[wired_house]

I enjoyed this tutorial, thank you alot!

result:
http://www.maj.com/g...s/tree_edit.png

Have a good day!

[Forbidding]

Hm, here's my *attempt* at it.

[Griatch]

@wired_house

Glad you enjoyed the tutorial. Your image came out good, the structure and colours almost feels moss-like to me. Also the light works fine, with good shading into the distance. The nearby ground is maybe a little messy though, it's hard to see what is what and how the trees are positioned relative to each other. An idea for another time would be to make the light and shadows fall more clearly across the ground to accentuate the 3D positions.
Good job, if you supply me with a thumbnail I'll put it up in the top post's 'hall of fame'. :-)


@Forbidding

A snowy feel! Nice to see you try out some variations on the theme. Possibly the more distant trees could be a little more faded with distance; this would enhance the depth of the image. Also, shadows usually aren't solid black things, especially not on a snowy surface, so breaking them up a bit with some ground structure is something to consider for the future. The light and colours are well chosen however, it really feels like a cold chilly day! Putting this up at the top.

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[BladeMasterEX]

awsome

[Garfi]

Hi, I just stumpled across this page, and I must say these tutorials are great. The perfect starting point for a newbie like me. Much appreciated!

My go at it, the lighting is a bit weird - rather difficult to do:


If I create a brush that size and an image that size, the airbrush tends to make circles connected instead of a steady line - Can it be avoided, other than moving the pencil real slow?

[Griatch]

Garfi said:

Hi, I just stumpled across this page, and I must say these tutorials are great. The perfect starting point for a newbie like me. Much appreciated!

My go at it, the lighting is a bit weird - rather difficult to do:
http://www.rolchau.d...rest_sketch.png

If I create a brush that size and an image that size, the airbrush tends to make circles connected instead of a steady line - Can it be avoided, other than moving the pencil real slow?

Welcome to GIMPtalk! Thanks for the kind words and for trying out the tutorial.

If you want to refine the brush strokes further, you need to go in to touch them up, like in the latter part of the tutorial. You can make the brush dib (circles) connect but changing the spacing parameter for the brush at the bottom of the brush list.

It think the lighting came out pretty well, you varied the shade of the trees with distance giving this some nice depth, good job! You should probably try to avoid making "lines of light" across the tree trunks; unless made very clear across the entire image, such rays easily come across as just looking a bit sloppy, as if you didn't finish filling in the trunks. You might also want to consider moving the brush parallel to the ground when making light shining over the ground, to make it look more like the light hits an uneven ground rather than flowing like a waterfall. That said, I think this looks good, the light could certainly look like that if the sun is low. The bright part to the lower left reminds me of reflections in a lake. :)
Linked this to the hall of fame!
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[JohannasGarden]

This was my attempt--it was for a game background, so that's why it has such odd dimensions. Thanks for the tutorial.

EDIT: And I'm not sure why it came out quite that small--it's better than huge, though.

[Griatch]

@JohannasGarden

Thanks for trying out the tutorial!
It's hard for me to make out much detail in such a small image, bu I like how you added some hills in the background. Be careful with making trees "transparent" though, it seems like you can see the hill through some of the trees. Hope to see more work from you in the future!
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[Griatch]

@Demen

Welcome to GimpTalk! It's strange how many people tend to make their first GT posts in these tutorials. :)

Wow, I like how the top of the forest turns dark, with the trees outlined in the gloom. Great mood there! I think you have made a good job of using the fainter colours to show depth. I would consider putting more work into the ground as it draws closer to us though -- separated strokes work decently at a distance but when we look at close-by ground we should see smaller derails, so you could switch to blending the dark and light together more subtly. Also the items on the ground somewhat distract the eye I think.

But overall I must say this is a very good outcome, I really like moody light in a painting and you got that down very well. Looking forward to seeing more work from you in the future. Goes into the hall of fame for sure. :D
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[Griatch]

Well, I don't know of any particular one dealing with things like colour theory, complementary colours or things like that, at least not off the top of my head. A book on basic painting is probably the best, but google or wikipedia can give you a good start.

Generally, if you feel your colours end up too washed out, you should actively try to put a few strokes of "off" colour in there. It forces you to deal with that colour, to rebuild surrounding shades to incoorporate it. It can be very instructive for example in nature scenes (instead of just green and brown, try, yellow, purple and turquose...), or portraits (green, lilac and bright blue ...). Can you see the purple and orange in this face for example? Another idea can be to force yourself to work in just a few colours. The buildings in this image were for example basically all done only with the same three colours (there is a tutorial on that one).

In a more integrated sense, several of my tutorials deal with colouring and selecting contrasting/brilliant colours for a sketch or directly from scratch. See the list in my sig.
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[Griatch]

@Demen

Yes, looks like there's more structure to the ground now after your update; also an improvement that you removed the items on the ground; this looks much cleaner now. A subtle, yet clear improvement. Nice !
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[Griatch]

Good. :)
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[sneaky_squirrel]

These tutorials are awesome, though the quality of your example discouraged me sicne mine was nowhere near as good, but I will keep trying.

http://s168.photobucket.com/albums/u185 ... Forest.jpg


Tips for improvement? (Looks a lot more "cartoonlike" than I expected)

[Griatch]

@sneaky_squirrel

Thanks, glad you like the tutorials. :)

For some reason Photobucket would not allow me to view a big version of your image, but from what I can make out it looks good. You have used a lighter colour for the more distant trunks to signify distance. The reason it looks a little "cartoony" is, I think, due to the sharp lines, both along the tree trunks and along the ground. It's hard to see, but I suspect you might have zoomed in and made details rather soon into the process. Overall the ground is very smooth and nicely ordered. Nature does not look like that. If you look at my example you can see that I have indeed been almost sloppy with my strokes. It looks downright awful at close range, but decent at a distance. It's a good practice to try to do an image this way once in a while, even if you personally don't adopt that style for your future works.
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[kevlarflounder]

Hello again Griatch! I decided to try out your tutorial and I came up with this (thumbnail is click-able):


Any comments or suggestions are greatly appreciated, as always.

[Griatch]

@Kevlarflounder

Moody one! The little touch of red eyes makes for a good break of colour in there, it draws the eye. Very omnious. As for critique, it could be an idea to work a little more detail into the branches. Starting out with them fuzzy is just fine, but as you work it's often good to gradually refine/define them some more, at least those that are closest to us. I personally like to keep more contrasts than this too, by introducing brighter light between the trees ... but that's more of a style prefefence than any real critique.

In summary, I like the mood of this. :) Putting it up in the hall of fame at the top.
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[Jessi]

I can't do this too well, i'm not good at drawing

[Griatch]

 Jessi, on 03 April 2011 - 03:01 AM, said:

I can't do this too well, i'm not good at drawing

Don't worry about that. The idea of doing tutorials is to get better after all.
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[Muzikjunkee]

GREAT TUTORIAL

[alexstandiford]

Awesome tutorial! Thank you so much for sharing this.