Tutorial: Easy, quick [forest] backgrounds (Photoshop needed

[Zoideah]

Want to create nice, colorful backgrounds featuring meadows or forests? There's a simple trick to doing it.

Step 1: Draw the base.
Create a new picture, roughly 600 x 600. Make the background any color you want. Then, draw the shape of a tree trunk and it's branches.



Then, do some quick, cheap shading and/or lighting.



Step 2: Create brushes.
Start a new image, about 20 x 20 pixels. In it, draw the shape of a leaf. In another picture, same size, draw a blade of grass. They should look something like this:



Save them as something like brush1 and brush2. Next, go to Edit > Define Brush Preset. Now they should be listed under your 'brush' tab. Pick one.

Step 3: Adjusting the brush.
Pick the leaf shape. See the 'brushes' tab in the upper right corner? Click that. Next, adjust the settings according to this picture:



And use that brush to add some leaves to the top of the tree, using two or three different shades.



Lastly, take the grass brush and do something similar. Your end result should look something like this!



Took me maybe 10 minutes to do. I'll probably go back and fix some things/add more detail, but it's up to you what you do with your drawing.

[monele]

Interesting... Any trick to get a forest out of this single tree now?... or do you simply draw another tree and yet another, etc...? ^^;

[lordcloudx]

using this tutorial, my lazy way would be to merge the tree into 1 layer and copy it over and over changing the position, opacity, transforming/resizing it if necessary.

[Zoideah]

lordcloudx's method should work. If you want more variation, though, you should draw each tree individually.

[DaFool]

Thank you.

[Adorya]

To make a shadowed forest is quite simple too:
- create an image with any color
- with any big painting tool fill the half botton of your image (might be in green tone for a forest)
- take a small painting tool of any of the 2 colors used and hack the color limit edge in the middle of the image with a shakened mouse

[Zoideah]

To make a shadowed forest is quite simple too:
- create an image with any color
- with any big painting tool fill the half botton of your image (might be in green tone for a forest)
- take a small painting tool of any of the 2 colors used and hack the color limit edge in the middle of the image with a shakened mouse

Yes, that's also a very useful technique. Thanks for contributing.

[lordcloudx]

I usually just play around with photoshop's tools and abuse its layering, filtering, and blending capabilities to make these types of backgrounds.

I think that landscapes are much easier to make than cityscapes or man-made structures since you don't have to worry about accuracy in the shapes and there's no back-breaking tracing with the pen with a freakin mouse required.