Tutorial Painting Realistic Leaf Fast and Easy

First let's open a new RGB canvas, white color. Usually I prefer to work on 400x400 pixels to paint small object.

You have the choice of painting your leaf silhouette in mode or use a Path Shape from your custom shape in PI and use the medium green color from the ulead color picker panel.

The one I have use from the custom shape had an empty space where the big venure was, so I did use use the paint brush with the same color and paint on mode to cover that part, click out of mode and merge the two objects together.

If you use a path shape to make the silhouette of your leaf don't forget to convert it to an image object. You will find it under object from the menu bar.

Great, now we have our silhouette leaf done. We are going to select the paint brush. This is the panel brush for setting our paint brush in PI v.11 previous version is different but has all the same feature under tabs.

Use the same setting as on the left, the size may vary a little from mine depending of how big you did made your leaf.

Here is the the other setting for the brush in PI v.11, some that you will not find in the tool setting brush but in earlier version that you could find under the tabs. Set your brush there as well, as you could see I have change my size to 11 and click on paint mode to have my paint on it's own layer for the next step.

Next, we are going to change our color to a lighter green, right click on the color box on the tool bar next to the round shape and choose PhotoImpact Color Picker. You will get this window, you will see the current color that you have, so it is easier to select a lighter color compare to the current one. As you could see, not only you have the RGB color's number but also the Hue, saturation and brigthness numbers as well as the hex color number, very usefull to have when you want to prepare your color palette in advance. You have also the Web safe color, but you will be limited for choosing your colors and since we are making a painting we are not going to use it. Once you have chosen, click ok.

Ok, our paint brush is set, the mode feature is on ( when on the icon became a light blue color and not gray out).

We are going to paint the big venure of the leaf, don't make a straight and perfect line, in nature notice is straight and perfect.

Try to make a big long stroke by pressing more and applying less pressure going down to the tip of the leaf. Don't worry if you don't get it right the first time, we are lucky to have the undo and you don't have to click out of mode for using the undo. Follow the curve of the leaf.

Once you are done, click out of mode, now you will see that your big venure you just draw is a selected object, just like in the example on the left.

We are now going to make it look like more 3d.

In order to make it more like a 3d look, we are going to use the emboss, go under Effect from the Menu bar, choose Fills and Textures and select Emboss. A new window will open. The default display is there, and will see all the default in gray color, don't worry about it and click on Option.

This is the window you will get,on the left. You will now set your Emboss.

First; select your light source, this is the source from where the light is coming, be sure to always use the same one to make your leaf realistic.

Second; Depth I have set it to the highest at 5.

Third; we are going to change our color and use a simliar color that we did use to paint our venure.

Right click and select Eyedropper. Follow me below for the example window.

This new window will open for the eyedropper. You could zoom in to pick up the exact color that you want and move you image as well in the view panel. Click on your pick tool and click on the color you want in your image window, after you're done click ok.

As you could see in the previous image above, the green color will now show and as well in the dual view the one on the left is now green and not gray.

Click ok in that window to apply your emboss.

This is what it will look like you you deselect it. Does look 3d but not very nice, don't worry we will fix this in a few easy step. Select your venure again.

We are going to go to the retouch tool and select the Blur tool.

This is the window for the Tool Setting-Brush for our Blur tool. Set yours the same.

This is our tool bar for the blur tool, use same setting. As you could see, we are going to click on the edit mode, this is the next button on the right to the Mode button. Click on it and we are ready to apply our blur tool.

Now, when you do click on the edit mode, as you will see all of your other objects will fade and only the selected object will be bright, this way it is easier to see what object you are working on.

Follow me below, I,m showing you how to apply your stroke.

To not lose our light source showing we need to make our stroke from the light source going down the opposite way. Not a back and forthed motion but one stroke at a time, see example on the left.

Don't be afraid to start away from your object, since we are in edit mode it won't affect the other objects and will only apply to the selected object.

Great,looks a lot better already. We are now going to make the venure look like it is a part of the leaf and not standing on it.

Click out of the edit mode and keep your venure selected.

Click on the pick tool, This is the black arrow. On the tool bar (example at the left here), you will see the transparency setting and the softedge. Set your transparency at about 55. As you could see now, the venure is more blend into the leaf than just sitting on it.

Next step, we are going to select the leaf and use one of the retouch tool, the Dodge tool. Use the setting above and don't forget to click on the edit mode. Don't worry about the venure it won't affect it.

With The Dodge tool, we will put some highlight to our leaf, remember where we did decided from where our light sources was, well keep this in mind as you do put your highlignt on.

Don't do a back and forthed stroke, always go in the same direction if you feel it is not highlight enough after the first stroke, you could go over it once more.

When I set the level of the Dodge tool, I prefer to set it not to high, I rather make an other stroke on top where I want more direct light than just a light reflection.

See example on the left for a guide line on how mine look like.

Keep your leaf selected.

For our next step, we are going to add shadow, this will give more depth to our leaf. For this we are going another retouch tool, this time it will be the Burn tool. The Burn tool, will darken our paint and if use to much it will become to dark. So we are not going to set our level to high either for this tool, if we want it darker we could always do an other stroke on top of the stroke. Again we are going to use the edit mode so our venure is not going to be affected by it. See below for instruction on how to do your stroke.

The fun part about this, is that we have our venure as an object and we could apply the Burn tool under it. By starting from the stem going down to the tip of our leaf make one long stroke, it will seam that you go over you venure, remeber we are still in edit mode and this won't affect the venure and only the leaf.

Now do a second long stroke but on the right side of the venure, we have more shadow showing here and the light is coming from the other side.

Next, we are going to give more depth, my leaf is pointed, so it gives me a pretty good idea where it should look deeper, at some place you could make shorter stroke and apply less pressure as well, remember that nature is not perfect. Have a look at the example on the left to use as a guide line.

Keeping our leaf selected, we now select again the retouch tool but this time the Blur tool and set as above, we are going to use the level 3 and of course with the edit mode on.

What we are going to do, is make our Highlight and shadow softer, make it more smooth by gently brush over it, one stroke at a time following the natural curves and lines of the leaf. Look at my example on the left to give you and idea. Don't do to much, as you could see it does darken a bit our paint, we don't want to lose all our details here.

Look pretty good already, but as we all know leafs has those tiny venure that goes from the big centered one toward the edge of it.

This is what we are going to do next, using the same way as we did for our big venure.

This is the small venure we are going to paint in mode. Take the time to look at the example on the left here, and if you have a different kind of leaf, look at some real one or a photo of some, it will give you a pretty good idea how to imitated the small venure in them.

For this we are going to use the paint brush again. Under the paint tool select your paint brush.

Again this is our tool brush bar, choose a lighter green color, so you see where you are drawing you small venure. Don't forget to click on the Mode button.

This is our Tool setting-Brush panel again, use the same setting as in the left image, of course the size may vary a bit depending of the size of your leaf.

Now draw your small venure, one full stroke for each one, applying more pressure where you start and almost to no pressure at the end of your stroke, do it only once for each segment of the small venure. Don't worry if you don't get it at the first try, just click undo and redo it again.

Once all your small venure has been drawn, click out of mode, this is what you will see on the left.

Keep selected.

Again we are going to apply the Emboss filter to it. Go under effect, fill and texture and choose Emboss, and apply the same setting as we did before, if you have close your PI program the last setting you have use should be there as well. If not refer to the Emboss setting we did earlier and apply by clicking ok.

Again, we are going to use the Blur tool, following the same step as we did for our big venure, and make the same kind of stroke keeping in mind the direct of our light sources, since we have lots of small one close together we are going to make small stroke, not a back and forthed one.

This is how mine look on the left.

Now we are going to make our small venure look as a part of our leaf and not as if it is standing on it. Keep your small venure selected. Select your pick tool and apply a transparency at about 50 %.

If you deselect, this is what you will see on the left, it is looking better already.

Let's keep going follow me, we are almost done.

We do need some shadow under those venure, in order to do this, I prefer to zoom in on it, at 200% view.

Select your leaf, select the burn tool, click on edit mode, set the size of your burn tool to 7 one pixel bigger than the size you did use to draw your small venure.

Now make one stroke movement for each small segment of the small venure, applying more pressure at the starting point and almost to none at the tip of the small venure segment.

Look at the example on the left to give you an idea.

Do keep your leaf selected, we are going to change our retouch tool.

Select the Blur tool from the retouch tool, use the same setting as above here, click on edit mode.

We are going to make our shadow that we just did more smoother, don't do a back and forthed stroke but just one, follow the natural lines and curves of our small venures.

Looks much better already, let's keep going just one more step and we're done.

Select your small venure, choose the pick tool and adjust the transparency, do this in the actual view mode, I have set mine at 67 transparency.

Here is our final result. Pretty cool isn't it. Save it as a ufo on transparent background for further use.

You could make some different shape one to add to a painted flower.

This is an example of the same shape leaf that I just did duplicate and rotated and apply the burn retouch tool for more shadow.

You could apply the same technique to paint some fast an easy flower.

Don't forget to show result at PhotoImpact International, I would love to see it. The painting basic forum is the right place to show your painting.

If you are not a member, you just have to register, it is free.

Hope you did learn something new and had as much fun as I did had to write the tutorial for you. If you need help you could always contact me.