Create Rocky Texture Drawings!

Would you like to create rocky texture backgrounds digitally? While difficult at first, this lesson will break down the process so you can start painting your own rock backgrounds in no time!

Initially, we need to consider the random placements of shapes and patterns. Some times, you will tend to go redraw the same shapes over and over again until you find a random pattern that fits.

In this lesson, we will work with random contour and gesture sketches in your digital art program to create this random pattern.

So whenever you're ready, load up your digital art program, begin a new drawing layer, and start learning the basic steps!

1. Drawing rocks using outlines

As mentioned, the best way to start off creating a rocky texture is to create a few random gesture drawings. This will allow you to create shapes out of nothing!

With your digital brush, draw circles and lines to help you seek out the necessary shapes. Your job is to create patterns, while at the same time, looking for abnormalities in the patterns. Remember, this step is to 'feel' the rocks emerging.

Once these gesture drawings are done, refine it a bit. Use contour drawing method to highlight the outlines. Use your eraser tool to tone down unnecessary lines that could distract you from finding those rocky outlines.

From there, the next step is to divide the shapes into planes to help with shadowing and texture.

2. Using planes to draw a rock

Dividing rocks is fairly easy if you can see how light and shadows hit! As usual, if you have any annoying lines that may interfere with your ability to see light and shadows properly, I suggest you do some more cleanup.

The key here is the shape outlines that you want to divide up!

What is recommended is to start where each of the shapes overlap. Any part that overlaps will have shadows near it because the light will not be able to penetrate it.

The second part of division is figuring out how to put depth into those rocks. Go ahead and shade in any areas that you think the light can't hit.

As you can see from the example this will help you locate the dark and light areas for you to refine the rocky texture drawing!

3. Drawing rocky texture values

The exercise here involves black and white values so you can see how light and shadows behave. To paint the rocks, I will get you to start a new layer under the gesture sketch. This will be your background layer.

I suggest a neutral tone as you don't want to cover up the initial gesture sketches! Then, go ahead and merge both the layers together.

Now, choose a chalk-type digital brush and begin painting using white. The pressure sensitivity settings will create different levels of gray depending on how hard you push on your stylus.

Switch to black to get the right values if you placed too much pressure. At this time, just concentrate on painting the light as it hits your rocks. Don't forget about the small crevasses!

Overall, you want to use a chalk brush to create the various tones of values, a splatter brush to create the textures, and a small round brush to draw in any cracks. So make sure to adjust the size and types of brushes accordingly!

4. Adding rocky texture colors

After learning to create this simple rocky texture drawing, the next step is applying color! Based on the lessons so far you can choose either to 'glaze' over the rocks with a color of your choice, paint the colors and highlights manually, or a combination of both.

With your brush, select the 'color' blend mode to cover the rocks with the desired colors. Depending on your values, it will work.

However, if it's too dark or too light, your best bet is to paint the colors in manually along with the dodge and burn tools. These will highlight and darken the colors as you much as you need without destroying any textures that you have painted!

Depending on the types of textures, in conjunction with color, each potential combination will yield different types of rocks. At this point in time, it's up to your imagination!

I recommend studying about rocks so you have a good idea of how a certain rock is made to get a good idea of the textures possible.

I hope you enjoyed this lesson on creating your own rocky texture drawing. As always, leave it up to practice to get the hang of it!

P. S. Don't forget to upload your artworks to the site galleries as I would love to see what you can do!

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