🍀Hi! I'm going to show you how to make an abandoned place, but first...

let's start with some warmup and try to figure out how each material works

🖌️I'm only using 2 brushes, the G-pen (or any other similar basic brush that you like) and a soft airbrush. We combine them with lasso effect, soft eraser, and a soft airbrush look-alike eraser. Tonal Corrections are a must.

 

Sometimes I change the names of the brushes that I use, but don't worry, these are default ones. I encourage you to get familiar with 2-3 brushes and just use those until you are comfortable with them, then try out different ones that have more texture. For me, digital brushes are similar to real life, master the pencil/watercolor, then you can jump into ballpen/gouache or try a combination.

Let's try the wood material first. We will make it as new, so bright colors would look just fine

~ Steps are easy - base shape over, base shape under. Use new layers and clip them to the base shapes, this way you can easily edit without getting lost in too many masks.

~ On the clipped layers make lines and circles. Wobbly lines are perfectly fine, just make sure they go in the same direction (horizontally or vertically) Don't worry about the colors, you can adjust it after

~ Make a new Clipped layer on multiply and another clipped layer on-screen or overlay (Depends on the colors you choose so, test things out and see how you like them)

~ Final step, adjust colors Edit->Tonal Correction->Color Balance + Brightness/Contrast + Hue

Great! Let's age it.

~ Wood usually gets darker with age, so adjust colors Edit->Tonal Correction->Color Balance + Brightness/Contrast + Hue. Adjust it to your liking

~ Erase sharp edges and make some new cracks

~ with a darker color, draw more horizontal lines and extra dots. wobbly lines and random placing of the dots are perfect for a more organic look

~ Add a bit of highlight, in my case overlay mode + yellow tone worked great. It's old wood so don't overdo it, no need for too much shine

~ More cracks, random lines, scratches. this is a fun part so really, just have fun

 

Up next, Stone wall

~ Use rectangle to make the basic shape, same process rectangle over a bit lighter / rectangle under a bit darker

~ Erase a bit of the edge on both rectangles, and make a blurry texture with different color variations. You can see the difference in each tile, if you want a smooth tile use less(see last row of tiles), if you want a bit of a wobbly tile, use more (see the first row of tiles)

~ Yellow-orange tone on screen mode. I use this to make the edges look more defined and add a smooth gradient

~ Shadows on a multiply layer. These are just for small accents, the difference is subtle

~ Here I added more highlights because I feel like it was lacking something

~ Final step, last details, small cracks, and dots just to give the stone some extra texture

Aged stone wall

~Some stones get lighter with age, and some get darker, so, let's try the darker version, Adjust colors to your liking

~ I wanted to add a bit of light so a pale yellow on Add(Glow) mode was a good choice in this case

~ Next, add cracks, a lot of cracks in a darker color. just have fun, no strict rules here

~ On a multiply layer, I added small airbrush dots, and a bit of color, a bit of green, and a bit of red suit this stone

~ Extra small details, scratches, and dots in empty spots.

Lets try metal.

~Rectangles in the shape you want

~For every rectangle, make a soft gradient, light blue and darker gray

~ Metal is usually shiny so I just used a soft airbrush+ eraser were needed to add the highlight

~ Multiply mode layer with darker colors, for a few shadows

~ Small details will make it look more interesting, and since its metal, let's add metal screws (dot with gradient and darker contour)

(sometimes) Metal rusts with age, so lets try that

~Adjust the colors and make it a bit darker

~ Duplicate the shape a few times, and try to adjust colors, make one more yellow-ish, and one more brown-red-ish. after that, soft erase parts of them. now you have gray-yellow-brown rusty shape.

~ Make a new layer on multiply mode, draw some shapes and use the smudge tool/blend tool, to make strains

~ repeat the process with a new layer on overlay mode, for the highlights

~ make small scratches and dots for extra texture. Since it's metal and its, a very hard material make sure when you make a darker dent to automatically add a lighter dent line next to it. this will give the impression that the dent is really deep

Normal stones! Les try this one as well

~ I used the lasso tool to make some basic shapes. It is good to vary the size and the shape, use round edges and pointy edges

~ Let's add a shadow, use a slightly darker tone, and the lasso tool + airbrush. fast way to make shapes

~ New layer on multiply mode, use the airbrush to softly make extra shadows, it is ok to make small bumps/dots. This will read as a stone texture

~ Now make a new layer on-screen mode, use the lasso tool and airbrush to make some highlights. as with the first step, play around with sharp and soft edges

~ Almost there, add some dots and small lines

~ Final step, adjust the color balance to your liking. In the first version, I wanted a more blue-ish stone

Let's see if we can make it look older?

~ I changes the color to a more lighter tone, lets say the stones are in the sun all day, so the color will fade away

~ I also added a grass patch underneath. This is good to show that time passed so much, that grass/moss/vines grew around them

~ New layer with cracks and extra dots

~ Grass layer over the stones

~ Same as the first step, I added a new layer with a darker color

✍️Ok let's make the drawing

I start off with a sketch. make sure to look at photos for inspiration

I wanted to add some kind of gate, a building, some gothic arches, and a lot of green

But since I'm still figuring out the process, I start out with an easier task, the sky

I used gradient and the G-pen. Use the smudge tool for the windy clouds effect

I added some base colors, to have a better feeling of how it should look.

I also adjust the colors, there are made to be color picked

 

Now I just slowly add the basic shapes

I do have a perspective grid, but I'm still learning it and I don't feel comfortable making complex background. So for now, I keep it simple

For the gothic arch, I wanted to add it into perspective, so it is was easier to draw it flat, and then just scale it to my need

 

And this is how it looks. More details will be added later after I am happy with the mockup

You will notice I play a lot with the scaling of the objects

Added the rest of the details

With this , I am happy with the settings, so I will go and render things out

I ran out of time and I had to rush this illustration, but I hope you found it helpful 🙏

Edit : I took a tiny sleep break, and worked a few more hours. I made the building a bit smaller and also adjusted the colors. With the same brush, I made small details like leaves, cracks, fog

🍀Thank you for joining me 🍀