Technique: Tree Stumps
Wherein I teach a simple technique for drawing tree stumps.
When making outdoors battlemaps, it is often desirable to mark where trees are so that the characters know where they can and cannot move. Tree stumps are the best way to indicate this – either representing literal tree stumps or simply marking where trees are.
A tree stump is made from three layers (the top, the rings, and the roots) and then grass and moss is painted over them in their own layers. Note that if you don’t want to have these appear as “stumps”, you can skip all the ring-creation steps and just set the Stump Top layer to be solid grey.
A Freeform Pen drawn shape with a grey stroke produces a really basic, crude tree stump shape.
- Create a layer group, “Tree Stump”
- Inside of the Tree Stump group, create a new layer, “Stump Top”.
- Set your paint color to a light brown or tan (
#baad87 ) - Select the Freeform Pen tool.
- Draw the shape of the top of the stump inside of Stump Top. Tree stumps are never truly circular and most often are slightly irregular in shape.
- Add a simple stroke for definition: 1px outside,
#222222 , blend mode Multiply, 50% opacity, with “overprint” checked. - Add a stroke for the bark: 15 pixels (or so), outside, 100 % opacity, Normal blend mode, and a medium grey in color (
#999999 )*, unless it is the stump of a redwood tree**. - Do not add another external stroke yet.
Add some rings. You might think to yourself, “Self, I bet I could do this with inner strokes!” and you would be correct, but the result will not enthuse you for three reasons:
- Inner strokes within odd shapes end up getting sharp corners, which don’t feel organic.
- Inner strokes always step on each other regardless of how you order them. You have to do your “spacing” strokes in the same color as your base. There are ways around this using multiple layers and fill opacity settings, but they look just as janky.
- You have a limited number of strokes, which won’t be enough to fill the stump.
Thus, you have to draw them with a brush. Now would be a good time to bust out your pen tablet. You are going to draw rings in their own layer by hand.
- Create a new layer inside of Tree Stump called “Rings”. Place this layer above Stump Top. Set it’s blend mode to Overlay.
- Set your paint color to a dark grey (
#222222 ) - Select the Brush tool. Use a 1 pixel hard round brush at 100% opacity.
- Working inside of the Rings layer, carefully draw the rings. Work from the outside inwards, starting by mimicking the exterior shape of the stump but gradually reaching circles in the center. You don’t have to be exact, and you can have thinner or fatter spaces between the rings, but rings cannot overlap.
Once you’ve got a stump with some rings, it is time to grungify the bark on the main stump – to make it irregular. You’re going to rasterize the Stump Top layer and attack it with the Eraser tool and then add an outside stroke to it.
- Duplicate Stump Top, rename the duplicate “Stump Shape Backup,” and turn off its visibility.
- Right click on Stump Top in the Layers panel and select Rasterize Layer Style.
- Rename your rasterized Stump Top layer to “Stump Top Pixels”.
- Switch to the Eraser tool, with a hard round brush, 100% opacity, and a size between 5 and 10 pixels.
- Go around the edges of the stump, erasing bark in places. Don’t erase all of the bark. Just dip in and out in an irregular fashion.
- Clean the edges of Stump Top Pixels: Go Filter -> Sharpen -> Unsharp Mask and set Amount to 50 and Radius to 2.0. Hit <return>.
- Add a stroke to the outside of Stump Top Pixels: 1 pixel, outside, Multiply blend mode, color
#222222 , with overprint selected. - Add a grunge texture (I am using Grunge – Seamless) with a blend mode of Overlay.
- Add an outer glow: Color
#222222 , blend mode Multiply, 50% opacity, softer technique, spread 10, size 25.
It’s time to add a shape for the roots. You’ll create a basic shape with the Freeform Pen tool and then apply some texture and a smooth inner bevel.
- Create a new layer inside of Tree Stump below Stump Top Pixels called “Roots”.
- Set your paint color to a dark, greyish brown (
#534741 ). - Select the Freeform Pen tool.
- Inside of the Roots layer, draw the tendrils of the roots. Don’t worry about them clashing with the grass layer right now. Don’t draw them too far out, and gnarl them in places.
- Go around the edges of the stump, erasing bark in places. Don’t erase all of the bark. Just dip in and out in an irregular fashion.
- Add a grunge texture (I am using Grunge – Seamless) with a blend mode of Overlay.
- Add a Bevel & Emboss effect with the following (complex) settings:
- Style: Inner Bevel
- Technique: Smooth
- Depth: 500
- Direction: Up
- Size: 25
- Soften: 10
- Angle: 90 degrees
- Altitude: 90 degrees
- Highlight opacity: 30%
- Shadow opacity: 30%
Now it’s time to blend some grass and moss overtop the roots. This is done with a technique similar to that described in the adding moss tutorial.
- Create a new layer inside of Tree Stump called “Stump Grass” above Tree Roots.
- Set a pattern overlay on Stump Grass to be the same grass texture as your background.
- Set the fill opacity of Stump Grass to 0%.
- Select the Stump Grass layer.
- Select the Brush tool. Hard Round, 15% opacity, and with a size that is large but not too large (20 to 40 pixels, depending on your map’s resolution).
- Gradually paint around and over the tree roots. Go back over areas to thicken in places. You want to fuzz out the hard edges of the roots.
If you want to add moss, do so using the same technique in a new layer (below Stump Grass and above Stump Roots). Remember that moss mostly (but not exclusively) grows on the north side of trees in the northern hemisphere and on the south side of trees in the southern hemisphere.
* Contrary to popular belief, tree bark is usually a grey and not a brown. Children have been conditioned for decades to use brown crayons to draw trees, but that is yet another lie perpetrated by the main stream, fake-news media.
** If you’re dealing with redwoods, the color is closer to