Site Header
Deviation Actions
Hello everyone!
This month's theme is “Lighting”.
It is a fascinating subject because light is essential to achieve the desired atmosphere. Light interacts with everything and is one of the most important subjects in art.
In this tutorial, I want to explain, in simple steps, how to add basic lighting to a tree trunk and the surrounding vegetation.
For the tutorial, I’m using my “*🖌️ Free Environment Brushes 2.0 “, and my “ 🎨 Anime & *Ghibli Style Color Palette 2.0” . And you can download the PSD tutorial file here.
⭐ You are invited for a live Q&A session that will take place on this journal on November 10th at 11AM PST .
👉 JOIN HERE
Use the tag #ShineWithSyntetyc to earn the exclusive badge
⭐ Let’s start!
1 - Paint the background.
Fill the background with a dark green or blue shade.
With the “ 🖌️ Airsoft” brush, and darker shade, paint vertical lines, like background trees. Don’t worry about precision.
2 - Draw a cylinder
In a new layer, with the “ 🖌️ Rounded Sketch” brush, draw a cylinder.
This cylinder will mark the reference position for the tree trunk, so draw it in the position you want.
3 - Tree trunk main shape
In a new layer, paint the shape of the tree trunk, using the cylinder as reference.
Draw the main shape with simple vertical curved strokes, following the contour of the cylinder.
On the base of the cylinder, extend the lines to the sides and foreground.
4 - The light source
In this step, you must decide where the light source comes from.
Look at the shapes of the tree trunk, and visualize the 3d shape.
Each line is a bump on its surface, and the light touches only the top of those bumps.
It is a good exercise to draw the preview lines of the shapes, to find out what the three-dimensional shape is like.
5 - Defining light points
Following the three-dimensional shapes, draw some circles on the tree trunk.
This is another exercise to preview the position of the light spots, and distribute them.
Visualize the light direction, and draw more light spots on the lighter side, and less on the shaded side.
6 - Base color
The previous steps were very important visualization exercises for understanding shapes and their three-dimensional volumes. From here, you have to use that knowledge to start the painting, respecting the previous schemes and decisions you made.
With brown shades, and the same “🖌️ Rounded Sketch” brush, increasing its size, paint the base color of the tree trunk, respecting its volumes and shapes, like the scheme.
Paint with darker shades in shaded areas, and follow the shape of the trunk bumps with short strokes.
You can recognize in the image the lines, following the three-dimensional shape, like in the scheme.
7 - Painting the light spots
Like the last step, use the scheme of the light spots to paint with a lighter brown shade on each spot.
Each point of light is a small radial gradient that follows the shape of the tree trunk.
Lighter (yellow, almost white) at its center, and gradually mixing with the darker base color.
8 - The grass
For painting the grass, you can use the “🖌️ Rounded, Sketch, Leaf, Grass” brush (softer and rounded). The “ 🖌️ Hard Leaf and Grass” one (for defined grass blades). Or the “ 🖌️ Grass Blades Textured” (more painterly effect). For the tutorial I used the last one.
Draw vertical lines, using different shades of green, and respecting the roots of the tree trunk.
Remember the direction of the light to paint some spots with lighter green tones, simulating direct sunlight.
9 - Vegetation
With the “🖌️ Hard Leaf and Grass” brush, paint short strokes with more defined shapes, simulating leaves and flowers.
Respect the areas of light and shadow, painting with lighter shades over direct sunlight areas, and with darker and desaturated shades on shaded areas.
Use the same technique for simulating flowers with a different color. I use white, but you can use any other color, like reds or purples.
Paint with lighter and saturated color on the light areas, and desaturated and darker shades on the other areas.
This generates a very realistic illuminated scene with simple color variations.
10 - Ambient light
With the “🖌️ Airsoft” brush, paint some lines from the light source.
Use the Gaussian Blur filter to blur it more if its needed.
And it’s done!
I hope you enjoy the tutorial, and I can't wait to see the comments fill up with light and color!
Remember that you can download the resources used in this tutorial:
🖌️ The Brushes:
🎨 The Color Palette:
📜 Source file:
Use the tag #ShineWithSyntetyc to earn the exclusive badge
⭐ Also you are invited for a live Q&A session that will take place on this journal on November 10th at 11AM PST.
👉 JOIN HERE
This useful tutorial is sponsored by DeviantArt.
