Introduction

Hey, and welcome to my tutorial on isometric art! I haven't done much of it, so I'm kind of making this tutorial for myself as well. I hope I'll get through it without too many mistakes. The video included is just a timelapse video to show the process, but I hope it's still useful. Hope you guys enjoy! Oh, and don't mind the little crisscross arrows on the screenshots, those are just from the video recording.

Grid

First thing I do is create a new canvas, measuring 30 by 30 centimeters. Then I turn on the grid. This will be used for even measurement.

Next I find the special ruler, in the ruler toolbox, and go to Parallel Lines. The default setting to Step of Angle is 45 degrees, but for this, I set it to 30. It needs to be the straight line tool.

Using the ruler and grid for measurement, I can draw evenly spaced lines all the way down the canvas. At one point I have to move the lines down quite a bit, to fill out the entire canvas and still be able to use the grid to get them evenly spaced.

There, now we have one side of the vertical lines, time for the other. Just create a new layer, make a new ruler going the opposite way (still at a 30 degree angle), rinse and repeat.

And there we go, the finished bottom grid. Obviously you can make the grid smaller or bigger, you don't have to fill out the entire canvas, stuff like that. In fact, I'm going to make it bigger, by using the transform tool. Remember to have both layers selected when doing this, otherwise the grid won't match!

As a final help, I use the same ruler, only at a vertical angle, to create a few lines straight up, to mark where I want the building to go.

And there we go, an open cube, ready to build interesting stuff inside!

The Building Process

Before anything else, I want to mark off what is what. Mainly because if I don't, I will be confused really quickly. I do so on a new layer, that way it won't ruin my nice clean lines. See how I made the outlines thicker? That's because those will become walls and floor, and making them thicker, makes me remember that.

Now I'm trying to make this tutorial pretty simple, and therefore I'm just going to give you some basic inked outlines of things, not a whole long painting process. But sketching first, and I do that without any rulers turned on. It's just to indicate what I want in the room and where it should go.

There, now I have a sketchy layout of what I want the room to include. Now to ink it, I start by lowering the opacity on everything. The I put in three rulers, just like the ones on the outline layers, one vertical, and two at a thirty degree angle going in each direction. Having them all on one layer does that I can shift between them, using the Operation tool. I simply click a ruler to unlock it, then go back and forth between them to get the lines right.

Here the bed, mirror, and side table has been drawn, and already it is starting to look more like a room.

And there we go. Obviously I would add a bunch of more details as well as coloring and painting if I were to use it for something, but for this tutorial, I think it's fine. It's really all about the Special Ruler and getting the grid right to begin with.

 

As for time, this took about an hour to make, including the parts where I messed up (you can see those in the video). Thanks for reading and watching, I hope it's helpful!