Loish
patreon
TUTORIAL // painting foliage & complex detail
🕑 Added 2024-11-08 12:24:35 +0000 UTCIt's time for this month's tutorial! It's on painting foliage and complex detail, and runs you through how you can paint dense leaves in a gradual and structured way. This way, your foliage art will look expressive, interesting and complex! You can use the same workflow for other types of dense detail, like feathers, hair or grass.
I mention a variety of brushes in this tutorial. They include:
I also mention a couple of useful resource websites:
Unsplash - for royalty-free reference images
Here a few tutorials that would be helpful to watch alongside this one!
Soft & hard edges with the lasso tool: This tutorial shows you how to select areas and combining that with a grainy, noisy brush. It's a great way to get both texture and edge control, which is super helpful when conveying complex detail!
Stylizing trees & plants: This video shows you how you can apply stylization techniques to organic elements like trees and plants. It talks a lot about diverting from the reference image to create a unique interpretation of what you see.
Here's the outcome of the demo shown in the video:
As always, here is the cheat sheet with essential information from the tutorial, which you can also find attached to this post as a PDF file with clickable links:
I hope you enjoy this video and that it makes painting complex detail a bit easier!
For future tutorials, feel free to share any future tutorial suggestions in the #tutorial-suggestions channel in the discord server (If you don't know how to join, just follow the steps outlined here) or leave them in a comment below β€
Comments
Loish
glad you find it helpful!
Greg Jaimes
thank you, I really appreciate the cheat sheet , it's very handy to remember all the little details :)
Catmouse James
very helpful thanks <3
Sophie
That's exactly what i needeed to understand to feel free to paint, thank you !
Loish
glad you liked it Nana!
Nana
Thank you Loish, it' been so helpful as usual <3
Papierfaerie
Great tutorial as always, Loish! Love the detail of you wearing green for a foliage tutorial :D
Susan Burdack
Hi, new patron here. I was confused since I expected the branch from the thumbnail to be painted. Enjoyed the demo though and found the explanations helpful. Kind regards from Germany π
Yael van Engelen
Might be the first tutorial I watched on patreon because I couldn't wait for the download at the end of the month. Thanks so much for this tutorial it is great to hear you explain your thought process (I've been trying to deduct it from some of the process videos, might go back to those now that I watched this). And ofc. scroll through my phone to find old reference pics to paint <3
Loish
that's a great idea for a future tutorial or mini-instructional video! do you use photoshop as well?
Loish
Sorry about that! I always use some existing art to introduce my tutorial with. I used a mix of references for that one, although it's quite an old piece so I don't have the process video for it sadly! you can see the full thing here - https://loish.net/project/growth/
Loish
thanks so much! I'm very addicted to the lasso tool, haha.
Michael H
ππ»π Your use of the lasso/selections + the eraser tool to βcarve outβ areas and shapes in order to gradually build areas of detail/focus is so interesting! Itβs great to see your process! Thank you!
Ibrahim k
I like it , thanks a lot for sharing with us! I would also appreciate you showing us all these shortcuts to make your workflow faster , eg, switching from brush to eraser , then lasso tool ... gradient and so on , as I always feel that I cannot keep up with your pace at all :D
Jesse Whitson
Love to see how the use of the lasso tool changes the expression so much! Cant wait to try this and thanks for the wonderful tutorials!
Anna
I was kind of expecting the demo of the cover image... it lured me to sign up.. lol Did you use a reference for it? But the demo is still lovely, I had to go for a walk to take some foliage pictures!
Loish
I'm so happy to hear that! hopefully it will make your next attempt a lot easier and less overwhelming!
Faimano
I think this is a long awaited tutorial for me. I often have trouble expressing ideas because I can't represent the big picture I have in my head because I'm overwhelmed by the volume of details to draw. I'm going to try to work on this tutorial to improve my ability to put the ideas in my mind on paper. Thank youuu
Loish
what a coincidence! and a very common experience as well. I hope this video helps you with your workflow :)
Loish
I'm so happy to hear that Tala! I feel like breaking stuff down into simple steps can help take away the fear!
Loish
don't worry, struggling is always part of the process! just give it your best shot and learn from it :)
Loish
thanks so much for the kind words! I love not only sharing how I do things but analyzing the process and design principles, it means a lot to me that you find that interesting to hear about :)
Loish
so glad you liked it kat! i also prefer more simplified art but sometimes I really need to push myself to boost the details.
Loish
so glad you like it! do you have any specific topics in mind? happy to make more of these types of tutorials!
Kat Craig
This is perfect! For environments I tend to go a little too low on detail and there isn't enough variation. These are such helpful tips!
mobblack
This is super helpful, wish we could have more tutorials on how to render detail~
Raquel
Loved the tutorial, I really want to take some reference pictures tomorrow when there is some light and try myself!! You paint in a way that seems easy, but I know for sure Im going to make a mess and struggle (hahaha) Thanks for the wonderful content!
Kimberly Monson
Wow. This was so helpful! I am blown away at the depth of understanding you have about your workflow and what makes a successful piece. The way you can break it down like this speaks volumes about your intelligence. Thank you for sharing your smarts with us!
Tala
Great tutorial. Makes foliage feel much less scary to paint!
Erin Onorato
This is so timely! I was trying to draw a chrysanthemum today and I was overwhelmed by the amount of detail and trying to simplify it! Forever grateful for your tutorials π«Ά
Annett
π THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! π
Loish
haha, happy smoking! I hope you enjoy this video ~
Liz Jones
I'm really excited about this one!
Alicia JB
This afternoon I'm going to smoke this tutorial π€£π€£π€£ I love painting vegetation, I didn't even know it would make me so happy knowing you did this jaja π
