Video

Intro

Well hello there, this is Tamil. Let's paint a cozy room. I love doing little rooms because they are not too complicated and it's good practice for interior design. I will go over the workflow and how I approach this topic myself.

 

As always, you can check out my video to get more information and get a better understanding of what are my choices.

 

Let's get into it!

Idea

Cozy rooms are a fun subject to paint. It got super popular when Lo-Fi came around. So much cozy art and so much inspiration :) At least for me.

 

The first thing that I do is go to Pinterest and look for cozy room pictures. I have a big mood board of what I want and what I liked. I also try to look for styles too. I like animated tv shows from different eras, so I look at how they did their background as a reference. Did they use thick or thin lines? What colors did they use? Was it pastels or strong colors?

 

A very cool idea to do is to build the room of your dreams! What type of room would you like to live in? If you had to remodel it or live in the woods? Think of what you find cozy and cute. Your imagination is the limit.

 

Another cool approach is to find an interesting story for the room. What type of person lives there? A sporty good student young teenager? Maybe it is an older woman who has her own garden and loves vintage? Try to write down what type of person will live there, it will help you decide what objects to add and how to make it look more engaging.

 

Let's start sketching!

Process

I start out with a simple sketch and try to figure out where things are placed. I try to not get into too many details. I also did not use a perspective grid. It will not look as great for later, but I felt like sometimes you just have to let go of the perfection and just enjoy the process. I am not working on this for a job or portfolio. Sometimes I just want to play with colors and small objects.

 

The person is not the final too, so I will keep working on it with references later. I start out with no clear goal for myself if it's just a personal piece.

Add more cozy things: plants, lamps, posters, and plushies. I also decided to try out the CSP 3D model to put my model in perspective. See how it sits in the scene and use it as my reference. I also made a tutorial for that.

Look at the small bean :3 She is relaxing and listening to music. A cozy scene demands a cozy person. My main goal was to create someone who enjoys themselves and is peaceful. Compliment the room and the environment really well.

Then dive right into the line art. I just picked a standard CSP brush that has some small texture to it. Pick a brush that makes you feel comfortable. I always recommend using a bigger size so that you do not go too much into detail. It also looks nicer on a smaller scale when viewed on a phone or a small screen.

 

Make bold and strong confident strokes. Do not do too many small sketchy lines. It makes for a busy artwork a lot of times. Since we will paint it later, we need to use as few lines as possible.

 

Adding a cat is a must have by the way. No painting is good without a cat 0_0

Starting with coloring. Color is a very hard topic, but a good start is to find focal points. Using colors from a photo as a mood is also a good start. See what looks good and what does not.

 

I also had in mind that I am going to be using light in the end from the window to make the character stand out more.

 

 

After that, I usually turn it into black and white to see if I need to fix the base colors. The main technique is:

• Make a new layer on top

• Fill with black

• Set the layer mode to Color

 

Should be a good start to check for values.

I only made a few changes to make it look more cohesive. Just making sure the bright parts are not too bright.

Just darkened everything with a universal multiply layer. I used a purple that has high saturation. I recommend using high saturation when using a multiply layer. Looks way juicier.

Starting to add shadows. I try to make big shadows and collect them in the best way possible. Adding way detailed shadows as a first pass will make you focus too much on small details.

 

Now our image is way too dark! We will add more light from the window.

Doing some light highlights and using fewer shadows. I also added some dark corners around my image like a vignette. Colored corners with some slight blue with Color mode.

 

I also use a lot of Overlay layers to bring things up with brightness.

Now I was just playing around with curves in adjustments. Making dark parts more bright and making the light look cooler and bluer.

 

Also do not forget to make lines not black. Depending on the scene it will look better if you use dark blue or dark red for lines. Just make a new layer and use a clipping mask for it.

Secret Room technique

I just wanted to share a small secret technique that helped me when I was starting out with drawing rooms. It's really fun to start if you feel stuck with your room.

 

The first half of the video is about that, so hopefully that demonstration will help you.

Think of your room as if you looking at it from the top. Just think of what you want to place in your room and what it should look like. The left side will be a simple door. On the right side is a table. The top will be a bed. I am keeping it simple so I can try and figure it out step by step.

After that, you can click Ctrl-T with your layer selected. It is a shortcut for free transform. This will give you the ability to skew and distort your drawing. Just crab one of the 4 handles on the corner and hold Ctrl before you click.

I set my room just like this with trnasform. Once that is done I can find myself at a vanishing point.

Just connect the perspective lines you have already. It's pretty simple. A place where it will converge is where you will find your vanishing point. You can put a small dot there if you want to.

If we use 1 point or 2 point perspective, then we can just make straight lines for walls.

Now we can continue making boxes. Almost every object can be put inside a box.

Just keep adding details depending on how complex or easy you want to make the background. I know the room looks SUPER (not) amazing :D, but I wanted to just show the technique without making it too complicated. I hope it's okey.

Here is my old perspective tutorial. It's a little crusty, but I feel like you can still learn a lot from it.

Outro

Thank you for reading! I appreciate any support. I think watching the video will be a good way to learn since I show everything right in the program. I hope you learned something and let me know if you have any questions. I try to answer them when I can.

 

Happy painting!

My links if you want to follow my journey :)