Water Color Phone Case Design using Blender Grease Pencil

Artwork Finished Projects
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#1

SonofaBirch Phone Case_Test-3
SonofaBirch Phone Case_Test-31800×3200 1.29 MB

Been working on this for a few days using Blenders Grease Pencil tools. Believe it or not it’s a mock up for a phone cover I wanted to try to make.

phonecase-template_Mock Up
phonecase-template_Mock Up1953×1250 863 KB

It was fun to come up with and was taken from one of my nightly doodles.

Ink Doodles and Birch Designs_1
Ink Doodles and Birch Designs_11227×1578 397 KB

I also got to teach myself how to make my own custom watercolor brushes in Blender, which I’m sure 50,000 youtubers are currently making into a tutorial, but I did it on my own and that felt great!

Splotches_1
Splotches_11920×1920 309 KB

Art is a weird subject, and the path of an artist is also weird. Covid making it even weirder. I’m apart of a lot of artist and animation groups on FB and its almost like there is this collective desperation among artists in finding purpose for their work or to make enough of a living to have the time to make it. When most of them have just started. It’s been hard to watch and has even made me want to leave groups and not check news feeds. It seems everyday an artist is now pushing themselves in hopes of striking gold instead of enjoying the practice of making something. Becoming depressed by their peers instead of inspired. But the truth is, even when I had no money or apartment, I was still making comic books. I was still drawing everyday cause it made me feel better. And eventually I was lucky enough to incorporate those skills into a multitude of different jobs I’ve had through out my short career. A career that could end at any moment for any reason. I wish I could give the art community a collective hug, and the hope that if you just keep loving what you do and keep doing it, it will love you back.

Update 12.2.20

If you like the design and want it for yourself you can get it on amazon!
–> Son of a Birch Phone Case (i-phone / USA)<–

OR

You can download the project file for yourself for FREE and see what I did!
Son of a Birch Blender 2.9 File

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#2

Thanks for this little blip. You’re speaking what has been on my mind a lot lately. Social media has been a real detriment to young and amateur artists, whom are often trying to live up to the impossible talents of those they see online. I wish we could go back to a time when we just did what we did because we enjoyed it. I admit, I myself don’t always enjoy the creative process like I used to, I wish I could keep that childlike enjoyment of learning and doing the best I can during my creative endeavors, and I wish the same for everyone else too!

I’ll join that collective hug now. :grin:

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#3

I featured you on BlenderNation, have a great weekend!

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#4

really nice work. can you tell us more about the workflow

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#5

Great watercolor effect!

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#6

Really cool! the watercolour itself is a Grease Pencil brush?

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#7

I was curious about this too

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#8

Oh wow! Thanks! Never thought I’d be featured!

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#9

Yes…sort of!
So I set the stroke material to be Dots and to use a Texture with Path as the alignment. Then I swapped out the texture with a few transparent watercolor splotches. I then used this as my material for other brushes like the chisel, ink, and the marker using the Vertex material option for coloring. To see any of this you have to be in rendered view when coloring. Another secret for this to work is to also set the brush radius to something ridiculously high, like between 2000 to 5000px depending on your image size. Which you’ll have to manually type in as the slider doesn’t natively go that high. I hope this helps!

#10

Thank you! I was inspired by the texture brushes!

#11

Sure, it was pretty simple!
First I used the doodle I made on paper (after taking a pic of it with my phone) and made a mock up by loading it in as Background Images in my Camera Settings. I also included a “Bleed Size” for phones that I got from online.

SOB - Mock Up
SOB - Mock Up1800×3200 341 KB

After that I started to trace and add variety by using the ink Brush native to blender. I like how it acts like a fet-tip brush pen if you allow the pressure sensitivity to be active. I use a Huion tablet so this is great for line variation. I then created a series of masks for everything. The Trunks, the leaves, the rocks, etc. This way I could color them with the watercolor brushes I made and it wouldn’t spill into places I didnt want it to. Then I just kept tweaking till I liked it. I also made the Sapling, the close rock and the Text childs of empty objects so I could re position them if necessary. You can do this by placing them on their own layer and then going to the relations tab.

I hope this helps, and let me know if you have anymore questions!

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#12

Oh really cool! if you want to share the watercolour brushes and include in the official textured pack let me know!

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#13

I would love to! Let me package them cleanly for you and I can send you the Blend file!

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#14

Great! Thanks a lot.

#15

Hey pepeland, I didn’t realize it till now, but I sent you the watercolor brushes via the messaging service here. So it should be in your blender artist inbox! Thanks again for wanting to include them!

1 Like