Behind-the-scenes on "the western woods"

Another speedpaint!  This was my last one before the week from hell known as "finals."  Unfortunately, I'm still not completely done--I'm taking a required science course over two weeks at my college to get it out of the way.  Yeah, it's not gonna be fun, but at least then I'll be done with it!  (Darn you liberal arts educationnn!)

My latest paint was referenced from RiNymph-Stock on deviantART.  She has a lot of lovely stock photos, so if you need references or ideas, be sure to check out her wonderful gallery!  (The photo I used can be found here.)

So let's get on to the step-by-step!  :)  Check it out after the break!



Step One: Base colors/layout

As per usual, my first step was just a very basic composition of the piece.  I should maybe take this opportunity to state that I actually find forests really difficult to draw.  Really, it's anything with a large amount of detail that starts to overwhelm me (another reason I shy away from drawing cities, a fear I'm trying to overcome with these speedpaints).  It might sound odd, but I just never know what to do with the ground and leaves in the trees especially.  This was another reason why a reference picture was pretty much a must.

Step Two: First go at the leaves

I  decided to start with the leaves.  I was also experimenting with a lot of different brushes on this picture.  Unlike my last speedpaint, on which I used just a few brushes and had a fairly clear idea of what I wanted, here it was more "throw stuff at it and see what sticks."  I did eventually figure out what brushes I thought were working best, but there was a lot of frustration initially.

Step three: Leaves and trunks

I detailed teh leaves more and also worked on the trunks at this point.  I think the entire time I was doing this I was dreading the part coming up: the forest floor.

Step four: Basic forest floor

First go at the ground, just trying to figure out shadows mostly.  This is where I started to do a lot of color tweaking as well.  I did have trouble with color consistency throughout this painting.  I also fixed up the trunks here to give them some more texture.

Step five: Floor basically finished

As you can see, I started mixing in reds in order to deepen the really simple greens/yellows from the previous step.  That really helped fill the painting out.  I also tweaked the colors generally.

Step six: Nearly done

Just deepening shadows, some more detail work, putting in some more highlights.  At this point, it was really nearly done; it was just my nitpicky nature that kept me going until I finally forced myself to stop.  You'll see the final product below has a lot more texturing (particularly on the ground, but overall as well) and some more foliage.  Unlike my last painting, which was fairly smooth brushstrokes, this forest scene really lent itself to having some rough textures. 

The entire painting was a real learning experience for me.  It was encouraging that I could satisfactorally paint a forest scene--something that has always challenged me--but it also forced me to confront where I have trouble and need to focus on.  So a good time all in all!

Final Product