Drawing landscapes—tips & tricks
Hello Everyone!
Today I am going to give you tips and tricks to making your very own landscapes! Whenever I create an original character, it helps for me to also draw out the world they live in. This gives me a better understanding of the character, as many times the environment that surrounds characters in books, movies and TV shows shapes their personalities.
That’s why in this post I’m going to take you through the process of making landscape paintings for two of my OCs!
Landscape #1
(In this post, I am using Procreate for both of the paintings)
This first drawing I have named Adventure because really I couldn’t think of anything else to name it. It is the world of any OC that has not been revealed yet: Rose! Rose is a calm and caring person from a land in the skies. First, I draw with a simple gray brush some floating rocks and a platform in the foreground. Once I’ve done that, I decide to draw a dragon in the center of the drawing. Next, I use airbrushes with shades of green and touch up on the drawing to make it more realistic. I also use a brush that is supposed to resemble snow gum and paint on the rocks. A tip that I’ve learned from watching videos is that in order to make things look realistic, you need to have two things together and one far apart. For example, I draw two birds flying together and then one bird flying far apart from the others. Another tip to make landscape drawings realistic is to blend things in with an atmospheric perspective. I use an airbrush with the same color as the sky and blend the platforms and birds in that I want to be farther away from the others. I also add a bunch of clouds and my OC Rose standing on the nearest platform.
And that’s all for the first landscape drawing! Moving on to the next one…
Landscape #2
For this landscape, I am drawing the world of my character Freya, who lives in the mountains in a region called Illumini. In this drawing, Freya is standing on the edge of a valley overlooking a river and then some picturesque mountains. The trees in Illumini are always bright and pretty colors, and for this illustration I make them all pink. Another tip you should learn is to always use a reference if you are drawing something unfamiliar. For example, I use references constantly for the trees and the mountains in this drawing. There’s no shame in using references, as you can see. The final tip I have for you today is about scale, which can either ruin your illustration or perfect it. In order to give the sense of scale in this drawing, I add Freya on the valley in the foreground. Making Freya really small would make the world seem big and magical and cool, but making her too big just makes everything seem small and like there isn’t anywhere to explore. So I make Freya a little bigger than tiny and finish the illustration with my signature!
Chong
28 Apr, 2022