Seasons Greetings! 🎄☃️ I hope you had a wonderful Christmas! In this week's tutorial, we are going to use some of the premium foliage brushes from my Effortless Flower Brush Set and a free glitter brush to draw this super easy Christmas Tree. Please don't forget to download the tutorial files before you begin. You'll get the tutorial PDF for offline viewing, the free glitter gel brush, and a swatch palette for this project. Please make sure that you're on your iPad when you try to download and install the brushes and swatch palette.
If you're ready, let's begin!
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Step 1: First, draw the general shape fo the tree using a peppermint brush. Lower the opacity of this layer. Then add new layers and start drawing the leaves using the Foliage no. 17, 10 and 6 brushes. Make sure that Dynamic Brush Scaling is turned on. It's under preferences.
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Step 2: Continue layering Foliage no. 7, 2, 8, and 1 to make your tree look full! Vary your strokes and pressure to create a more organic look.
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Step 3: Add decorations using Pollen brush no. 8 and Pollen brush no. 4 for the star. Using the Glitter Gel Pen - Multi-colored, draw a ribbon spiraling around the tree. You can set the primary color to a gold yellow and the secondary color as white. You can use a layer mask and the monoline brush to hide parts of the ribbon. Set the color to black to do this. Using the layer mask is a non-destructive way to cover up areas of your art.
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Step 4: Now to add a bit of sparkle! Using the default Lightpen from the luminance brush group, you can add glowing light around the Christmas tree for a truly festive look!
Optional Animation Steps:
To animate this illustration, rename the very top leaf layer as the "foreground" and then group the rest of the layers together. Add another layer, renames as guide. And using the glitter gel brush, create a ribbon spiraling around the tree. After that reduce the opacity of the guide layer. Then turn on animation assist.
Tap on the first frame (it's the group illustration layers) and enable it as background. This way, the main illustration will not flicker in and out.
Add a frame, and trace the path of the ribbon from the bottom using the lightpen or the glitter gel brush. As you draw each ribbon segment, overlap the path so that there's a good continuity of movement. It's okay to have a lot of frames.
Add some glowing dots and small pollen # 4 (star shape) in each frame so that it twinkles in some areas. Add some small lines that trail after the ribbon. Repeat this process until you’re happy with the result! Don't forget to turn off the original ribbon you traced earlier.
Repeat this process until you’re happy with the result! Don't forget to turn off the original ribbon you traced earlier. Play around with the settings to set the frames per second.
Then export your animation as a GIIF or MP4 if you want to share it on social media.
And there you have it! Congrats on finishing this tutorial using the premium brushes from my Effortless Flower Brush Set! Please don't forget to tag me if you post your version online! I would love to see it! Merry Christmas! 🎄☃️🤩🎅🏼
