Some Of My Pixel Ghibli Studies

I want to start drawing landscape. Do you have any tips?

Took me a while to answer this (sorry anon)! Drawing landscapes for me are mostly just a matter of doing a few 'art studies' and a bit of imitating life. Here's a brief rundown of my process. I find that I learn best when I see a picture or a reference that really tickles my fancy, like these ones! First image for it's colors, and the second for it's composition.

And then I pull up the dreaded white canvas on start on a rough idea or just start dribbling out the basics: composition, a bit of color, general shapes, etc. If you have a hard time doing general landscapes, don't worry! Imagine breaking it down like this: You layer on some general colors and shapes; don't be afraid to make mistakes, you can always go back to it! Be loose and organic with it at first, we're not striving for detail yet, and just let that brush move freely. And once you got the shapes down, you can go back and forth in the canvas to start detailing. I find that it's best if you really look into how some things are "made". Like for example, how that patch of grass in your reference is made: 'is it layered? does it have some shiny bits in it that I wanna highlight? are the blades of grass sharp enough to individually detail or more clumped up together to just put in a sorta grassy blob?'. Also, don't be afraid to experiment a bit. Try putting some highlights around the edges to make it pop out more, or try putting small changes in the color you're working with; something that's close but still different, so that it compliments each other! Then it's just a matter of going forward with it; see what you like and what you wanna keep and imitate, see what you want to change or maybe just leave out on. Keep on detailing and going until you're happy with it!

This is a really brief rundown and explanation of a process that can be entire unique to each and everyone of us, and takes a bit of time and practice to pull off. But I believe in you! We all start from somewhere, sometime down the line; and that can start right now if you want it to! Goodluck to any artists out there who wanna try out landscapes. It's a fun and comforting process of organic and loose art that breathes in a lot of life in some people, especially me. Twitter | Prints | Ko-Fi | Patreon

Here, Nepheli Loux furrified ;)

Made for a Lospec collab.

A cold moonlit night

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easy tutorial for how i made this simple stylized "nebula" from my 'head full of stars' piece. note that this is not the only way, or the best way to do it, it's just the way i did it (and i made it up). enjoy

btw this was made with my 8 colour palette 'supernova' which you can download free here. eyestrain warning maybe

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🌿 How to draw simple grass for a game

Thank you kind asker I will make a tutorial below for grass. I'll do shrubs and trees in another one, because it's a different method and it got pretty long.

🌿 How to draw grass tiles: step-by-step

Each box is 16x16, the same size Stardew Valley uses. Make it tile (how to do it depends on your software) so we can see if our edges match up nicely.

Draw 1 simple blade of grass. Many options for shape but I like this one. Feel free to copy me directly

2. Give it a shadow. Wow !!!

3. Give it a highlight! OMG!

4. Add another grass

5. Do it over and over and over and over and over

Literally just do the same or similar blades of grass, give them all little shadows, highlight a few if you want and there you have it! So easy.

It looks really complicated like this, but its literally just a few steps, repeated over and over.

Many games use this technique and it would be perfectly serviceable for a base grass tile.

Personally, I prefer lower contrast grass. This tile will likely be used for large areas, so ideally you don't want it to be too busy or eye-burning to distract from the character.

🌿 I'll show you how to do a different type of grass now that is a little more complicated.

Midtone grass colour

2. Add some lighter and darker patches touching each other (not too high contrast!)

3. Use this shape (or your preferred, but this is how I did it) on the top edge of your patches. Colour them with the middle colour from each patch.

4. Do it again a lot (this is very tedious)

5. Add some highlights

6. Add some fun extra stuff

We're done! Have fun everyone, show me if you try it!

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