Valentine’s Pool
The Valentine’s Pool is a heart shaped pond deep in the woods that crackles alive with magic once a year to grant a single wish to the worthy of heart. There is only enough magic in the pool to last a single night so those who wish to discover it, must plan accordingly and venture in at the right time.
About the Design
It’s almost Valentine’s Day. Why do I say this? As I was doing some after Christmas shopping, I saw that the Valentine’s Day products were very quickly replacing the Christmas decorations, cards, and lights. So, to jump on the bandwagon of Valentine’s Day, I thought I would create this.
The design is created with Clip Studio Paint and was created using seven layers…whew…that’s a lot of layers for me.
Layer number one
The first layer was a typical pencil layer that I inserted so keep myself on track with what I wanted to draw. I used to do this in a sketchbook and then scan the pictures in but now I just draw straight in the program from the get go. After I sketched what I wanted, I just deleted the layer by dragging it to the trash can.
Layer number two
This was my inking layer. This layer I spent the most time on as I wanted to make sure that there were no “holes” in my lines. This is crucial to the flatting process. If there are gaps in the lines, the color will flow out and color other elements that may or may not need color. I used varying pen sizes to get some good texture and depth.
These are the final inks. I added some blending to the far tree in the background. I was going for some darker depth.
Layer number three
The third layer was for my flat colors. I set my inks up as a reference layer and then began filling in the color. Since this was a Valentine’s Day pic, I kept my pallet to three relevant colors of the season. I was looking for a bit of a gothic appeal so I used pale colors and limited myself to three.
It is also important to point out that I duplicated my flats layer before I added highlights and shadows. This preserves your color layers and allows you to use your copied color layer as a reference. It makes color picking so much faster. I also turn on fix pixel. This keeps your air brush strokes from going all over the place keeping your design a lot cleaner.
Layers Four Through Seven
These layers were for extra items that I put into the design. I used one layer for a painted background. Those mountains were painted in using a texture brush and then blended so that they looked far away.
I used another separate layer to create a pink fill. This is the sky color that you also see in the background. I fill the entire piece with color and then erase out what I don’t want to use. This is time saving for me but I’m sure that there are other ways to do the same thing.
This is a screen shot of the inks with just the pink fill in the background. I used the fill bucket to paint in the whole layer and then erased out what I didn’t need.
This is what the design looks like with the pink fill. As you can see, I erased out what I didn’t need. In the background is the tree I erased out to leave the branches. Another layer I used was the glow layer. The glow layer makes certain elements really stand out. In this piece, the magic effects were placed on a glow layer to increase the contrast and make it look more magical.
The trees in the background are actually from a “tree brush” that I used. I set up the largest size I could and erased off the parts I didn’t need. The result is that the branches from the giant tree I placed now look like individual trees in the distance. I reduced the opacity so that they look blurrier and further back in the page.
Animation
This is the animated version of the design. Seven animation cells to animate the design. I primarily added in the magic affects to the pool to make it shimmer. I didn’t want to make it too complicated.
Summary
That is all for tonight. If I left some things out that you may want to know more of, please ask. I am always happy to help everyone out. Also check out my book. You can find it here. Amazon Prime holders can get it for free. It is available in hard copy and E-book format. The book has a lot of these types of tutorials designed to help you come up with design ideas.
If you enjoyed this tutorial, maybe you’ll like the one I did during the fall. I also did an interesting autumn piece earlier this year as well. Also check out Pilgrim in the Woods. You will find some really cool tips and tricks that I used to create it. I always on the prowl to collect suggestions and comments from everyone. Let me know what you think.
