Step by Step Environment Speed painting

First thing when drawing honestly most compositions, but most important in a speed study, you
want the overall view or the big picture. You focus on getting the largest elements onto the page
first then worry about little things later. I unfortunately didn’t time myself so I’m guessing a half
and hour or so. Usually the white page is hard for people to get past, so the first step is to get
some color on that usually I like to pick the sky color or even field. Any prominent color will do.

Note: If you are approaching this with traditional media such as pencil, charcoal, watercolors,
etc. You need to keep all colors light because your ability to go back to white is limited to
impossible.

This particular one is done in an art program called ‘Mischief’ I love it as a starting point in art.
Simple layout, intuitive. Simple with best feature being unlimited canvas. You can scroll forever.
It also saves all undos due to the fact it is a vector art. It is how I doing this tutorial by drawing
then undoing everything to screencap each stage.
Next step is to get it more like the actual sky which has a bit of a haze that is white with yellow
tint. I highly recommend playing with the opacity of your brushes if working digitally. Washes,
glazes or light quotes for traditional media

Next is to get a hint of the mountains in. Don’t worry about exact of every bump, just the general
feel of it.

Next I make the mountains a bit darker just to

see the composition. Better.
Next is get a quick feel for the ground color.

Now I get a stronger feel for the

mountaintop/horizon line. After I just brought a
light brush of blue/sky color over the mountains.
What this does is create the atmospheric
perspective. What happens is when things are
further away the sky or atmosphere tints the
colors so they are duller (as seen below)
So everything before this step we been focusing on was the background (besides for quick color
lay). Now we’re getting an idea of the placement of the greenery in midground and foreground.
If you need a better understanding of this click here. I personally did this step on a new layer.

Now I began another new layer to quickly place buildings and fence.

I went back to the original midground layer. I

won’t be putting anything else on that 3rd
layer besides for the man made objects.
Now I need to adjust the colors in
midground more accurate. I let this color
adjust the greens to be more accurate since
the yellow tint is very strong.
Now I work on getting the darker tones in brown. One thing to realize when I work with
extremely light and dark colors. I will almost never use a true white or true black. I always color
tint it. So the whites I used on the buildings and fence had a yellow tint. While the black was a
red brown tint.

Now I begin getting more details into the midground by adding in red tones. Yes the grass goes
up and down but when it is further away you don’t need to express it the same way. So I did
broad horizontal strokes.
Now I add even more red tones that overlap the foreground as well. A few red lines I added a
couple of short vertical strokes.

Now I add in more lights and in midground begin to add a few brush strokes that go up and
down to imply the grass but kept short and soft.
 Now I focus on the foreground and get the
strong darks in. These black like colors are
green-blue tone. I this time do more of a
stripling effect ( a bunch of dots and/or really
short lines). As a general rule of thumb the
foreground (or the focus area of the
composition) gets the highest contrast. So
things further away have less contrast (less
extremes of light and dark tones). Things that
are closest we can see the brighter and
darker darks in more detail so they look more
extreme. I did toss in a few darker greens as
well to get some middle to lighter dark tones in as well.

This next step has lighter tones added or middle green tones in. These are to get the impression
of leaves layered without worrying about making every leaf.
Now I’m working on getting the darker grasses on there that way the lighter colors have
something to contrast with. My main tip to texture is contrast in colors/tones. If everything is the
same color you won’t notice the texture. It is the contrast of colors make you notice it. Textures
get little highlight and shadows which is what makes it work.

Now I work on bringing in stronger yellow colored leaves and lighter color greens Notice that the
highlights are strongest at the tops and are in clumps with only a few strays. I think of lights and
shadows are in area, to keep the texture I do a cluster that has gaps. It creates the layer effect.
This last step have lighter grass colors brought in and a few middle tones. Note with grass, it is
tempting to make all the strokes straight up. This is never the case, it is always have a variety of
tilts. Some are up and tilt to left, others to the right. Some are tilted further to one direction or the
other. I also brought in a couple of dots of blue purple to represent the flowers in the original.

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