In this lesson video, we are going to start sketching out a three on a hill illustration project. Previously, we already add reference images to our document, we can see them if we drag around the canvas. For our project, we are going to contain the illustration inside a circle. Why? Well to be honest, so it doesn't take too long to finish because we are going to focus on the techniques, so there is not much value for you to see me repeating the same thing over and over again. Okay, let's zoom in a bit.

To create the circle First, we need a new pane layer, renamed a new layer to frame Next, choose the elliptical selection tool and then click drag from here. While we are dragging hold the shift key to make a perfect circle or shape. Now if you reach the end, but the circle is not at the center, just hold out and drag the selection to the left or to the right. We haven't discussed about alignment yet. So for now, let's just eyeball it, then release the mouse. Okay, for this circle, we actually want the center to be void in the outer area to be filled with color.

Basically, we need to invert the selection. We can do that by pressing Control Shift I. Now this outer area is selected, while the area inside the circle is not. Let's pick a dark gray color, then press Shift Backspace to fill the selection with that gray color. So now we have some kind of circular window where we can put our drawing, Press Q to unselect all now for this frame layer. We don't want anything to happen to this layer, such as brush strokes.

Or any other accidental changes. So for this layer, let's turn on the lock layer icon in here. This way, nothing will happen to it. Next, we are going to create rough sketching in this layer two. For this purpose. Let's pick our pencil brush.

And for the first rough sketching phase, I will use blue for the color. Okay, in this area, we will create the tree around the middle area, we will draw the cliff ground and aggressors. And finally at the bottom, we will draw the rocky cliff. So let's begin sketching. This will be the tree canopy or the leaves. This will be the tree trunk and branches and this will be the ground or the grasses At the age of this ground, we will be able to see the rocky cliff.

Okay. Now, I think the ground needs to be lower. Let's use our eraser brush. If we have to ground lower, we can have more room for our tree. Let's add more details and let's start with the tree first. We are going to create the tree like this bonsai reference photo here, but we are not trying to create a realistic style for our illustration.

Instead, we will create a more stylized version of the three. Essentially I want to create a more zigzagging style. So I will use mostly straight lines. I hope by doing this gives stronger characteristic on the three Okay, I will speed up the video For now, as there is no new technique that we can discuss, this will be the left branch. For the work details, I want to add several lines pattern just like the bark in the reference photo, but I want to make them twisted to give it more stylized look. I am adding a tree not in here.

The shape should be polygonal and has a stylized swirl pattern. The roots should also have twisted bark pattern just like the trunk. Okay, the tree is done and I am working on the grasses now. For the rock cliff. I am trying to copy the pattern from the bottom reference photo After we are done, let's create a new layer on top of the current blue sketch layer. Essentially in this new layer, we are going to create more refined sketching using black color.

To set the foreground color to black, we can simply press D As we can see, the foreground color is now set to Black. Let's start tracing and refining the previous blue color sketch. I'll speed up the video for now. For this final sketching, you can create these to be as detailed as you want, especially if later you want to overlay your sketch on top of the final illustration. I know many artists like to do this as this technique can give more artistic and handwritten feeling to the final illustration Okay guys, so here is the final sketch. I am sorry that I have to fast forward the video because I made several mistakes when recording and these mistakes might get you confused.

Essentially I did suffer tweaks on the final sketch. As you can see the age of the trunk at the center is moved down a bit. Also the age of the right branch is moved down and to the left slightly and I also So fix some of the branch details at the left. Let's rename the previous blue sketch layer to sketch rough and rename the final black sketch layer to sketch final. Okay, in the next lesson, we are going to prepare the layers and start adding the base colors