Drawing cartoon landscapes
Drawing cartoon landscapes I’ve already written about drawing cartoon landscapes and why you should choose Clip Studio Paint for 2D digital drawing and animation. This article is about Clip Studio Paint’s digital drawing techniques and brushstrokes using a cartoon landscape as an example of Cartoon drawing ideas.
Create a landscape
The story and the mood of the picture: We have the beautiful nature of Western-style America. Forest, mountains, waterfall. The symbols are an old forester and his daughter. In the distance, you can see their home. Forest fishing, his daughter, hung up the washed clothes. The atmosphere is sunny and calm. Foreground, background, and create the depth of the landscape: in the foreground are the bushes. The medium is a meadow with the characters. In the background, there is a waterfall, a forest, and a house.
In the distance there are mountains. Shadows can also support creating the appearance of deep. In a general reduction of colours: on a summer day, woods and green meadows prevail. The second colour is a light blue sky, the shining sun from the left count’s shades of golden. Composition and Accents: I created this art for an animated short film in a game. The horizontally stretched image in the film moves to the left of the screen with the forest ranger, to the right with his daughter. Hence, this image has two primary planes in the composition. Here, the accents are the characters.
1. First step – draft sketch
Rough lines transfer vision. In Clip Studio Paint, it is suitable to use vector coatings. Don’t draw on photos if you want to learn how to draw. Furthermore, it is shameful to use the art of other artists in their work. However, it is helpful to collect example photographic and artistic references (Pinterest in Pinterest) and study them. But when you start drawing, I recommend that you rely on your memory without looking at the connection.
2. Line art
The first draft level has 6-10% transparency, the following vector layer for the outline. Don’t forget to enable “Erase at the intersection” in the settings until the eraser.
3. Fill the colour with raster layers
I have created several automatic actions to mark the critical layers and have arranged the buttons in the top panel. Any lower layers marked as draft layers (blue pencil icon) are not contained in the fill. In the Fill tool settings, I turn off Anti-aliasing to avoid artefacts. After the packing, I use the Smoothing effect (Filter> Blur> Smooth, my Ctrl + \ key) to correct the edge of the filling. Repeated use of this effect does not ruin (does not blur much) the fill boundary. The last step is to use a stiff round brush to paint over the remaining small areas. I operate a different layer for additional fabrics and overlapping elements. For the initial fill, I use approximate colours.
4. Almost final colour adjustment
Then I adjust the colours of the flat layers. Colours are changed concerning neighbouring colours and the overall gamut of the image.
5. Paint the outer shadows
Identify the light sources and the direction of the light first. I use a soft round brush for the shadows. Sometimes, using the Multiply blend mode for the shadow layers is appropriate. Where objects touch, the cloud is denser. I recommend learning from 3D graphics and rendering to practice understanding lighting.
6. Shading
I paint objects’ light and dark areas, creating a 3D effect. In most circumstances, my famous shading encounter is a pastel encounter. Adds roughness and warmth. It does not separate shading and colouring. My technique is like an oil painting.
The flow of painting:
1. Big broad brush strokes.
2. Smaller contrasting strokes (darker and lighter) for details.
3. Blender brush.
7. Reflection in the shadows
The colour of the light depends on the environment, but you can sometimes deviate from this rule depending on the desired effect.
8. Adding textures and materials
I paint surfaces for metal, wood, stone, etc. I have a button in the top panel for Soft Light Blending mode, and it bases the colours of the stripes.
9. Color for line art
The line colour is darker than the primary fill colour. Glare, reflections, small details