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Here we go! Probably the very first tutorial in my life! Yay!

What I basically explain here is step to step how I painted the forest. The tutorial starts at some visual point when you already have at least something drawn, but a real beginning is what you have in your head before turning everything on. I my head I had an idea of regret theme for some art where there would be a character as a main figure and probably would take a 75% of a canvas size in a `falling`-standing pose and under the figure would be blood, probably left from someone he or she knew but was late to help out. So the background starts at the point where you decide whether you will draw realism or fantasy. I can easily explain that decision - so if I had some fantasy theme for this it would have been for example a huge cave shining blue with some bluish-green water (also giving a light) and as for the main theme `regret` the blood would be coming from a character`s face down to the water and go away as a symbol of life that you can not restore. This choice between realism and fantasy depends much on a character you will want to draw in. Once there are no unnatural colors, anomaly long hair, ears, tail(s), 69 eyes you have a regular more probably to be called a `realistic` character you are free to choose either this or that. If you have a non-realistic character you would want to plan a drawing well enough or choose fantasy. If I had a character with bright pink hair that wouldn't look realistic enough, would it?

You have chosen the category, the theme, picked a character and have a smooth picture of background. Now it`s time to open your mind, reach the edges of infinity and try first lines to see how your imagination can put an idea into the canvas.
Tip 1: if you do not know what to start with - start with a character. Once you have first lines of it - add perspective lines. Only then correct the anatomy of a character and try some background sketch (I do not draw lines for background but start with painting it smoothly black and white right away. I do NOT recommend this technique ahah especially if you are just studying or working on improvement - draw each everything. When I was younger I used to plan shading, lightning, final effects and even watermarks on a sketch stage)
Tip 2: start with a huge canvas if you`re unsure what exactly you want from your drawing. Then when you have everything planned just make thing smaller and crop the canvas.

Once you`ve done the very first planning you should have something closer to picture 1 on tutorial list. If you still have just lines, then go on for coloring in back and white. Why would I start in black and white? This is not what I normally do, but having a complex background with so many original colors taking place (green - yellow leaves, brown - green trees, grass colors, still unsure what color I want the sky to be and struggling for adding something like red leaves?) better to start in no colors. If you have a photo reference you can lower the saturation to 0 and keep on drawing. If you don't have the photo reference - it`s really bad, better go get it now unless you are a super mega master that lives in a forest and knows how everything works here. Now just add smooth details. Do not get into the very tiny details for now. Or I would say in advance - no tiny details ever ahahh.

Once you have something closer to picture 2 you can start coloring. That was a real pain for me earlier and I would usually start backgrounds in colors because I could not color black and white properly. So I`ll give some basic tips on that. First - Photoshop. No Sai coloring or anything else. I have a Photoshop CS6 and it is really life saving. There I go photography mode and start with filling the whole picture with more likely basic color that I find.
Tip 1themostimportantever1: always CTRL+S and always double your layers. I don't like working with a lot of layers like having each separate tree on each separate background. Basically on the stage of picture 1 on tutorial I have layers: sketch of a character, character`s sketchy base, the filling for the background (light grey sky), foreground (which is grass and the ground in front), far trees (light grey ones) and front trees (dark grey ones). On the stage of coloring I merge all the layers together and have only one. I double it, now one of them is invisible and is here in case you need to go back and start again. You make another copy so you have 3 copies in all: one invisible, one you will work with and one if you need to mix two colors by making one of the layers partly transparent. So always have 3 copies.
In a painting zone just paint the other colors that you need and try out all the layer modes - sometimes one is found working better that another. Try CTRL+U to edit colors that you draw. This must not be perfect as you see on the example of mine - everything is messy.

Now is when you can finally paint and add details. Phew, finally you may think x) but your emotion changes to this X(( because you really have to watch the amount of details and sharp figures you add. I`ll tell honestly - on this stage I was trying some textures sharp leaves and it just was not working. Remember one simple thing - this is the background and this is pretty far in distance background. In the end you will add blur effects and there are almost no situations when you will need a really small details like a shading of every single leaf that you draw in a tree. I used a square brush to paint in some plumps of leaves and was completely off.

Finally how long you have been working, sacrificing yourself just to say proudly `Yea, I`m making final effects, mum, do you see me?` The basics here are no basics. Blur what`s far behind, blur what`s to close to the viewer and edit colors, maybe add more details? I personally decided that my life was too boring and went for drawing in some crows, why not.

And that is all about it so I can only hope this was much helpful (at least some helpful) for everyone who was interested. If you still have any questions, you misunderstood something or you want to complain about the text size that you have to read you are very welcome to go to comments! Also if you have any other ideas about the future tutorial themes - welcome welcome welcome!!!

Credits:
Tutorial by Dezigre

Description
Patreon | DeviantArt | Instagram | Tumblr | FurAffinity | PicartoTV

Here we go! Probably the very first tutorial in my life! Yay!

What I basically explain here is step to step how I painted the forest. The tutorial starts at some visual point when you already have at least something drawn, but a real beginning is what you have in your head before turning everything on. I my head I had an idea of regret theme for some art where there would be a character as a main figure and probably would take a 75% of a canvas size in a `falling`-standing pose and under the figure would be blood, probably left from someone he or she knew but was late to help out. So the background starts at the point where you decide whether you will draw realism or fantasy. I can easily explain that decision - so if I had some fantasy theme for this it would have been for example a huge cave shining blue with some bluish-green water (also giving a light) and as for the main theme `regret` the blood would be coming from a character`s face down to the water and go away as a symbol of life that you can not restore. This choice between realism and fantasy depends much on a character you will want to draw in. Once there are no unnatural colors, anomaly long hair, ears, tail(s), 69 eyes you have a regular more probably to be called a `realistic` character you are free to choose either this or that. If you have a non-realistic character you would want to plan a drawing well enough or choose fantasy. If I had a character with bright pink hair that wouldn't look realistic enough, would it?

You have chosen the category, the theme, picked a character and have a smooth picture of background. Now it`s time to open your mind, reach the edges of infinity and try first lines to see how your imagination can put an idea into the canvas.
Tip 1: if you do not know what to start with - start with a character. Once you have first lines of it - add perspective lines. Only then correct the anatomy of a character and try some background sketch (I do not draw lines for background but start with painting it smoothly black and white right away. I do NOT recommend this technique ahah especially if you are just studying or working on improvement - draw each everything. When I was younger I used to plan shading, lightning, final effects and even watermarks on a sketch stage)
Tip 2: start with a huge canvas if you`re unsure what exactly you want from your drawing. Then when you have everything planned just make thing smaller and crop the canvas.

Once you`ve done the very first planning you should have something closer to picture 1 on tutorial list. If you still have just lines, then go on for coloring in back and white. Why would I start in black and white? This is not what I normally do, but having a complex background with so many original colors taking place (green - yellow leaves, brown - green trees, grass colors, still unsure what color I want the sky to be and struggling for adding something like red leaves?) better to start in no colors. If you have a photo reference you can lower the saturation to 0 and keep on drawing. If you don't have the photo reference - it`s really bad, better go get it now unless you are a super mega master that lives in a forest and knows how everything works here. Now just add smooth details. Do not get into the very tiny details for now. Or I would say in advance - no tiny details ever ahahh.

Once you have something closer to picture 2 you can start coloring. That was a real pain for me earlier and I would usually start backgrounds in colors because I could not color black and white properly. So I`ll give some basic tips on that. First - Photoshop. No Sai coloring or anything else. I have a Photoshop CS6 and it is really life saving. There I go photography mode and start with filling the whole picture with more likely basic color that I find.
Tip 1themostimportantever1: always CTRL+S and always double your layers. I don't like working with a lot of layers like having each separate tree on each separate background. Basically on the stage of picture 1 on tutorial I have layers: sketch of a character, character`s sketchy base, the filling for the background (light grey sky), foreground (which is grass and the ground in front), far trees (light grey ones) and front trees (dark grey ones). On the stage of coloring I merge all the layers together and have only one. I double it, now one of them is invisible and is here in case you need to go back and start again. You make another copy so you have 3 copies in all: one invisible, one you will work with and one if you need to mix two colors by making one of the layers partly transparent. So always have 3 copies.
In a painting zone just paint the other colors that you need and try out all the layer modes - sometimes one is found working better that another. Try CTRL+U to edit colors that you draw. This must not be perfect as you see on the example of mine - everything is messy.

Now is when you can finally paint and add details. Phew, finally you may think x) but your emotion changes to this X(( because you really have to watch the amount of details and sharp figures you add. I`ll tell honestly - on this stage I was trying some textures sharp leaves and it just was not working. Remember one simple thing - this is the background and this is pretty far in distance background. In the end you will add blur effects and there are almost no situations when you will need a really small details like a shading of every single leaf that you draw in a tree. I used a square brush to paint in some plumps of leaves and was completely off.

Finally how long you have been working, sacrificing yourself just to say proudly `Yea, I`m making final effects, mum, do you see me?` The basics here are no basics. Blur what`s far behind, blur what`s to close to the viewer and edit colors, maybe add more details? I personally decided that my life was too boring and went for drawing in some crows, why not.

And that is all about it so I can only hope this was much helpful (at least some helpful) for everyone who was interested. If you still have any questions, you misunderstood something or you want to complain about the text size that you have to read you are very welcome to go to comments! Also if you have any other ideas about the future tutorial themes - welcome welcome welcome!!!

Credits:
Tutorial by Dezigre