(click for DA version)

A landscape image done for a birthday card. In the distance are two characters of mine.

First inspiration for the light structure is from romantic 19th century paintings by John Atkinson Grimshaw; but I moved more and more towards my own style as I worked on it.

Krita + Gimp, some five hours.
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Griatch

That is bursting with atmosphere and happiness. I love it!

Very nice.

Absolutely beautiful. I just love it. Can't think of what else to say.

Nice!

The ambiance is superb Griatch.

Griatch, I'd be so happy if you told me how to do such a beautiful effect. Is it possible with Gimp?
Thanks in advance.

Brilliant

griatch: busvackert! i love the warm light and the atmosphere and the way the sunshine is sifted through the pattern of empty branches. especially the detail of that small bush or whatever it is to the left is so impressive, just the way afternoon light would work. beautiful work on the colouring.
i think one of the characters is that troll you've painted in an armchair, don't think i recognise the other one.

I really like the atmosphere

I keep meaning to give Krita a go, but I have some weird dependency issues that keep me from installing it.

I loveeeeeeeeeeeeee this, it's so pretty and relaxing!
Are the distant characters Blackback ( think that's his name, the troll merchant fella) and the Jester?
It's so far away I can't tell if it's the jester or the troll girl, I think I might see a tail but I'm not sure. xD

I really like how the foreground road looks. It has a very great mood. The trees looks barren though and the background trees looks weird with the transparency at the top and being branchless. The grass field on the right also look too smooth. Is that on purpose? I really also would like to know how to paint grass in GIMP. Any tips?

Beautiful, soothing, tranquil - great work.

Thanks for the nice comments everyone!


Interesting that you'd see "happiness" alongside the ambience. Thanks for the comment!

Glad to hear this.

This is mostly traditional painting techniques. I'm using Krita since it has more specialized brushes but you could certainly do this in GIMP too if you preferred (I've done so many times in the past). The light is mostly done manually but some of the shine (especially that which shines past the leaves to the left) is made with a dodge-brush. The equivalent in GIMP is the dodge tool using a fuzzy brush and low opacity.
I have made many tutorials on how to create paintings in GIMP, check out my signature for the link to them. Ask if you have any further questions.

Spent a lot of time on the lighting here, so it's good you think it looks realistic. I was happy with that left-side brushwork. The big character in the distance is indeed good ol' Blackback the troll. The smaller one could be a few different ones, but it's most likely the jester, I'd like to think.

I had that issue for a long time too - compiling Krita from sources is a bit annoying and it has some really hefty KDE dependencies. But since Krita started offering development-snapshot PPAs, installing problems are pretty much gone on Debian-derived systems. I use the unstable PPA snapshot myself, from http://krita.org/download.

It's indeed Blackback, the merchant troll! The troll girl is a lot taller than the other one, so I think your guess of the Jester is probably pretty correct. Thanks for the comment!

It is always good with feedback. There is some transparency going on there, that is true, I could probably have cleaned those up a bit more. I did try to add more branches towards the top of the image but I found that this gives a "ceiling" to the image and makes it look claustrophobic and closed-in - so I opted to make make them more sparse for this reason. Not sure I'd agree on the grass field, it has quite a lot of structure but I suspect you might need to look at the larger-size image to see it.
Grass in gimp is done in the same way you'd do it using normal pencils or oils on canvas. I usually use a hard, round brush and low opacity to paint out the general structure. Then you apply strands in a slightly different colour to cover the "lower part" of the grass - and so on. The main important aspect is to always vary your hues - nature is not homogenously coloured. I have a tutorial that covers making grass, you can find it here.

Thanks a lot!
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Griatch

The tutorial as great and helpful. I would try your technique, though, your grass is much more prominent in the tutorial than in this painting.

About the trees, why don't you try what David Revoy does to his Alice in Wonderland (please search for it I can't seem to post off-site urls).

Look at the background. You can see trees, mountains and castles there but they never really detracts with the foreground. I think it is because he uses very low contrast and monochromatic treatment for them. They rigester more like mist that solid entities. Maybe you could do the same to your background trees and make them part of the sky.

I saw some of your drawings. They are great.

You could spend more time drawing beautiful girls.

Glad the tutorial is useful. Yes, David's Alice in wonderland is a very nice piece! (although made in a quite different style) and you are correct that merging trees (and other things) with the background color through low-contrast is a nice and semi-subtle way of adding depth. You can see this technique used in parts of this painting too, but low-contrast effects like this is only possible (realistically) if you either have fog or the distance is big enough so as to have enough atmosphere between the viewer and the object - the closest row of trees is too close for more than a hint of this. But by all means - it's certainly possible I should have refactored the background to offer a further viewing distance in places to lighten it up a bit. It's worth thinking about. Thanks a lot for the feedback and suggestions!


I have done some of those on occation too.
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Griatch

Perfectly chosen colour scheme; I commend you on your excellent work!

Thanks, AFarmaAnt.
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Griatch