Thank you kind asker I will make a tutorial below for grass. I'll do shrubs and trees in another one, because it's a different method and it got pretty long.
🌿 How to draw grass tiles: step-by-step
Each box is 16x16, the same size Stardew Valley uses. Make it tile (how to do it depends on your software) so we can see if our edges match up nicely.
Draw 1 simple blade of grass. Many options for shape but I like this one. Feel free to copy me directly
2. Give it a shadow. Wow !!!
3. Give it a highlight! OMG!
4. Add another grass
5. Do it over and over and over and over and over
Literally just do the same or similar blades of grass, give them all little shadows, highlight a few if you want and there you have it! So easy.
It looks really complicated like this, but its literally just a few steps, repeated over and over.
Many games use this technique and it would be perfectly serviceable for a base grass tile.
Personally, I prefer lower contrast grass. This tile will likely be used for large areas, so ideally you don't want it to be too busy or eye-burning to distract from the character.
🌿 I'll show you how to do a different type of grass now that is a little more complicated.
Midtone grass colour
2. Add some lighter and darker patches touching each other (not too high contrast!)
3. Use this shape (or your preferred, but this is how I did it) on the top edge of your patches. Colour them with the middle colour from each patch.
4. Do it again a lot (this is very tedious)
5. Add some highlights
6. Add some fun extra stuff
We're done! Have fun everyone, show me if you try it!
A new tutorial will be available on my Patreon tomorrow December 1st!
It will be available for all tier patrons and it includes the reference image and texture that I use in all of my artwork, to achieve a paper-like look.
someone asked how i draw grass, so i made a little layer breakdown of the process.
brushes: only two for the grass, although you only really need one! one of them was for the strands of grass (just a pencil-y brush, had to do one blade at a time), and another to create those tiny cluster of dots! you can skip em, or do em by hand. the flowers were done using the same two brushes.
art program: sai 2, although you can do this in almost any art program!
this tutorial is also very helpful! it’s the one i based my breakdown off of.
and as always, study other people’s art and try to see how they do it! hope this helps!
1. first off, use a marker tool to create some quick lines to cover the area. ignore the dark and blended area that’s a mistake i made and went with (happy little accidents y’know) . I liked using a grayish sorta pastel green for a base.
2. I doubled the layers a couple times and layered them around so it wasn’t as white. I added a very light green on the edges where the light would hit it and than darkened the shadowed and farther away areas. Blend the colors a bit into the base.
3. I used the dark, light, and base colors from earlier to make like specks come out (you know what i mean the actual grass). Don’t put one color in one area, move it around and going wild. Use motion, play around, have fun y’know.
4. Add some shading and lighting and thats about it :)
WATER (this is going from down to up because idk)
1. I used a reference here just cause i had no clue what to do so yeah those are good. I started with a basic outline just to get out the shapes and movement i wanted.
2. with coloring it, try not to lose the motion of it as much as you can. also added some lighter and darker values because it looked nice
3. blend those values out and just keep adding more. also highlights, those are good too. sorry im really bad at tutorials
4. add white highlights with the layer on luminosity, this makes them extra bright. also blend out with the water color brush to make it very flowy.
5. more highlights and more shadows. just keep putting them on there ain’t no stopping
i’m guessing this was pretty useless but if you liked it than thanks :)
