other way round, you can always go in with your transformation tool and you can use the rotation or the flip in order to get the areas that you want and the places that you want. But I think I'm quite happy with this as it is. I'm going to add another layer. Chose this very pale maples yellow color. I'm going to put in another layer of very light glazing in the area where the sky is. Just pressing very, very lightly because I want this to blend in [inaudible] it's not over the whole thing. So you can carry on just building up your layers of paint and this is a very translucent brush. If you're using a bit of a hefty airbrush of course you can always play with the blend modes here and just see how they look. You can adjust the transparency as well. Although I think I prefer to treat it just as if I was painting on canvas and just use the right brush to start with. Having cats is lovely but they're not always super helpful. You can see that layering the colors is giving it much more depth. This is what I would do with a traditional acrylic painting on canvas. I just keep adding very thin layers. I'm going to go for one more. This just might overdo it. I can always get rid of it if it does. Let's switch on and off the layers. You can see the differences makes. So I'm happy with that. Because I don't have many layers to play with, I want to merge that down. I'll do the same with this layer too.
9. Add Details: Happy with that texture, I want to now knock the texture layer so that I can't mess it up by accident and then I'm going to add a new layer and start putting some details in. First thing I'm going to do is to make my sketch layer visible. This is just the sketch with the sun and the path. Open that up just below my new layer so that I can see what I'm doing. I'm going to zoom right in. Just using our painting brush to put in the sun and I'm using the same color. Let's switch off the sketch layer and see how that looks. That's fine. That just gives you the look of a hazy sun shining through the mist, hopefully. Let's switch that sketch back on. I think I'm going to work on the trees next. Let's bring the trees sketch up. I'm also going to lock the sketch layer that's gotten some on it as well. Let's switch that sketch layer off again and to bring my tree layer visible. I'm going to make a new layer directly above it and I'm going to make this one a clipping mask. This means that everything I draw it in this layer will only show if there are some pixels on the layer below. To show you how it works, I'm going to scribble all over this lowest tree. If I turn the clipping mask off by touching let's say, clipping mask, you can see what's actually on this layer. This is scribble. Attend the clip you asked lock on. It only shows what's on top of the trees, so that someday you can see if the layer is a clipping mask because it's got, can you see this little arrow here? Is well, it's not the thumbnail, it's slightly shifted towards the right. This means it's clips to the layer below. This means that we can work on it without disturbing the layer below. If there's something that you want to change later, you can do that. It's not a destructive way of working. Working on my clipping layer and first thing is just put some color over the trees. I'm going to start with this dark pink and using my painting brush and then I'll do a couple of orange runs or so. It's a bit of variation. If I zoom right in, you can see that we've still got a little bit of texture there. Because where I drew with a 6B pencil on the sketch layer, paint is just sticking to those pixels. Now I'm going to take my brush size right down and you don't have to do stripy trees, but I quite fancy doing some stripy trees. I'm just going to put in some stripes. Just playing with the colors and how they work with each other. Always be aware of what's going on with the tones below. If I did something really light on a tip from a distance that gets lost. Just be aware of how what you're doing is working with your other layers. Okay. I'm going to go through and do all of my trees like this. Now I'm fairly happy with the trees. I definitely don't need status to separate layers. I'm going to merge the two tree layers together and to do that, I'm going to swipe to the left and unlock that lower layer. I'm going to get to the clip right here, tap on it and choose merge down. The reason I keep doing this is I've only got six layers to play with, so I have to choose what I want to merge them and what I don't. If you get to a stage where you're really not sure whether it's right to be merging yet, you can always go back to the gallery and duplicate your entire painting. That way you can get back to any layers that you've missed. Now I'm going to sort out the path through the trees to make that layer visible and I'm bringing it up to the top. My sun layer, I'm going to just put that down out of the way so that we can just be a bit more organized. We lock the tree layer again as well just to keep it intact. I'm going to put a new layer on for my path and for this one I'm going to use the sticks, which is in the drawing category of the brush library. I'm going to use this very pale, almost white color here. I'm just going to play around with the size of this brush to make sure it's okay. Let's just try this out. I like this brush because it's got the texture and it looks like something you'd really paint with. Let's turn off the sketch layout and see how that looks. Let me just put another layer in because I'm going to lighten this up underneath that have enough layers. I'm actually going to merge the sun down to the texture layer. Let's push another layer in, just underneath my drawing layer. I'm going back to my painting brush to merge both the path layers together, that's the drawing layer and then the painting layer. Then we strike the whole path layer down behind the trees. I'm just looking at that, I might just bring the path layer down a tiny bit as well. I'm going to go for my Transform tool which has transformed everything on that layer and just strike that down a tiny bit because I don't like the way it's working with that front tree.
10. Geese and Finishing Touches: Next it's geese time. I'll go back to my layers, we're going to turn on my sketch layer that has the geese summit and I'm going to make a new layer and I'm going to use my Larapuna brush. Let's just do a quick test to make sure that the slicing is going to work. I'm jut going to paint in the main shapes for my geese. I'm going to look at them without the sketch layer underneath. They look a little bit messy. But okay, I'll turn the sketch layer back on. I'm going to neaten this up in a minute so don't worry too much about it. Scale and just watch the bits that will be at the top of the geese where the light to be landings, so I'll get it more land here. Add a touch of shadow. I'm going to go in with the eraser and a just clean up a little bit. I'm using the 6B pencil eraser for this. So it's still a little bit of texture. Let's see what that looks like. I think I would like to have some pencil marks on these geese. I'll just try to work out how I can consolidate my layers now in order to have enough layers to put that in separately. I'm going to actually make a duplicate of this in the gallery. I'm just going to merge my text allowance into my base layer, and that gives me room to put a new layer at the top for the geese, then I choose the white. I'm going to use the 6B pencil again. I just wanted to define some parts of geese. Then we need to put in the beaks and the feet on the new layer behind the geese. I'm just going to pop some eyes in. I think I'm just going to do it straight on to my geese layer. So if I switch my sketch, I can still see the geese eyes through the paint because it's not very opaque. Now I have my trees, I have my geese, I've got a path, I've got my sunset, all the elements are in there. We just need to do some finishing touches. I need a layer, which is around here, so it's going to merge my geese together, and I'm going to put a layer on top of my base layer. I think what I want to do now is put some shadows underneath things that need shadows. I will use the dry brush this time. I'm going to use this pink. I'm just going to put some shadows in under the trees. When I paint with acrylic, I'll actually just do this, use a dry brush and just pop in some shadowy bits. I'm going to do the same underneath the geese. This is also just putting bit more texture in the foreground. Because this is spring painting, I'm going to put a little bit of blossom on top as well. Let's merged that one down. I'm going to get rid of this goose sketch layer because I don't need that anymore. I need to unlock it first and then delete. I'll put in another layer which is above the trees and start with some white, and this time I'm going to go for the flicks. The flicks came from this spray paint section. Just suggestion of the blossom on my trees. This is the equivalent to splattering with a tooth brush and some paint and size up a bit. Just put some down in the foreground as well. A few flicks down here, maybe some even bigger ones. Just added a couple more finishing touches. So I have just a little bit more to lighten up the background using the light pen or brush and I've used the dry brush to give a bit more texture to the foreground. I think that's finished.`
11. Painting Demo 2: First Stages: I'm going to demo another painting. This time I'm going to bring in some of other methods that you might like to use. This one has much more of an optimal winter feel to it. Its based on a birch tree, which used to be outside my studio window. These are my initial photos. My rough thumbnail, slightly more refined sketch, and a combined tunnel and color version. I wanted it to be mainly in neutral gray shades, but with also pops of color on the leaves. She painted this some years ago, but it was far too small to be useful. I thought it'd be fun to recreate it in Procreate. I'm using a very simple color palette and the same brushes as in the last painting. This time I'll go in straight in and paint because I don't feel the need to bring in sketch right there. Let's start with the background, which is a gray sky, typical of where I live in the southeast of England on a November day. Let's start by dropping in a dark gray by tapping the color on the palette and it's drag and drop that color onto the canvas and then use some whites with the larapuna brush to cover the top parts of the canvas. I want some of the darker color to show through and give it a nice texture. I'm going a bit further down from where I want my horizon to be. This is a lot like using fairly soft acrylic paint. To add another layer and do exactly the same again to give it plenty of depth. I don't want this guy to look too exciting. It's just supposed to be a background. But I do want it to look like it could rain at any moment. I'm going to merge those two painty sky layers together and then start a new layer. I'm going to put one more sky layer in exactly the same way as before. I think that will do. Throw in a mesh that one down as well. Next layer is going to be the ground, and it's the similar color to what we've got on the screen right now. Its going to make a new layer for that. Because I wanted to have a nice sharp edge. I'm going to start by choosing a Selection tool and then at the bottom, I'm going to choose rectangle and then just about two-thirds throughout the page. Make sure that my selection goes off the edge. Now I can only draw within the selection. I'm going to use this mid gray color and drop that in. I'II deselect by tapping on the selection tool again. Let's turn on the alpha lock by sliding the layer to the right so that I can't draw outside those pixels. I'm going to use a larapuna brush and a slightly darker version of the gray to go in and give that some texture. Then I'm going to use the dry brush for more texture. I'll make a new layer and I'll use a clipping mask to confine my straights to the layer below. I'm using the slightly lighter gray and it has very, subtle effect, so I'm not sure if you're going be able to see it very well. I've also added a little bit dark texture the same way, but is too boring show you. Now I'm going to merge that down. I want to lighten the foreground up little bit. I'm going to make a new layer and make that a clipping layer. I'm using a lighter color and I'm using the dry brush but a larger version of it to add some quite subtle, but quite big texture. I'm using both the brush and the eraser version of the same brush. Just check her like that layer by turning the visibility on enough. Then I need to merge that down. Then I'm going to merge that one down so that we've got the sky layer and then this foreground layer altogether. I'm going to press some stripes into the foreground now to give more of a feeling of depth. I'm going to add a new layer. I'm going to go for the Selection tool and make sure it's on free hand and it's on add. Starting at the top left of my foreground, I'm going to be drawing some 300 stripes just there and back to start with and then I'll carry on down the page, making them a little bit further apart each time, a little bit thicker. You don't have to do this in one continuous stroke, you can lift off your pencil and then start again where you left off and they'll turn that back to the beginning. Then I'm going to choose the fairly dark color. I'll turn off the lower layer so we can see what's going on. The stripy part is not going to have anything on it. I'm going to just drop that color into the whiter bits. Now I'm going to deselect and just make a couple of adjustments by using the inky pen and the eraser. I'll turn that lower layer back on. On the stripy layer, I'm going to turn on the alpha lock. Then I'm going to use the darker color and the larapuna brush to add in some texture onto those stripes. I'll make a new layer and make it a clipping layer and use the dry brush and the slightly darker color again. I'll merge that layer down again and we'll move on to the next bit.
12. Painting Demo 2: Adding Detail: We start with a new layer using the brush and a very dark gray. I'm going to draw in my tree trunk about a quarter of the way in. I'll drop in the color to fill it. With some brushes when you do the colored drop, you get these white edges. To avoid that, if you hold your finger onto the picture once you've color dropped, you get this slider. Let's hope this is color drop threshold. You can move your finger left or right until that white line disappears. Then to use the same brushes and eraser just to change that a little bit. Then I'll add a new layer on top of the tree trunk. I'll make that a clipping mask. I'll use the old brush and a light color to add a layer for the bulk. I'll merge that down and make a new layer. I'll make it a clipping layer. Now I'm going to use zinc lead and a really dark color just to go in and look at what's there already and put small stripes in it with the chalk. I want to add even more texture to these stripes. I'm going to use the old brush and a lighter gray color. What I'd really like to do is make another clipping layer clipped to the stripes, but I can't do that. Instead I'm going to duplicate the stripe layer. Let's turn off the top one. That's really an insurance in case I don't like what I do on that level one. This brush is matching the stripes. To start with output the Alphalock on this lead, stop that happening. While I'm doing this, I'm just taking care to make sure that there's still a difference in tone between the tree trunk and the background. In some areas I'll need to lighten it just to give that definition. Then I'm going to take the Alphalock off and just merge those stripes a little bit in some places. I'll explain so I need to delete that top layer which I didn't end up using. I'll merge these stripes down into the trunk as well. It's time to join the branches. I want to use the ink bleed for fine line, same texture, and a mid gray which will show when the dark and the light areas or low. I'll change this later. Now I'm going to put the Alphalock for that layer. Till I get a perfect line along the horizon, I'm going to go and use my selection tool on rectangle. I'm going to draw a rectangle right over that darker foreground section. Then I'm using white. Really any brush you like. I happen to be using the [inaudible] quotes. I'm just going to fill in all of the areas where branches are below the horizon. Against that dark bits and you can see the contrast really makes it stand out. Then if I tap and hold on the selection tool icon, I can modify my selection. I'll choose invert so that now all the sky areas selected and the foreground isn't. Not really going a lot darker. This time it's not nearly as dramatic. In the same right out just to check that everything's looking balanced and working okay. Then I'll make a new layer to put my leads on. Meant to use the orange and the ink pen to draw in a few leaves. Then to Alphalock the leaf layer. I'm going to use a couple of different brushes and also a few different shades of the red and orange in order to get these leaves really nice and smushy. Then I'm going to make a new layer and make it a clipping mask. I'm going to use the flake onto the leaves. Once I'm happy with the leaves, I'm going to merge the two leaf layers together. One of these leaves isn't quite right. I'm going to go into the selection tool and choose the free hand selection. Using transform tool I'm just going to move it a little bit and rotate it so that it looks more like it's falling off the tree. That's our painting done.
13. Final Thoughts & Project: I just want to quickly show you a few more examples. This woodland became home to my fox who started life on this tiny scrap of paper which I doodled during a work meeting. So apologies to my old boss about that. Here he is in his much less sunny forest. I love snow, and this rather fuzzy picture led to this sketch. Then finally, this frosty seen. Pretty meadow in Bordeaux in France which we drove past annoyed to the supermarket became this painting, and here are a couple more for you to finish with. I hope you're feeling inspired and full of ideas. For your project, please post your landscape painting. It would be lovely to see some sketches too. I love seeing the class projects, and I do what I was looking at them. Don't forget to follow me to be kept up-to-date with my new classes, and please post your classwork on social media using the hashtag nick squirrel skill share. Thanks very much, and bye for now [MUSIC].
Nic Squirrell, Artist and illustrator
