Limburg Hills

A few weekends ago, we had a surprise dinner and weekend for my partner’s mother. His siblings and partner also joined us for a wonderful “family retreat” by the hills in Limburg, South of the Netherlands. That’s right, we do have hills in the Netherlands! Contrary to known belief, it is not entirely flat. Such a scenic view too, and we were there just before the leaves changed colors so quite a lot of green still. And of course, I wanted to paint about our trip our wonderful trip there! Digital painting on Procreate this time.

The Start

The painting was actually partially duplicated from another one I had created a few months ago. Started it then abandoned it and started over again which became More Heather and Water Lillies back in September. Luckily I retained this abandoned one and decided now to recreate it! The sky and characters stayed as they were but modified the hills in the background in a different shape and color. I switched my outfit to pink and added baseball caps for both us and drew the eyes with crayon brushes (FTOON Set available on Creative Market). So far so cute!

Developing Texture

And here comes the fun part! Introducing texture and playing around with light modes. First we have the bright sun using Wild Light brush in Linear Light mode. A variety of leafy brushes in Jason’s Expressive Brushes set (also from Creative Market) were added. A few layers were then assigned for each light mode, including overlay and color dodge. Also some grainy spray, and for the reflection of the sun, I went for Soft Airbrush. The white areas of the baseball caps were filled in Dot Patterns brush. Finished it off with eyelashes using the crayon brush, and here we have it!

One of the wonderful things about digital art is that you can recreate easily from another existing piece as I had done here. Just a bit of modifying and tweaking you have another painting! Playing around with colors, textures and light modes especially resulted in a stunning background resembling the grassy hills we so much enjoyed viewing. Now I am very happy that I was able to illustrate something to remember that special weekend in Limburg by!