How To Sketch Landscapes: Tutorial

[Music] so i think this is now the third or the fourth time that i've tried to make the audio for this video and i've seem to have finally done it now so that's good um i bought a shiny lovely new microphone so hopefully you can hear me a lot clearer um and just a lot better now um and yeah so this is the new video finally this is about starting and sketching landscapes and when i start a new landscape i always begin by sketching out my idea first like you can see here and when i do this i want to make sure that my workflow is as trouble-free as it can be i essentially want to create readable sketches in the least tiring way i can and that's not just because i am a little bit lazy it's just because sometimes you need to kind of get work across quickly and in you know efficiently i want to reduce the unnecessary doodling and put my ideas down in the best way possible this is what this video is about and you know i'll describe the workflow i used to accomplish this kind of sketching you might have noticed straight away that i'm not using lines and i'm not creating line drawings for this this is because this workflow is based around the idea of creating shapes with big broad brush strokes instead of sketching in a typical line drawing style and i do this for quite a few different reasons firstly i feel like this is a quick way of putting down marks and building shapes it's a way of getting something down on the canvas immediately that can start to resemble the main elements of the composition secondly working in broad strokes stops you from getting too caught up in the smaller details as well by making longer strokes across the canvas you'll be instead focusing on the larger shapes in the image instead of trying to worry about the smaller rocks and trees and all these little things you don't really need to think about at this stage so one of the most important things about this workflow is about creating brush efficiency and that comes from choosing the right brush for the job brush efficiency is a way to describe how we put down marks in the most minimal and streamlined way it's a term that covers how we use the brushes and tools at our disposal to draw and design in the least cumbersome way that we can it's about avoiding doodling small and you know unnecessary little details and trying to focus on the overall shape of the design instead that's what i think anyway another way of describing what good brush efficiency is is using the least amount of brush strokes as possible to get your idea across this comes from varying the brush size that you're using or grouping values together into more simple overall shapes and just trying out different brushes as well as there are literally infinite possibilities when it comes to custom brushes it can be a little bit daunting when there are so many brush packs out there that you see other artists using the key is to choose the best brush for what you're painting and with landscapes i find it best to use some while sometimes use a brush like this it's flat and it's got like a little bit of teeth to it and it allows for large shapes of rock and landscapes to be put down quite quickly i actually made this brush myself to create that kind of nice or almost pencil kind of look and i found it's quite good for sketching in the beginnings of stuff like this yeah like the rocks and the overall simple forms that you see at the beginning it's all about experimenting with these brushes to see what marks you can get down in the quickest way and then morphing in changing those marks and brush strokes with the eraser the smudge tool and the mixer brush or you know anything else that you can really find in photoshop this workflow is about putting down those large shapes and then cutting into them and focusing on how the light is hitting those simple shapes that you're putting down you saw at the start i started with a large square like rock formation thing and by then painting into that shape i've started the process of showing how light is hitting it therefore starting the process of hinting at the form that it might have and i will put this brush down in the description as well if you'd like to try out for yourself i think it's important when putting down these shapes that you don't try to be really exact and really stiff these are meant to be rough and fluid and they don't have to look exactly the way you're thinking in your head right now don't get too caught up in the worrying about making them look perfect because of course this bit is all about creating rough ideas that you'll then refine later is meant to be sketching at the end of the day so another thing that makes it easier to create efficient artwork like this is to make sure that you've got a setup that kind of allows you to do so um and really it's about using all the digital tools you've got as much as you can the keyboard shortcuts for example that you set up in photoshop or whatever program you're using but i'll just be covering photoshop here um will be the key to speeding up your process and making it all feel less cumbersome for the most part i actually just use the default shortcuts in photoshop and i'll go over the ones i use the most here the brush tool it's pretty simple enough it's already on there right now and of course it is just the brush tool as we know it following on from that to change the size of the brush um i tend to then use these open and close bracket buttons and they are also like i said the default ones for photoshop just no just does that pretty simple the next is the eraser i think we all know what the eraser does but i'll just show you anyway the next is the lasso tool hopefully you're seeing just how easy it is to move between these tools when you've got them set up in this really simplistic shortcut way and then we have the smudge tool as well and then this is really useful for being able to see around the canvas more and it's always a really good idea to pan around the canvas as much as you can if you are zoomed in so for example use a space bar and move with the mouse to get a better look around the canvas and then finally the eyedropper tool which well yeah which is also known as the color picker as well and this allows us to quickly pick colors i've set this as this button for me um but obviously if you're using a pc or a different kind of computer you'll have to set it up in in a place that's easiest for you the next thing i'm doing is making sure to put each part of the landscape on its own layer like i have here on the right and what i'm trying to do is breaking down the sketch into things like the background the mid-ground and the foreground for example this is a really important way of keeping things organized in the painting while also helping you to visualize the depth that you're trying to achieve as well i've done exactly that here and i've placed each element of this sketch on its own layer at the bottom of the layer palette down here i've placed the sky at the bottom meaning it is underneath all the other layers then going up from that i've sketched in the far away background mountains then at the main large mountain that will be our focal point and then the foreground mountain on the left you don't have to sketch things in that order the good thing about working digitally is that you can do certain things in whatever way you want to obviously at this stage anyway also make sure to not be precious about using layers as well it's fine to use more than you think you need no one is going to tell you off don't worry i clearly don't label my layers here but if you feel like that will help you understand the layout of your painting you should definitely do that obviously when i'm doing client work i will try to work in a much more organized way and i will label things if i need to especially if i then need to send that psd off to the client as well there might be times where you have to hand off the working file like i've just said to someone else in the pipeline and if they can't navigate through the mess of layers that you've created much like i sometimes do myself that's obviously pretty annoying and i've had lots of experiences where i've obviously created a psd and then sent it off to someone and they've been like what the hell is this we can't use this so that's that's taught me to you know try to be as organized as you can but when you're doing fun things like this and just playing around don't be too worried about her because you're not going to be sending off to anyone are you so if you are doing this yourself if you're following along with this video now i would definitely say to start by making these three layers and labeling them background mid-ground and foreground like i said and then try to stick to each of these with the appropriate elements that you might put on them one of the main things that i'm doing when i'm sketching like this and i'm using this efficient workflow is that i'm not just you know sketching and marking things down onto the canvas i'm also using all the tools that are there and available in photoshop for example one of these is moving and skewing and changing and warping the different marks that i've put down and this is something that you shouldn't be scared to do you shouldn't be afraid of moving and transforming the marks that you've put down and this includes the layers that you've made as well just to clarify what i mean by that a little bit um in this video you might see me make a mark or start sketching in a part of like for example a part of a a road or a rock or some kind of mark um that i think kind of looks and works quite well i might then duplicate that and then move it around a little bit around the canvas and place it somewhere else where i think i could also use that mark as well again like the reason that we use digital tools is because they make creating artwork much more streamlined and experimental and if you feel like one part of your sketch is working but like you know it needs to be bigger or it needs to be moved or it needs to be duplicated um we shouldn't be afraid to do that you don't have to try and punish yourself by thinking you need to paint in every single little part of a sketch uh if you can repeat and move elements around then you should just do it like like everyone is using these tools to be as efficient as they can and yeah again that is why we're digital painting at the end of the day isn't it you know we have to put the same level of for and process into what we're making but if we can find ways to kind of speed up a little bit then we should do that i feel like there's sometimes an idea where you really have to suffer you know to make artwork in the right way and that is an inverted commas you know like if you're not drawing everything completely like a traditional artist would you're not actually making like real art and that is complete rubbish and you should ignore anyone who makes you feel guilty about using digital tools so i think before i carry on talking about what i'm kind of technically doing um it's probably good to talk about why this kind of sketching is important really so to make an effective and readable landscape you need to plan a working composition before moving on to anything else jumping straight into the small details before getting a feeling for the entire composition is a bit like painting the leaves of a tree before really knowing what the rest of the tree is going to look like the objects and shapes in a painting are all relative to each other and can either help or hinder the overall composition of a piece depending on where they're placed and what they overlap with working out the composition by working with big shapes first lets you find setups that will help the small details stand out while also helping you to create the image in a less time consuming way it's all about efficiently getting and yeah i keep saying efficiently over and over again don't i but getting the idea in your head down on the page or onto the screen in this case painting small unnecessary details before anything else will usually be much more of a time wasting exercise as you don't know exactly what you should be focusing on in the whole painting in this video i try to stay zoomed out as much as possible and this is so i don't get too bogged down in the small details and i just focus on putting down big readable shapes by keeping it more zoomed out and away you can see the picture coming together as a whole instead of focusing on a small area once these shapes are down and placed where i think they look good i can then start refining them as i already know the overall placement of them is working so overall i always try to make sure i've got a working base composition before moving on to anything else as i mentioned before when you're working with clients as well as a concept artist you sometimes need to create a lot of ideas in a short time too and any way that you can create work in a fast and timely fashion is great and this workflow is literally just one way of doing that now i'm gonna move on to the second sketch and i'll use the exact same kind of workflow again and i'll start to try to go into a little bit more technical detail as well the idea of this sketch was to work out the shape of the main mountain first i started by putting it on its own layer and working out the shape of it by using broad strokes and shapes like i did with the last one like i mentioned earlier i'm still trying to minimize the brush strokes i'm using to create simplified shapes and i'm sticking to a simple idea of the background mid-ground and foreground using darker values as we get closer to the camera and i'll explain a little bit more about that later i'm building a simple shape that i will then work on more later on in the process like the previous sketch i'm trying to sketch out a mountainous area a little bit like monuments valley in the us and following on from that a little bit i i do tend to get asked whether i've already got an idea in my head before i start sketching something most of the time i do but only a very rough idea of the kind of composition and shapes that i want to put down i don't have a completely planned out and detailed idea on my head it's mostly just the general layout and subject matter that i want to do you can obviously spend a lot of time thinking over what you need to put down for an image or if you're just doing a sketch you don't have to do that either but i do find that you know at least thinking a little bit along the lines about what you're going to do is uh you know much better than just throwing yourself into something with absolutely no thought at all but obviously it's also important not to be too hard on yourself if it doesn't look exactly the way that you wanted it to you can see here that i've started adding in lighter values to give the idea of atmospheric perspective into the sketch in less confusing terms this is a way of starting to create depth in the sketch by adding a lighter value i'm trying to push back the mountains in the scene while also hinting at fogging clouds and dust and other things in the air that can create a haze in the landscape i talked more about atmospheric perspective in my earlier tutorial video and if you want to learn more you should go and check that out again i'll put the link to that in the description as things get further away they lose detail and definition and if you emulate this in your sketches you'll be able to quickly create the illusion of depth this feeds into the idea of using different levels of contrast at different levels of depth in your sketch to explain what i mean by that a little bit in a landscape be it real life or painted most of the time you'll find that things that are far away from the viewer end up being lighter and have less contrast like i just mentioned so conversely things that are close to the viewer will end up having more contrast and will look more like normal more contrast in this sense means that there's darker shadows to an object if that object was further away from us these shadows might become lighter meaning they would have less contrast this is because there's more distance between us and the object and this is a really simple way of creating depth quickly in your sketches as you can quickly hint at not only how far why certain things are in relation to one another but you can also start hinting at the scale of objects too you can see here that i'm using the lasso tool to quickly block out shapes and this is another way of speeding up your sketching process you don't always have to draw every little thing in with the brush tool and using selections is a good way of creating a sharp and graphic look in your sketches and it's especially useful when you want to make your sketch look more readable too using selections to erase away parts of the shapes you're creating is a good idea as well i use this tool like all the time and it's one of the biggest things i use when i'm quickly generating landscapes like this and i use it quite a lot to kind of keep the look of my sketch clean and bold now i'm starting to paint into the main mountain shape to start creating form of lighter values in other words i'm starting to build up how the sides of the mountain look and i'm starting to turn the 2d shape into more of a 3d form by adding more detail into the shape to do this i use the color range selection tool and again i've i've talked about this a little bit on my other video so i won't go over it too much again but you can find this in the photoshop top bar menu under select and then color range but you could also use the magic wand or the quick selection tool to get a similar result but i prefer to use the color range tool um i'm now starting to show how light is hitting the form of the mountain and to show counter change which i will get into a little bit more later once i've made these selections i then start using broad strokes down the side of the mountain to start showing the form of it you can hopefully see how i'm trying to just affect the inside area of the shape or in other words not trying to change the overall shape of it changing and tweaking the overall shapes is something i'll do a little bit more later um if i want to you know tweak things a little bit or add a bit more detail but as i said earlier um we already should have the overall shape there already and we don't want to now change that the only thing we want to do is add detail into it and this is essentially the workflow i say essentially a lot don't i this is essentially the workflow i use to efficiently again render shapes in the landscapes i'm sketching and i would recommend trying this process out for yourself so again like this process of making a shape getting the shape down to kind of look how you want it to and then painting into that shape and creating form uh from using big broad brushstrokes try using tools like this like the lasso tool and the color range tool or clipping masks as well to render only inside the shapes you've made once i've made brush strokes indicating the form of the mountain i can then do the exact same thing with these marks and start indicating lighting as well much like how i've been making the rest of these shapes i've selected um within these new brush marks i've made the ones that are on the side of the mountain and as you can see here i've started using the brush tool to slowly build up a nice soft gradient onto the side of the mountain indicating that there's a little patch of light bursting through the clouds and kind of hitting it on this particular area i might also use the gradient tool later to do a similar thing with this as well what i'm trying to do here is to play with counter change and counter change is when lighting on a form changes from dark to light or vice versa usually created as something moves in front of a light source like clouds for example or something like that there is more to it than that but for now that's just a keeper that i like to use this kind of lighting shift in a lot of my paintings because it immediately gives the piece an idea of scale as only parts of an object are in light while the rest stays in shadow this creates the impression of there being more to an object than we can actually see while also hinting at a larger world outside of the painting's boundaries this is a cool thing to play around with and i recommend looking up james gurney's definition of counter change to really get a better idea of what i actually mean by this and following on from that like a rule of thumb i tried to follow um to make interesting like lighting setups on my shapes once i've drawn them is to avoid creating lighting setups that are equally in light and shadow i try to make objects be lit asymmetrically and that's because asymmetry for the most part looks more pleasing to the eye and with landscapes it's always a good idea to create a pleasing visual balance you can do this by avoiding symmetry in your landscapes for example i've placed the main mountain for this sketch off center and that is counter balanced by smaller mountains next to it when trying to compose a landscape sketch it's a good idea to experiment with balance as much as possible by putting lots of the same shape of the same size everywhere that's not going to create an image that has things like flow and perspective and scale and ultimately it won't look pleasing to the eye avoiding symmetry in your canvas will help you create more interesting compositions in the future i probably will now that i'm talking about it will i will make a video about this hopefully so moving on to the third sketch um for this one i'm gonna try something a little bit different and i decided to move the horizon line this time higher so instead of having a scene where we were looking up a landscape like the two ones before this we'll instead be looking down through and into some kind of valley as i've done before um i'm starting by setting out blocks of grey and i'm once again using my big wide toothy brush that i talked about earlier you can see that i'm using the brush to kind of set out um a pathway here and again i'm trying not to use lines for this like i'm trying to instead think about the shape of whatever this pathway might turn into again i'm trying to focus on keeping my brush very large right now and using that kind of wide mark that it gives to really put down some large areas of paint all at once so i'm thinking more about these big um areas of rock and shapes i'm trying to put down instead of like i said focusing on very small areas instead i'm trying to get the whole composition in before moving on to any kind of smaller details i'm continuing to use the process that i've already set out in these earlier two sketches as well and once i've got down a mark i then quickly switch to my eraser and i cut into it a little bit even though i'm cutting into them at this stage it's all about just trying to refine this very rough stage of the sketch and trying to get these shapes looking more pleasing the idea i'm trying to go for of this is some kind of rocky valley and hopefully you can now see the shapes coming together to kind of form that kind of idea one of the main things i'm trying with this is to really try to lead the eye by using this pathway that i've put down that that first moves like off in a diagonal to the right and then comes back to the left and this is like a very kind of basic way of trying to lead the eye to where you want the viewer to look i'm going to put the focal point for this where the eye kind of ends up being which is around here in painting one of the most common ways to make an image work is by making sure that the viewer is looking at what you want them to actually look at so to do this we use things like lines and shapes to force people to follow the flow of objects and eventually end up looking at a specific place on the canvas i tend to think of it as a bit of a roller coaster um which is a bit of a weird analogy but go like go with me with it um your eyes are moving up and down certain lines in an image and they tend to follow these lines down to a specific place we usually want people to find their way to the focal point as this is where the most interesting part of the image will be [Music] so again the way that i've used this basic path is a bit like this i've tried to force the eye to look a bit this way and then to the left hopefully also creating a nice bit of visual balance too as i'm also playing with asymmetrical shapes additionally i'm also using other lines to do this too like here and here i'm trying to push people to look at this area as it will be the focal point this still feeds into creating an efficient landscape as you don't need loads of detail to make sure your viewer is looking where you want them to simple shapes can do loads more than you think when you place them in the right area keeping things at this level of low detail and simplicity is the way to create a better image further down the process using only simple shapes to lead the eye is the kind of balance you want to strive for when you're making lots of quick sketches like this you can hopefully see again i'm using the same process as before i'm making a selection of this rock in the foreground and i'm adding a very slightly lighter value into the shape to kind of start adding more form to it one of the other things you hopefully start to see in this one as well is how i'm trying to repeat very similar shapes over the course of this sketch and i do this to kind of give a sense of the place being all in the same area but also to start building the piece's own shape language up of course these are all very pretty standard simplistic shapes but these are the building blocks to making environments that have their own kind of worlds to them when you're sketching environments you obviously want the environment to feel real and like you're actually looking at a believable world so by repeating certain elements but also not repeating them in such a static and linear way you can start to make the world feel like it's actually got its own life to it for example if you could imagine like a world that had so many different shapes of rocks and trees and like just everything all over the place it'd be really hard to kind of put your finger down on what that place was it would seem very alien and if that's the kind of thing you're going for that's great but to make a piece feel grounded you need to kind of have a level of repetition in it to make it feel real and as i said just now that repetition doesn't need to be linear the point of doing environments is trying to repeat elements to make the place feel real but also not doing it in such a way that it seems that they are placed there you want it to look natural and this is something that comes with time and it feeds it directly into how you compose an image overlapping shapes and moving them and morphing them and stretching them is a really good way of one practicing your compositional skills but also to maintaining a shape language to your pieces and the more you play around with different shapes and layering them and overlapping them in a piece to see what kind of works best for you the better you will get it overlapping shapes is one of the most important things in putting together a sketch quickly as well because it's a really quick way of adding depth to your sketch if you had a bunch of shapes all lined up next to each other with no overlapping it would be impossible to tell what the kind of distances between you and that shape because you can't judge the depth for something and you can't judge what's behind something and what's in front of something one of the last things i'll talk about before i um let the video just play on and i hope you've enjoyed this like obviously this has been quite um much more of a quick overview of a few of the little things i do here and there um obviously in the future i'm going to try to make some more specific videos that focus more on all these topics and if you've got any questions just pop them in the comments below but one of the things i probably should have talked about a little bit earlier was the idea of value grouping as well and the way that i've tried to cover these sketches is that i've obviously simplified down a lot of the form of these rocks and these shapes what i've really tried to do is to really simplify these shapes and as i try to make them into more of a 3d block um i'm not necessarily that worried about all the tiny little details on the sides of them i'm really i'm just taking them down to like their basic 3d geometry and this moves into kind of the idea of value grouping so instead of me painting all the tiny little bits of variation of value or texture and things like that i'm trying to simplify things down when i paint like this into an overall value or grey that covers all of one side of one form i've simplified how dark mid and light things are instead of really getting into all these different value variations that are obviously there more in real life and that's kind of the final thing i'll say the way to really paint efficiently is to not again i've said this load worry about details and worry about textures and worry about things that you paint and render later on in the process to paint efficiently you need to group values together and what i mean by that is that you need to simplify shapes down to much more of their geometric forms a rock can be much more blocky at this stage um a building can be much more blocky at this stage like you meant to this is about putting the foundations down and i've now recorded about well so i've now been talking for um quite a while so i'm going to leave it there for this video but i really hope that you've found some of this useful and i'd love to see what you guys can do so follow me on instagram and link me your own attempts at doing this kind of workflow i'm always open to looking at people's work when i've got the time and i just honestly hope that this has been helpful in some way to you i will stop talking now and i will let it play um there is one final sketch to come as well and maybe when you watch that just try to think about what kind of things i've talked about before and try to look at the techniques that i'm using again in the final sketch and i will see you all again later [Music] do [Music] [Music] do do [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so so [Music] [Music] so do [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do so [Music] [Music] 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Channel: Jordan Grimmer

Views: 252,394

Keywords: art, landscape, concept, design, conceptdesign, tutorial, timelapse, cinema, photoshop, digital, cg, conceptart, environment, 2d, artwork, learning, watch, walkthrough, shape, digitalart, speed, speedpainting, how, to, process, painting, lesson, drawing, sketching

Id: _e6wTOuJ20M

Length: 54min 53sec (3293 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 08 2021