Custom Brush Techniques: Trees and Forest

I learned how to do this by watching a Gnomon Workshop DVD by David Levy.  Its a cool way of getting  a lot of detail or implying detail for speed painting and early stages for concept art.  To paint a forest in a single stroke you essentially need to make a series of brushes that build on top of one another.  So for the first image here I show two different leaf brushes. I used a reference for the maple leaf and did not use a reference for the other one. When making a brush try and get a wide range of value .  Its important that one side of the branch is not lighter than the other. You don't want your brush looking like a light source is from one direction but your painting itself is in another direction. If you look at the maple leaf branch I have highlights and shadows on both sides.  The dialog box to the right of the image shows some of the dynamics that will make it flow like a vine or a branch.

Since we just made the leaf brushes we can start with making a brush for the tree trunks.  The reason I make a brush for the trunk itself and not just a full tree is because I want to be able to create a large variety of trees.  With a trunk builder I can make some short trees, tall trees, fat trees, etc.  Just like with the leaves you want to make sure the bottom of the trunk blends into itself.  The second image demonstrates the process for making a tree for each season.  I start with a winter tree which has no leaves.  I copy this to another layer for spring and add leaves with the leaf brush I just created.  Copy the spring layer and repeat for a summer version.  Remember when painting in the leaves to use a wide range of values to get more detail on the brush.

With the right settings for a forest brush we can easily paint a picture like this in a matter of moments.  This image was an original test for the brush and you can see with opacity and size jitter set to pen pressure you can create some real depth. This process could be used for anything. Try making a brush for making buildings, mountains, or clouds. I will upload this set of brushes for everyone in the doc sharing tab. -Matt Carey