Hey Hive!
We're back again with another Art Attack! If you're new to the series, this is where I share my drawings and the process behind them. A behind-the-scenes look at my artwork, if you will. This is not to say that I'm very good at art, or that I'm a professional in any way. In fact this is the opposite, and serves as a reminder to how I first started, and lets me track my progress too!
So back when I first started digital art, I started by drawing some simple landscape pieces and I practised recreating paintings from one of my favourite games of all time - Stardew Valley!
Source: Steam
If you're unfamiliar, Stardew Valley is a very charming 2D pixel indie farming simulator game that was developed by a single talented guy; ConcernedApe! I love everything about Stardew Valley. The visuals are so adorable and well done, the art is beautiful, the gameplay is solid, and the music is phenomenal!
Anyway, in Stardew Valley there are actual paintings that you can put up in your house and they're some of my favourite furniture in the game!
Source: Stardew Valley Wiki
I thought it'd be cool to try and practise my digital art while recreating some of my favourite paintings from the game! This is one I did of Calico Hills:
Then I tried painting my favourite one, Jade Hills, in watercolour:
It didn't turn out like how I hoped, unfortunately. So I decided to try drawing this digitally to see how it would turn out, using some of the techniques I learned from doing the textured landscape I shared previously.
These were the references I used, and I decided to try doing the Extended version of the original Jade Hills painting. I also found a similar painting that someone did online but on a mini canvas that I thought looked really good too!
Initially I wanted to make the trees more realistic so I tried looking for simple-ish trees I could reference. But when I actually tried drawing it didn't feel right.
After that I figured I would just draw it simply since I wanted it to look like the painting anyway and stick to round trees. I started with a simple background using the colours from the source, but it turned out a little more saturated that I expected.
So I tweaked the colours to make them more pastel-like and pleasant. I think it looked a lot better. But I wasn't really sure about how to draw the river since it looked like it was cutting right through the hills.
When I used the spackle brush though it didn't really seem to matter too much. After all they were low hills I don't think they were supposed to be very distinct. I added some texture on the water too which I thought would look weird but it fits.
I added in the trees and once they hid the hills everything seemed to fall into place. I wasn't too sure on the clouds though since they seem to stand out. I think I should've blended the edges to make them smoother. I thought the trees looked good though, and I added some detail on the trunks so they looked better.
Overall it's a pretty simple piece, and I might still change a few things here and there but otherwise I think this ultimately looks a lot better than my watercoloured version for sure. I wouldn't mind trying different styles of this painting in the future. Maybe then I can really learn how to draw trees properly; I feel like striking the right balance between simplicity and realism in trees has been a big weakness of mine.
Here's the timelapse for this piece:
I know most artists have a particular style they stick to but I like variety and trying and learning different styles has always been my thing. Even though it takes some time and sometimes doesn't turn out like I envisioned I think it's still fun to try new things rather than just sticking to what you know.
Thanks so much for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
Gorgeous, it reminds me of the illustrations of a childhood book.