Procreate Landscape Painting Techniques and Tips

1. Introduction : Welcome. In my new Procreate class, I'll show you my techniques and processes to create a landscape, including some tips. You will learn how to use the reference photos in combinations to guide you to produce a creative artwork. Learn to use the sketch layers rather than one sketch. So each Landscape layer can be worked on separately. Next, we'll go through the color blocking process. Before beginning the painted texture layers, I'll show you how to use different procreate brushes to make your picture pop. Although mainly I use a soft airbrush and texture brushes. You can also paint your landscape using acrylic or oil brushes. We'll finish off the painting with my favorite magic techniques. We'll talk about the rule of thirds now and then I'll show you my procreate tips, which looked like this. Landscapes captured the beauty and the heart of the country. In this case, I've painted a landscape of a New Zealand field. An added the sacred king fisher as a focal point, including some native New Zealand plants. It's one of my favorite places as I live there for several years, using my process, you can paint your favorite landscape. Perhaps add a bird native to your country. Take a moment to think of a place with happy memories that inspire you. Then find reference photos either from free photo sites like Pixabay and Unsplash, or pictures you've taken yourself locally or on vacation, whatever landscape you decide on. My step-by-step directions will enable you to create your masterpiece. Let's begin less than one. 2. Lesson One The Sketch: Welcome to Lesson one. In this lesson, we'll look at the importance and use of reference photos. And then I'll show you my multi-layer sketch technique. Start off by collecting your reference photos than the free photo sites, such as Unsplash and Pixabay or your own images. Here's some of the pictures I used as a reference from my landscape. The sacred king fisher. New Zealand fields in the South Island, looping branches. And finally Skype photos. From these images, I can pick and choose which parts to use. For example, you may like one picture that add another part at such as the different sky. The next step is to sketch an outline the landscape. But first, I'd like to show you a Procreate tip. Sometimes we want to use a reference photo, but we don't want it to show up. When we play back a video history. We want it to be invisible. And this is how we do it. Simply swipe left where it says Insert a photo and then it will then say insert a private photo. So any reference will not show up in your video history. You can do exactly the same with a file. Swipe left on insert file, and it will say insert a private file. This can be so useful. For example, if you wanted to trace a bird to put in your landscape, it saves a lot of time. Now we'll move on to making our sketch. In Procreate. Go to gallery, tap the plus sign in the top right-hand corner, and choose your landscape. I'm going to choose an A2 landscape. You can choose any size of landscape, depending on how many layers your iPad can provide. The smaller the landscape, the more layers you have. So let's just go to the wrench tool and Canvas and have a look at Canvas inflammation dimensions. This is dimensions of the A2 landscape. Please note the DPI is 300. It's important that you use 300 DPI to get an excellent print quality. First of all, I'd like to show you the rule of thirds. Go to the wrench tool, add, Insert a Photo, tap this image, Fit to Canvas. Now the rule of thirds helps you to make a balanced picture. For example, the horizon line should go on either this line or this line. Or you can just make sure it's near the line. So draw your horizon line and tap to straighten. Or the horizon line could go up here. It doesn't have to be exactly on the green line. Now the grand line could be the edge of a lake. Maybe pushes. The green spots are focal points. And in this particular painting, I've used this focal point on which to place my bird. You can see it's quite a good spot for a focal point. Other examples, you could use this focal point and put a mountain. You could use this focal point. You've got a plant coming in, maybe a flower. You probably won't want to use all the focal points. One is maybe enough maybe to thinking about it in this particular landscape. I've actually used all the focal points. So it depends on the content of your picture. So I will go into layers, swipe to the left and clear. Before we begin sketching, I like to show you another Procreate tip. If you go to Preferences, press the range key. Preferences. Just your controls, an eyedropper. Right at the bottom here you'll see a slider. And if your slider is f around the 0.6.5, you will find that if you move it down 2.2 and press Done. When you do a line or a circle, it forms much quicker. And also when you're color picking, it will speed up that action as well as other actions. So it's well worth spending a couple of minutes just to change the delay on your eyedropper. And now we'll move on to the sketching. I'm going to show you two ways. So tap the wrench tool, canvas reference. And we're going to import our reference picture. Now we can just use this as a guide and hand sketch landscape. So we'll start with the horizon line, tapped to straighten the first mountain, the foreground one, and the rear mountains. But this is a much easier way than this. So I'm going to undo all this, removes the reference photo. Now we'll, we've got a layer there. So we're going to bring in Add, insert a photo, and we're going to bring in a finished picture. But to Canvas, I'm going to use my finished picture to make life easier for you and for me. But it's exactly the same as using your reference photo. So if you're doing a different picture, simply bringing your reference of your landscape. Tap them on the layer and reduce the opacity. Make another layer. Rename landscape. Sketch. Choose your sketch pen. I'm going to choose the six B pencil and choose a sketch color. I'm going to go for a mid blue. And now we'll begin our sketch. We'll start with the horizon line. Hold Japan to make the line straight up and tap to make it level. Just put in the forward 19. Sketching the farmer. Then we'll sketch this foreground little peninsula. And then we'll just do the outline of the lupins. That's all we're going to do with the landscape sketch. We're going to put the plants and flowers and the bird on another layer. So press the Layer icon, the plus sign, and we're going to rename this layer sketch. You will see later why really helps to put the sketches on different layers. So now we'll sketch the bird. That is armpit sketch. Now we'll go to layers plus sign. Rename the layer plant sketch. We'll carry on sketching our plants, starting with the French. Then we have our plants sketch, go to the Layers and create another new layer. And we'll rename this one. Sketch. So useful to just be able to draw with your Apple pencil to rename the layers. I'm putting the class sketch on a separate layer because later on I may want to change alpha locket. You see, when we get to that stage. So now let's do our sketch. We've completed a fly sketch. You want to, you can choose an eraser, pen, studio pen. Back into landscape sketch. I can see a little bit I've missed in the bird. So I'll go back into bird sketch. I'm just put that bit in there. Now you can go into landscape. Choose your eraser, and get rid of any overlying lines. Just to make your sketch look a little bit clearer. I'm just removing the looping online part of the post. Just make it a little bit clearer. So now you can go into inserted image and click it off. And there we have our finished sketch. At this point, I go into gallery, select the sketch and duplicate it. The some reason procreate is showing the underlying image even though I have clicked it off. Um, but as you can see, we've got the finished sketch there. So now we can move on to the blocking in color process. In lesson two. 3. Lesson Two Colour Blocking: Welcome to lesson two. In lesson two, we're going to colored block the landscape layer. But before we do that, I want to show you a procreate that will enable you to fill the color layers very quickly. So let's begin when you want to colorful. There are three ways of doing it. You can draw a line and then drag the color into it. Sometimes you find there's a small white line that hasn't filled in and you have to adjust for that. The other way you can do it is use a select tool. Do you shave? And then it. But a much better way is to you. You select to the top film and then when you make your shape and close it up, it fills automatically straightaway. I'll just show you that again. Like you shake tap and it's filled with the colour that you have selected preselected up here. And that's how I suggest that you do the color film in this next lesson. So let's move on to color filling. Okay, so we're ready to start. Color blocking in the landscape. So go to layers and tap off the bird sketch and tap off the plant sketch and tap off the flower sketch and tap the landscape sketch. And then we just have the landscape sketch to deal with. Next, go to the range tool and canvas and reference and we're going to bring in our reference picture. Now this is the finished picture here, and we're not going to use this one because it has textures and colors that I've added after I finished the picture. So we're going to import this picture without the special layers that will at the end of the class. This is so that you can color pic quite easily. Now if you wanted to make a color palette, go to palettes, press the plus sign and create a new palette from photos. And then you just press that photo and there you have your palette. But I find it much easier just to color pink. And so we'll do that today. Smoothes the picture over to one side. So we're going to tap the select key. Are we going to choose a sky color by tapping? And am I so you can go in and make it just a little tad lighter? Because this is the best colour and we can add light and dark on top of it. But first we need to make another layer and move it. Under the landscape sketch show so we can always see the sketch. Then go to the select key. Make sure your on rectangle. Like a rectangle and in the sky. And it's as easy as that. Now we're going to make another layer, but we can just go back to that one and rename it so we don't get confused later on. So that sky. The new mayor will rename that and call it. Mountains. Now we're going to color pick the light color of the nine things, but this time just move the reference up there. Press the select key. But we going to press free hand. And we're just going to. Tracing the former lynchings. They say they filled in straightaway. Now, if you want to, you can just use the pen on studio pen and just tidy up the edges. Because it's it's difficult to guess this select two exactly on the line. Easy enough to tidy, right? In fact, we'll do a line straight across. There we have it. Now press the plus sign and green nine. This liar. I will call this hill. I will choose a color fairly light one. We'll do exactly the same. Select two. Linda Hill. And then we'll just tidy up. But remember, the sketches are only a guide. So. We can change the shape if we feel like it. Just using the eraser just to tidy this up a little bit. And that will do. Now go into the lion's. And plus sign. She's a new liar. Now we're going to do the water. So we'll rename. We rename it like. Now let's choose fairly light color for the like, and this time we'll go to Rectangle. I would just make a large rectangle and fill in the light. Again. We need to tidy the edge, so we'll just go across. Go into layers plus sign on. This one is going to be our cropping land. So we'll rename this swan. I'll. So again we want to go into the selection to tap freehand choose a color. And then just trace around. Now you can see these two little pieces here. If we press and we can. Make those press up again and we can press on. I'm not set. We just tidy up a little bit. You raise a. And that's a little island. Now we're going to go into the Lions plus and we're going to do the looping. So we'll rename. Lupin's. For this time. We'll go to Freehand again. There's a picture in a little bit so we can see what we're doing. Choose the colour. It's a light one. And just bring it right way round the side. Stop it. And there we have it. You don't really need to tidy this up because we're going to go over the edges when we make the lupins anyway. So there we have our blockchain. Landscape layer. Now as before I would go into gallery, select the work we've just done and duplicated. And then start working on the next part. By doing this, you save yourself a lot of heartache if something goes wrong, because you can always go back to previous version. And now we'll move on to lesson three. 4. Lesson Three Painting The Landscape : Welcome to Lesson three. Now we're going to paint our landscape. The method I'm using is with a soft airbrush and using texture brushes. But you can also use oil brushes or acrylic brushes, depending on the finish look you want for your painting. So let's move ahead. Going to start by painting the sky. So we'll do top layers and we'll go to the sky layer, create a layer of a bucket, click that layer and press clipping mask and then whatever we paint on this layer will appear over the sky. So we'll start by finding the soft brush. And we will be bringing our reference. Now you can see the sky goes from a light to a dark color. Pick that dark color. But we'll have the brush on a lower opacity and a higher. Thickness so we can simply move our pen across. As we get near the tunnel, just a few more layers. So it's dark. That's all we want is a little bit lighter. Choose the light color. What gives this a basis for the sky? You may want to put in some dark patches or choose those. And there we have it. Now I go to layers and choose another layer and press clipping mask. And now we're going to do the cards. So we want a white but not a pure white going to go into our brushes. And we have one for clients that come with appropriate brushes and just a no side for all the procreate brushes you need into one brush library so that you can easily find them without having to look through your procreate brush sections, which is the clients once you can't launch. And then we'll just start to. 14 our clients. Using a circular motion is quite good. To use with the client brush. I want some lighter and some press a little bit more of more times. And then we're going to choose a very light purply color and just go underneath, maybe make the brush a bit smaller and just put some purple. Lavender. And it's just a reflection. But the sky is picking up from the events below. Just give me a little bit more interest. Maybe reduced capacity a little bit. Just a hint. Of lavender. And now we're going to choose a pure white. You can get this instantly by double tapping on the outside of any color towards the top. Now I will put the opacity back on. And we're going to just make the top of the clouds. Weiter. You know, when you look at the sky, players can be all sorts of shapes. All sorts of streaks. It could make the brush a bit smaller and just put a few streaks in the sky if you wanted to. I think I'm quite happy with that. It's so easy to keep playing with crowds. And then we have our sky finished. And I will paint the texture on the fall mountains. So. Going through layers. Top mountains add a layer, top to layer and tack clipping mask and then everything will be contained within the mounting layer. I will choose a colour picker, a darker colour, and then we need to look at the brushes. Maybe the storm will. We'll start off with the wasteland brush, I think. But you can choose any that you like and. We will just start. Choosing different shades. Change your brush. The burnt tree is quite a good one. Who chooses light colour? I think quite small. Just put in some of the slopes. I'll go a little bit lighter just for the 19 tops, then the one you painted mountains to keep it fairly light. Because mountains that are far away. A lighter. More diffused. I'm going to put a lighter line along the shoreline. Like a sandy beach almost. I'm going to choose a much darker color. Just make some depressions. The actual edge of the mountains will tidy up later. At the moment we just concentrating on doing the bulk part. I just wanted to say, if you wanted to make it an oil painting or acrylic, simply choose the the oil paint brush. And applaud apply. They will paint like this with the acrylic brush. I'm the same. I'm going to undo that because I'm using texture brushes. So I think that's enough for the moment for the mountains. And now we're going to paint the hillside. So choose the hill, add a layer and clipping mask. I'm going to choose the snow gum and a lighter green. Just to give some foliage texture. Change to dark green. And then choose a third color. And then we're going to choose this sun color and change the brush. Maybe the wild grass, probably quite small and just puts a little trail going down the hillside. And then we'll go across the bottom as if this a little sandy beach, maybe another few sandy places. I think that's it. So now we're going to look at the outcrop, the little island. So choose the island, make another layer clipping mask, and we're going to choose a lighter color and change our brush. You can use any of the brushes and just choose the ones that you think will give you the best effect. See their raw brush is quite good for the island. Turn it off a little bit. And we'll just color pick the. Lavender. Just put some. Little love in the pieces in. So the the island ties up with the mainland. And we're going to choose. Dark color. Or broom just to give plenty. The texture and contrast. Remember all the edges will do a little bit later on. 5. Lesson Four Painting The Bird: Welcome to lesson four. And this lesson we're going to paint the New Zealand sacred Kingfisher. We're colour blocking first and then we'll put the texture on the bird. So let's get going. So now we'll start to block in our bird. But first of all, pop the wrench key and go to canvas and reference an import. Our reference which remember this is an intermediate picture before it has the special finishes on just so we can color pick more closely. So going to layers on top on this bird sketch, make the bird bigger so we can see it clearly. So go into layers, make a new layer, but put it beneath the bird sketch. So on this new land, I'm going to choose a color. And try to choose fairly light colors. I say the colors are only base for the main painting, so I've chosen a color. Go to the select to make sure it's on colorful and freehand and then will begin to color block in the bird. Put your brush on studio phone so you can just adjust any spaces that you've missed. Then we'll carry on filling in the rest of the bird. And I'll speak this up for you so you don't have to waste where I feel the burden. There we have kingfisher colored blocks, so go into layers, plus add a new layer and then tap clipping mask to make sure everything you paint on this layer goes into the low one. I've provided for you all the procreate brushes in one folder, so simply go down and choose any of the textures that you feel will work. I think I use Sable quite a lot on the bird, so now I'm going to start with the head. And start to put the texture on the bird. And you can see because it's clipping mask, the texture doesn't go over the edge exactly the same as of lock. And I'm going to. The texture on the whole bird and all speed up the process. But all you need to do is to choose. Different brushes to give different textures. Now we need to tidy the bird up, so we'll go through the layers, add another layer, but we won't make this layer a clipping mask because we need to put some texture around the outline of the bird and fill in any gaps left from the colour filling. So for example, here we've got some little spaces that need filling in. So just go round and. Check all the areas. We'll go back to the sable brush. Who would just go around the edge and make it less defined. At this stage, we could switch off the bird sketch. That gives us a clearer view. I think that Sable is a little bit too. Texture to the edge. Let's try the willow charcoal. Make it quite smooth. That's a little better. Just to break the edge up slightly. And you can see this some little bits here that need filling in. Don't need to do all the edges. We can have some softer edges and some firmer edges. See there's a little bit missing around the foot here. Just tidying the whole thing up. Just check for all the. The lighter and darker pieces. I say I've missed this red flash here, so we'll just put that in. Just check if there's anything else that we've missed. I think that's about it. So I don't think that songbird finished. 6. Lesson Five Painting The Flora: Welcome to Lesson five. In this lesson, we'll be painting the plants and the flowers. As before. We'll colour block and then put the textures on. So let's get started. So now we're going to work on the branch and the plants. Going to layers and make sure the plants get you switched on. Often you layer. And place it underneath the plant sketch. So now we're going to colored block in the branches. And the plants. So make sure you're on freehand and colorful. Well, start by choosing. A color, a base color, and we'll begin. Not SOC color blocking done. Now we're going to go into the layers, add a new layer and make this layer a clipping mask. And now we're going to paint in the lights and shadows and textures. So we'll start off again with the brunch. I'm going to choose. The burnt tree texture. So I asked before I'll start to put the textures on and speed up the process for you. And now we'll make a new layer, but we won't put it on a clipping mask and we'll just go over the parts and tidy them up. So I'm going to go back to Studio Penn. And for instance, this plant here really needs widening. So here, I'm just tidying up the ashes of the plant. I may be filling in some parts near the base. Change color and not an extra plant in the. Go back to. Texture brush. Maybe the damp brush. Want to do architecture on here. Here. Go back to the studio, Penn. I think at this point I'll turn off the plant sketch. That we can see more clearly now what needs to be tidied up. I'll go over to the other side. I think we need to use the damp brush because you've got a little bit too much texture on there. So I'm going to use the damp brush and. Just reduce the texture a little bit. Let's switch back to the studio pen and just tidy up some of the entries. There. I think we finished the brunch and the plants and now we'll move on to colorful and put texture on the flour layer. So we're going to our layers, turn on the flour scratch, make a new layer, put that layer underneath the flat sketch layer so we can see what we're doing. Smooth picture over a little. And now I'll begin to fill in the flour layer. Well, because these are quite tiny. I think we'll just fill them in using the pen. The studio pen. We've got more control over the shape of the fires. So, again, our speed is up for you. Now we've done the color blocking of the flowers. So now we'll go in and turn off the flower sketch and have a look. Can see that there's some little bits that probably need touching up here. But don't worry too much about those, because we're going to put texture on top. So now I will make another layer. I will make this one into a clipping mask. Choose a texture brush. Maybe the will willow charcoal would be quite good. Now, you notice there's some dark bits in here, so we're going to choose that darker color. I'm just going. And put that dark. Same in that. And then we're going to choose a light color and a dark colored to put the light and shade in the flowers. So I'll just carry on and speed this out for you. I can see that you know what to do. Then I will just make another layer. But we won't make it into a clipping mask. We'll leave it as it is and we'll change back to the studio open and just see what needs tidying up. Just a little gap there. Not very much. And that's fly like a done. 7. Lesson Six Let’s Make Some Magic: Welcome to lesson six, the final lesson. I've called this lesson. Let's make some magic because here I apply several finishes that lifts the painting out of the ordinary. So let's see the method I use for the final finishing touch. Here's our painting. At the intermediate stage, we're going to go into layers and other layer right at the top. And we're going to bring in a texture. Press Fit to Canvas. Go to the Layer, press the N. And we're going to put this layer right down to twenty-five percent opacity. Now you can see what a nice painterly texture we have. Go back into layers, add another layer, going to the end, and go to Color Dodge. Going to choose a color. I like to go for an orangey color because that will actually come much lighter on the picture. Choose a soft airbrush. The opacity about 70%, and the brush about ten per cent. Now looking at the picture, we'll see that the light, It's coming maybe from here, the left-hand side. So now we'll put some other lies on the hills. Just worthy. The light from the sun would more than likely touch the top of the hill, will preserve a little bit of light on the the outcrop. Make it smaller. That's too much. So reduce the opacity and put the size up. And just tap gently. Add the light to the little island. Put the size right down. And we'll just add some light to the top of the king fish's head. Right down. A little bit on his beak. We could go to a smudge brush, put that down, and just merge that one on his beak. There. That's a little bit better. Let's put a little bit of light on his back, maybe his chest. Now we'll go along and put some lyse. Put the brush smaller. Keep adjusting the brush depending on where you're applying. The color dodge. So we're just going to go along the top of the branch. And you can see how that brings some branch to life. Maybe a little bit on the leaves. Now I make the brush bigger and we're just going to put some lights behind these plants. A bit smaller and just put some light streaks on the leaves. Then we'll go to the flyers. Quite small and just brighten up the flyers. I like the color dodge technique because it's injects lice and movement into the painting. Just lifts the ordinary into the magical. It might put a little bit of sunlight on the green hill, perhaps highlighting the path. Just use the smudge brush to spread that a little. So just play it by sun and put lice. What do you think it's appropriate for a little bit more on the brunch. I think that's enough. So finally we're going to lay as again, press the plus sign. And we're going to bring in a paper texture. Fit this to Canvas. Go into the layer, press the N, and we'll turn the opacity down to about 50. Then we'll set it to multiply. So that's a positive 50 and the screen is multiply. That just gives us some more texture. If you like, you can go back into the textures and such as the first one we put it in and maybe put the opacity down a little bit more. There. I think 20 per cent is, is better. So play about with the screens. And at last we have our finished picture as a sacred king fisher and the New Zealand field. Thank you for staying with me right to the end of the class. Now we'll go into the wrap-up. 8. Class Wrap up: Thank you for joining me and my first Procreate class. I hope you've enjoyed the class and picked up tips and techniques to move you forward in your artistic journey. I would love to see your paintings of your favorite landscape. Please upload them so the whole class can enjoy and appreciate your work. Finally, please take a moment to give the class a review. Thank you again for joining my class. If you'd like to know more about me, please visit my website, www color story.com. Thank you so much. I started my creative journey writing books and audios, as you can see here. Then I return to my first love art and created all kinds of art. Finally, I have 20 years of mind, body, and spirit articles to help my readers navigate our complex world. I think you'll find it very interesting to visit my website, color story.com.