Painting a Field - Free brush-set

hey guys today i'm going to show you how to paint a grassy field in photoshop or whatever program uh you want to this will also work in procreate or clip studio paint using my foliage brushes so at the end of this video i will show you how to go and download them you can download them for free or for any amount that you want to contribute they uh they but they can be a free download um if you wish they're over on my gumroad um and the link will be in the description of this video so i'm just gonna show you a quick uh field exercise and you're welcome to follow along with this and post your own version and if you want to you're also welcome to tag me and i'll try to go take a look at as many as i can on instagram and twitter and platforms like that so the first thing i'm going to do is create a base for myself so i'm going to lay in kind of a a warm green base i want this to feel like a field in summer like a pretty plant field a pretty grassy field in summer so here's just some examples of past ones that i've done these were little field samples that i made when i was creating the brushes i i went through and did little little tests as i was creating them just to make sure they were functioning how i wanted them to so i'm going to try to create something kind of similar to the feeling here or something sort of like this but maybe a little bit warmer so i'm first laying in kind of a warm green base and now i'm going to make a new layer and go ahead and get down to the plant brushes so i've got them all organized here and first i'm going to head over to the grass block in brushes and i'm going to start with this one here this one is one of my favorite brushes and it creates this kind of emotion and you can see that even as i just brush down it already starts to kind of resemble grass just as i kind of brush it from side to side across the page so it's not intended to be used up and down this one is intended to be used kind of side to side like this so let me make that full screen and i'm going to just go ahead and start kind of brushing creating a base grass texture for myself here so first i'm just going to fill the page with this we're not going to stop there this is just kind of a little base so the next thing that i want to do is i'm going to start trying to create a color perspective in this field so just to cut in and explain this color perspective thing real quick this is what i'm talking about when i'm painting grass i like to think of it as you know from top to bottom in this sort of perspective a sliding scale from at the top i usually go cool and low contrast so low value contrast the values are very close together and kind of like wide narrow stripes of various colors that creates kind of the appearance of grass like moving back in space and flattening in perspective and then that perspective opens up as we move toward the camera you know the the spaces the different like stripes so to speak of colors they get wider and um the the value contrast starts to increase um so we start getting darker shadows and maybe more visible highlights you know and then as we move down toward the base where the camera is going to be we get we slowly get richer um and we get more value contrast more color contrast and we get more texture so this is where i'll start bringing in those you know those grass blade details and whatnot and you can see that even in this super super basic broken down kind of diagram i just blocked in right here if you blur your eyes it still just kind of starts looking like a grassy field we're just going to take this really basic concept and then do a little bit more painted version of it in the final piece so hopefully that makes sense you know kind of this scale from from a cooler usually although the the color you can do different things with the color in this piece we're going to go cooler low contrast narrow in the back you know the the shapes open up get rounder fuller more texture richer and higher contrast as we move down toward the camera so i'm gonna grab a little bit of a lighter cooler green and start brushing along the back area here and i'm going to leave some patches so that we start kind of creating this pattern where there's patches of different kind of shades of grass that show through that's what's going to start giving it realism so you can see i'm leaving some areas where that kind of cooler green does not show where it's the warmer one and we're creating kind of like a zigzag pattern across the back of the of the different colors that we're using the next thing i'm going to do is i'm going to go over here and i'm going to grab one of these two brushes let's grab this one and this one's just a little bit flatter it's flatter grass it's made for like painting distant grass in and i'm going to go ahead and lay just some even lighter cooler shades over the top there like that so now i'm gonna go back to this grass blocking brush this first one and let's grab this color and then let's actually shift it even a little bit darker and i'm going to start trying to create some like pockets of of lighter and darker grass here like this let's make the canvas a little bit bigger and then we're going to keep shifting it a little bit darker we're trying to increase the contrast here as it gets closer to us so as we're getting closer to us i'm gonna switch up the brush now so now i want it to have more detail i want it to feel a little bit more dimensional so i'm going to go down into these detail brushes and let's grab this brush here which is kind of like a front grass blocking brush that has a little bit of a curve to it so let's make a new layer just in case you don't like this and i'm going gonna go ahead and start kind of laying in this type of texture and then i'll get a little bit darker maybe a little bit lighter again we're trying to create kind of layers and then right at the very front i'm going to go ahead and take this soft brush and i'm going to create some pockets where it gets much darker and you'll see how that comes in handy we want some kind of pockets here where shadows show through so that when we lay detail on top it feels quite detailed and let's actually i want to make this in here just a little bit darker and greener in the color perspective cool so we have this now this is a great base the next thing that we need to do is start adding detail so i'm going to make another new layer i like to keep things pretty layered out because that way i can go back and edit them easily if i want to later you know i can just turn this off and maybe add a different grass texture in um i like to each step kind of make a new layer and then i can always merge it down if i want to in the future so here are the dimensional grass brushes that i like to use at the front so let's start with this one here and we're on a new layer i'm going to grab a lighter color and and maybe shift the hue a little bit and we're going to brush some front grass detail on this and you can see the way that that that grass brush works it kind of looks like it's got dimension to it because you can see it's darkest where the grass kind of like turns over in space or darkest it has the most pigment where the grass turns over in space and if we use it with a lighter color then you can see that in here let me grab another brush to show you guys what i mean you can see that like at this point at this point here it feels like it's catching a highlight and we can actually add some accents to that so let me go back in here and grab one of these blade brushes like this i can go ahead and grab the color of the grass blade and then at these points here right where the grass kind of turns over in space you can see it like it turns over you know this is like kind of the high point i can use these blade detail brushes to add little highlights and that will accentuate the shape that we're already seeing it will give it like more form and maybe i grab this shape now and we go even lighter and i can create just a few even lighter grass shapes like that some nice shiny grass so now we want to go ahead and add some detail to the rest of this we don't want the detail to all just be concentrated at the front but we can but i like to add a little bit more detail moving back in space so first let's kind of ease these dimensional grass details out i made the brush a bit smaller if you can see that and i'm just kind of creating a few moments where it catches some dimension here i'm gonna make another new layer and i'm gonna grab one of these grass detail brushes these ones here and i'm going to just start creating some little pockets of detail throughout this field kind of following the patterns that we've laid out i kind of like to try to go along the divisions between the different colors and use use the colors i've already got in here like pick up those colors and use them to create the dimension and the detail and i want some areas that feel longer and some areas that feel shorter because i want this to be like a wild grass field so i'll grab this brush and start adding in some like little bit areas where it's longer if you can see what i mean where the grass kind of sticks up and it feels like it's a patch of longer grass and then maybe grab this brush and add in some of those details like this i'm just kind of moving between these grass brushes in here you know grabbing different ones trying to get the feeling that there's different like species of grass throughout this field and we can see that this already starts kind of feeling like a a nice busy grassy field and um this is a great base that now we can do some different things with it depending on what we want to do so the first thing that i want to do is add a little bit where of area where the dirt shows through where maybe it's not uh not fully grassy but maybe there's a little bit a little a couple patches of dirt in here so i'm gonna make another new layer here and i'm gonna grab this brush which is the brush that i created for making little dirt patches and i'm gonna go create i'm gonna go grab a color kind of like this just a very dirt like base color and i'm gonna start carving out some areas that could be dirt and you can really use any brush for this i just like having kind of a flat brush making the color a little bit lighter in some areas a little bit darker in some areas give it the feeling that there's a shadow from the grass at the edges so using a darker color to do that so we've laid in our little dirt patches maybe it goes step lighter in a few of these places like that and like this all right so now we've laid in the dirt let's make another layer and let's tidy up the edges of this so the first thing i want to do is actually let's grab this brush because this makes little bits of of grass and let's go along the edges here and make the edges not feel so perfect you know kind of mess them up a little bit more to make it feel a bit more wild so i'm just kind of creating some patterns of grass along the edges here using this grass clump brush making it smaller as we go back in space and bigger as we go forward in space to create the feeling of dimension and perspective and now let's go around the edges with one of these detail brushes and make it feel like there's dimensional grass kind of sticking up around the edges here [Applause] something like that so now these little field areas feel like they're sitting in space a little bit more let's take that to the next level by creating some more pockets of shadow so let's make a new layer and i'm going to set it to multiply and now i want to go in with one of these brushes and really try to get the feeling that there are some shadows at the base of these grassy areas here and let's grab this brush this one has a little bit of transfer settings enabled just trying to make it feel like it's sitting in space here and we can add a few patches of shadow also just like in these grassy field areas here just giving it a feeling of a bit more dimension and you know what why don't we create the feeling of even more dimension and feeling that there's even more happening in here by creating a larger shadow so let's make another multiply layer i'll go back and grab this brush and we can set it to kind of a cool green and then what if there is a shadow being cast by like a tree or something over this side of the image i just want to talk about shadows for a minute using more reference from studio ghibli you can see i've pulled a lot of reference in from studio ghibli just because i think that they paint grass in such a wonderful way um that i really take a lot of inspiration from the way that they render it so you can see that in a lot of these backgrounds these two that you that you can see here there is a lot of weight being pulled by the shadows a lot of the texture that we see a lot of the like grass blade detail and the like up and down you know blade texture that we see is actually being created by the shadows so you can see here that the most detail in this piece right here in this background is actually happening right along the shadow and light division this light area actually has very little detail in it and the and the shadow area also doesn't have much detail in it it's this division between the light and shadow that is creating that feeling of dimensional grass and even in this very short grass here we can say to see the same thing happening these little tiny shadows that are being cast from this broken um plane bike which uh is sitting here on top of the grass you can see that they're even on the short grass you can see that the dimension of the grass blades and it does a lot of work for giving us the feeling that it is textured grass and here's just another example of the same thing you can see even in this animated shadow um you know these characters are moving and this shadow is being animated across this grass you can see that they've given this shadow the feeling of little grass blades you know of of replicating the texture of the grass blades and it is a really great way to imply a lot of detail really quickly so uh you know it doesn't require creating a bunch of little lines all over the whole pieces like these little shadows and concentrated areas do so much of the heavy lifting for getting the whole area to feel textured without having to put texture everywhere it just kind of tricks the eye into feeling like there is more texture happening than what we can see visibly and you know as it's set to multiply it's darkening the pixels that are underneath so this is going to make it feel even more like it's like in a real place right and these are all optional things of course just things that you can try out maybe the front is in shadow a bit more like this shadows can be a really great place to show detail so i often like to go along the edge of my shadows with a brush kind of like this and show the dimension of the grass with the shadow detail kind of like that and we can go along the shadow right here and make it feel a bit flatter so then that will contrast with the dimension of the grass so now we have a shadow from a tree or something what else can we do so this is starting to turn into a nice little scene maybe there's a little bit more shadow in here some other things that we can do are we can go in and create even more little pockets of shadow and the grass here to make it a little bit more dimensional so i'm actually just going to go to any sort of painting brush that you want i'm just going to grab this kind of chalky painting brush any type of brush that has kind of a chalky texture tends to be good for this and i'm going to find little areas to start painting in shadows in between whatever grass is growing kind of like this i'm finding these little areas where there could be deeper shadows and painting in some deeper shadows and you can do this in the front and in the back here we're just trying to create the feeling that there's more dimension happening and i use this kind of it's this pattern really just kind of a a little bit more soft i'm just going in and creating that kind of a pattern it's the shadows in between blades of grass that we're essentially trying to imply i like using this technique because it also makes it feel a little bit more painterly so we could totally stop here if we wanted to but uh the next thing that i want to do is add some more biodiversity in this field so the feeling that there's maybe like more plants growing besides just grass so i'm gonna go head back to these brushes and let's look and see what we could do so in the photoshop and procreate set we have these kind of weeds and clovers that we can add which i like a lot so let's go ahead and add some of those in this just creates the feeling of little plants growing and we can add these in a few different places and we can vary the hue a little bit you know because maybe it's a different type of plant than the rest of the grasses so it could be a little bit cooler or a little bit warmer add a couple in the front here and then why don't we add in some clovers so for clovers i like to make them a little bit cooler usually and a little bit lighter the idea here is just to make it feel a little bit wilder like there's more plants growing than just one like species of grass i like to add some cooler ones like maybe they're reflecting some like light from the sky because clovers can be quite shiny and it can make the shadows feel a little bit um cooler and then maybe we add some in the light still going a little bit cooler with them careful to make them smaller as we go back in space something like that and let's see we can also use this little brush here we can create some little weeds so if i zoom this in create some little weeds growing here and then why don't we also make some larger plants so i'm going to make another new layer just in case i don't like what i end up doing but why don't we go down into these plant stocks here and create the feeling that there's some larger plants growing in this field so first i grabbed this brush which makes this kind of a texture and i'm going to grab kind of a darker green color and what if there was a little plant growing like this kind of like that and then maybe another one sitting a little bit further back in space so going a little bit smaller as we go back trying to keep in that perspective and then why don't we grab this brush and this one we use kind of downward strokes for and maybe there's some more plants growing in here and then as we get closer we want to get bigger so maybe there's a little plant growing right here it's a bit bigger in the perspective and then what if there's one in the front here getting a darker color [Applause] and creating this kind of pattern so now we have some more plants in here and it's starting to feel like a nice lush field and maybe we go ahead and grab one of these dimensional brushes again the the detail brushes and we can kind of brush on top of these a little bit just to make them sit in the space a bit more you know feel like there's some grass in front of them just so they don't feel like they're sitting totally on top of what's behind them as kind of a final step here just to finish this off something i like to do is i'm going to actually select everything with control a or command if i'm on a mac and i'm gonna do a copy merged and paste it so i'm keeping everything layered out in case i want to go back into it you could also just merge everything down but what i want to do is i actually want to grab a blending brush this is one of the kyle webster blending brushes you can use pretty much any blending brush and i'm actually going to blend out some of the detail in some areas here and then i'm going to make the detail more apparent in other areas and this is something that i see in studio ghibli backgrounds a lot there are just these big open areas where there's not a ton of detail and then um those become like the rest areas of the image and then there's areas that have highly concentrated details and those become like the action areas of the image and it's always just kind of a dance between you know having empty space that creates rest and then like you know contrast and detail and rendering that creates kind of the the action of the piece and the reason that i think it's so important to have both is it's actually kind of similar to drawing and painting hair um so you know when you're drawing or painting hair it's always nice to start with kind of like the big shapes first and blades of grass are similar to that you know they're made up of a bunch of tiny things you know grass is made up of a bunch of tiny blades of grass hair is made up of a bunch of hairs and uh and you get the best appearance often when you start with you know big groupings and then work your way slowly toward smaller groupings and you don't just draw uh you know every single great every single blade of grass instead we want to create these kind of larger forms these larger shadow and light shapes with some big rest areas and then break them up where it's most important with smaller shadow and light shapes so i've blended out some of it and now i just want to take um go back into my grass brushes let's start with this and i'm going to create a light layer and we're just going to pop in some areas of higher contrast and we'll tone this down this is just going to be kind of the first pass so i'm just finding a few little areas here [Applause] where i can make it a bit more contrasty and impactful and add some little finer details let's grab this softer brush and now i'm going to erase out a lot of [Music] this and i'm gonna take one of these detail brushes and create just some little points of of interest here and there let's switch it up so that it doesn't feel too repetitive and together the rest areas with the areas of higher contrast and higher detail together those create this feeling of of realism and of you know in real life our eyes can't focus on everything at once so it makes it feel a bit more like you know if we're actually looking at something in space you know there's areas that our eyes can't focus on it it mimics that in real life that that experience of not being able to focus on everything at once we're kind of directing the viewer's eye to where we want them to focus and then maybe we can just go in using any sort of like chalky painting brush again and just create a couple more little paint strokes little highlights where we want people to look both on the plants and on the grass just creating a little bit more dimension just blending here and there adding some detail taking some detail away until we feel like we have a pleasant space that we want to exist in and sometimes i also will like to go into my levels and maybe make my darks a little bit darker make my lights a little bit lighter and then fade that off where i don't want it so that it only shows up in this kind of focal area here where i want that uh that value contrast another thing we can do kind of at the end is go back down into these like blade brushes and maybe create a few little blades that are a little more designed this will just generate the feeling the whole piece is more painted and that it's not like you know stamp texture is being used just a little bit of variation goes a really long way an overlaying light blade detail on top of shadows seems to work very well for me and the opposite can also be true dark on top of light light on top of dark this is how we kind of craft our detail that feels like it's getting just a little bit too dark right here so i'm gonna fade that a little bit but um yeah that is my method for painting a nice little grassy field um i hope you enjoyed this and i'd love to see your versions like i mentioned um let me know if there's anything else that you'd want me to demo in the comments or if there's anything you want me to elaborate on more i'd be happy to make more little demo videos of how to use these brushes i'll definitely make some more of how to use different ones in the set since this just covered some kind of basic grass ones stay tuned if you want to see get instructions on how to download them so if you want to go download these yourself if you follow the link in the description you'll get to this page and you can see these two brush sets here um this one is for photoshop and procreate and this one is for clip studio paint um and you can you know whichever program you want to use there's slight differences between these two sets but they're not massive like that they are mostly the same there's just some differences in the clip studio paint brush engine that made some of the brushes not work as well and some of them i think actually work better so neither experience is like really better or worse they're just different um but yeah you can click on whichever one you want you can type in xero if you want to download it for free um and you can just do a free download and if you want to donate any amount you're welcome to and i super appreciate it um but again definitely not required i made these free for a reason because i want everyone to be able to use them so yeah thanks for watching uh i'll try to do some more of these little demos so stay tuned if you want to see more

Channel: Devin Elle Kurtz

Views: 338,900

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Id: jzwkgw9SE_Q

Length: 35min 26sec (2126 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 25 2020