PROCESS VIDEO // autumn landscape

Here’s the process for my Autumn landscape speedpaint that I posted earlier this month! I feel like this process combines a lot of different techniques that might be interesting to watch. 

Here’s some information about this process video: 

• The process has been sped up by 250%, so 2.5 times the original speed.

• This painting session took me about 2.5 hours in total. 

• I used the Macalabs HB pencil brush to sketch. 

• I used a mixture of my hard round brush and the DaveMH Spellbook speckle brushes to paint. 

• This is painted in Adobe Photoshop, but the same workflow can be applied to most digital painting software. 
  

Here are some helpful tutorials that can help understand this process in more detail: 

• Environment essentials: This tutorial talks about how I build up the basic shapes of an environment speedpaint bit by bit, so that it’s not overwhelming.

• Soft & hard edges with the lasso tool: This tutorial shows you how you can combine speckle brushes with the lasso tool to create a textured rendering effect. 

BIG SHAPES TO COMPLEX DETAIL

I start out by blocking in the main shapes, like the trees, mountains, lake, etc. These are just larger shapes layered over one another to slowly build the landscape.I try to get that right first before committing to the composition and placement - once that’s down, I can slowly start adding complexity! The reason that I work this way is because it’s hard to tell where that complexity is really needed until I have a sense of my overall picture. In this painting, I play around with that a bit: I try to draw the large pine trees on the left in a more complex way, but later on - 33:53 minutes in - I decide to simplify and streamline these shapes into triangles, because I feel like they are competing with the other trees and creating too much chaos. This is very much a trial-and-error process and starting simple really helps me build up the detail slowly so that I can explore different options in my painting process! 

ADDING STORYTELLING ELEMENTS AT THE END

With this painting, I waited until the very end to add the white deer, which I do about 45 minutes in. This is because I feel like this landscape needs a living creature to really push the storytelling - it was feeling too empty before. This only really becomes clear to me as I’m finalizing the details. Before that, there were still too many unknowns about how the painting would turn out. For some artists, it can be helpful to have a whole concept and story laid out in advance so they can plan around it. For me, I prefer to just let it evolve while I’m painting, otherwise I might find myself getting stuck on a specific outcome. Building towards a story, rather than deciding on one in advance, really helps make the process more smooth and enjoyable for me! 

I hope you liked this process! As always, if you have any questions about this process, don’t hesitate to ask ❤