Village Scene
02nd July 2025
In: Art
A very different subject for digital painting in Procreate, moving away from landscapes to an urban village scene. I wanted to see whether quoll brush, that I had be using recently, could be adapted to other subjects.
I particularly like the quoll brush for its transparent qualities - one colour can be overlayed on top of another e.g. yellow on top of blue to give green. This is most effective when strokes are made. If the brush is dragged/over painted on the screen it ‘mixes’ which may not be the desired finish. I also find it best to start with a large brush to maximise the brush’s texture and then work to the detail latter (a small quoll brush size loses the beneficial properties and becomes felt-tip like).
Applying the quoll brush to a subject that has more definite hard edges, eg buildings, was dance between the big brush and the smaller brush. To keep it painterly I decided that some soft lines were acceptable. This worked well for the cars.
The deep shadows were a challenge. Laying darks over lights didn’t work so well, it tended to mix as explained above. The work around was overlaying colour on a separate layer…a bit like glazing.
Overall, there are some parts of this painting that I like and other parts that were more trial and error…the learning goes on!
BTW - there are many digital options that could be used for this scene. For example, selections can be used to isolate shapes e.g a side of a building. This allows a big brush to be contained within the selected area and this might have been a good option but it would have moved away from the one painting layer method I have used for recent landscapes.
I particularly like the quoll brush for its transparent qualities - one colour can be overlayed on top of another e.g. yellow on top of blue to give green. This is most effective when strokes are made. If the brush is dragged/over painted on the screen it ‘mixes’ which may not be the desired finish. I also find it best to start with a large brush to maximise the brush’s texture and then work to the detail latter (a small quoll brush size loses the beneficial properties and becomes felt-tip like).
Applying the quoll brush to a subject that has more definite hard edges, eg buildings, was dance between the big brush and the smaller brush. To keep it painterly I decided that some soft lines were acceptable. This worked well for the cars.
The deep shadows were a challenge. Laying darks over lights didn’t work so well, it tended to mix as explained above. The work around was overlaying colour on a separate layer…a bit like glazing.
Overall, there are some parts of this painting that I like and other parts that were more trial and error…the learning goes on!
BTW - there are many digital options that could be used for this scene. For example, selections can be used to isolate shapes e.g a side of a building. This allows a big brush to be contained within the selected area and this might have been a good option but it would have moved away from the one painting layer method I have used for recent landscapes.