Back in the days of Red, Blue and Yellow, the official art was made traditionally using watercolours. It's still a well-beloved style today, and now you can even imitate it digitally. Technology is incredible!

This tutorial is intended for Paint Tool SAI. It's definitely possible to accomplish this style in other programs like Photoshop, but you will have to adjust things accordingly.

Back to the Paint Tool Sai folder, you can find many weird files and one of them is called 'brushform.conf'. Double-click it and if it asks for how to open that file, choose NotePad from the program list and open it. Mainly done with the Brush tool. For the leaves I used the eraser with a leaf pattern. It’s my 3rd real drawing with SAI. Posted by 2 years ago. Mainly done with the Brush tool. For the leaves I used the eraser with a leaf pattern. It’s my 3rd real drawing with SAI. 22-feb-2016 - I'm having lots of fun making brushes! So have a bark and leaf brush. The two swatches are the brushes by themselves. I layered colors with the brushes. SAI Leaf and Bark brushes. Paint Tool SAI Grass Brush – MORE INFO This brush does not work like the “stamp” grass brushes in Photoshop. To get a result like in the preview you have to paint every single stroke individually, best method is to start at the bottom and go up in a quick motion, lessening the pressure so the tip becomes very thin.

Before you start you’ll want to grab reference images for whatever it is you want to draw. This may include modern Sugimori art (if you’re drawing a modern Pokémon), and I definitely recommend selecting old Sugimori art references based on the colours, shapes, pose and body style of what you want to draw. Bulbagarden Archives has a category filled with Sugimori's old Red/Green art as well as one for Red/Blue artwork, so browse and pick things that are right for your drawing.

The subject of this tutorial is my Nosepass character from sometimesnosepass, who I can draw from memory. Please use references for your own drawing if you need them!

For the linework and colouring, I prefer to use the following brush settings, respectively (tap to view the full details on mobile):

You will need the textures Crust, Acrylic, Bark2 and Acuarelle in their respective folders (right click these links and Save link as... to download them). For SAI1 you may need to edit config files to install them - google how to do this. I will also have a page detailing how to do this eventually, amongst other SAI tips.

The tutorial itself begins!

Step One: Sketching your drawing

As with any other art you make, it's a very good idea to make a sketch first.

When sketching, do keep in mind the stylizations that Gen 1 art has. For example, instead of using my character's normal eyes (which are black ovals) I opted for Clefairy’s style of eyes here.

For something like my Fennekin, I also kept in mind how the fur is styled in old gens. Things are a bit smoother nowadays in Pokémon, but in older art it wasn’t afraid to get fluffy and pointy at times. Animalistic Pokemon are also less sleek and take on rounder shapes - Pikachu is a very famous example. Use those references!

Step Two - The linework

As all the Gen 1 artwork was drawn by hand they are full of small imperfections, but that’s what gives the art character and makes us all love it in my opinion. As such, take it easy and don’t be afraid to be a little wobbly. In SAI, you can even turn down your brush stabiliser if you feel comfortable enough to do that.

Pay attention to your reference images and emulate the thickness of their lines. Don't be afraid of your lines having a slightly textured feel, either. That's what we want the brush to do to make it have that drawn-on-paper look.

Step Three - Basic base colouring

You may have noticed that I'm drawing with a grey background rather than a white one. I do things this way to ease my eyes, but it also comes in handy for this next step.

Very loosely select the outside of your linework, and invert it (by clicking Selection and Invert Selection). The loose selection serves a stylistic purpose which I'll talk about in a second, but for now, fill a layer underneath with white.

As you can see, the grey background helps us see the white colouring a lot easier.

Since Sugimori's old art is drawn traditionally, many of his images don't have a perfect edge when you view them on a black background. I choose to emulate this for my old-style drawings for fun and for accuracy, but if you want to do otherwise that's completely up to you. And yes, this was the purpose of having the selection be loose and imperfect.

Step Four - Shading

Either lock your white layer OR duplicate it and set it to clipping group. This is so you can blend the colouring without it extending past the boundaries of the white base. And… start colouring!

For real watercolours, the most effective way of using them is to put down light colours first and then layer them with darker colours. The brush settings I use will indeed make things darker as you layer them, whilst letting you blend light parts as you paint.

Pay close attention to how your references use colours and highlights - it can be tempting to colour in the whole picture, but Sugimori lets himself have these white highlights and even a majority of white on lighter-coloured Pokémon. The colouring also tends to look quite muted and pale due to the scanning process, so use pale and muted colours in return. Darker parts can have more defined and sharper edges, so layer them to make them more concentrated.

Sugimori didn’t let differently-coloured parts overlap, but as you know traditional watercolours are still prone to small mistakes and on some of his art pieces you can see it. Thus, be careful, but don’t worry too much about things like the blue on Nosepass’ nose. Take your time.

Similarly, shade differently-coloured parts of your picture as needed. Don't be afraid!

Step Five - Detailing

Whilst my colouring is looking good, it also looks very soft around the edges and quite blended. I decided to fix this by setting my rough/linework brush to a slightly lower opacity but a bigger size, and simply going around some of the edges and doing a bit of fine-tuning.

As I've mentioned, there are definitely places in the colouring where they have a harder or more feathery edge. Emulate it as best as you can, and do what feels right to you.

Step Six - Texturing

At this point I could easily count this Nosepass as finished, but there are some further tweaks that can make it just a little better.

For any scanned artwork, there's always some residual papery texture. Use the layer settings on your colouring to set it to a paper texture of your choice, and adjust the intensity and scale until it looks right to you. By default, all versions of SAI have paper textures.

Step Seven - The authenticity of low quality

You may have noticed already, but on many of Sugimori's watercolour pieces the lines are a bit fuzzy, perhaps due to the scanning or the watercolours making the lines bleed ever so slightly. As such, we're going to replicate that feel.

Duplicate your linework layer and blur it. SAI2 does have a Gaussian Blur filter, but for SAI1 you will have to do the blurring by hand with a blur brush. Don't fret, however - this can actually give it a better look than the filter can.

Set the opacity of the blurred linework to around 40% (or whatever you prefer) and Clipping Group it to the colouring layer. In this instance I chose to preserve the sharpness of the edges by using clipping, but you can also leave it unclipped if you prefer the overall soft blur.

Another optional thing I did here is to colour the main linework off-black to give it a bit of a faded, washed-out look. It's down to personal preference whether you choose to do this, too.

With that, you should have a finished piece! Go you!

It can take some practice to get the hang of this style, but by paying close attention to your reference pictures you will slowly gain the ability to do some startingly uncanny imitations. Keep doing your best, and good luck!

Page last updated on 27th April 2018 at 11:42 GMT.

With Photoshop grass brushes, you can easily add great looking grass effects to your designs – it is time to seed your designs with some grass! One of my favorite tools in Photoshop is the Brush Tool (B). It is great for adding all kinds of design elements with just a few mouse clicks. There are so many different free brushes available on the Internet and we published several brush collection already. When it comes to Photoshop grass brush sets you will find that the availability of almost staggering. For this article, alone I found more than 60 cool grass brushes you can add to your brush collection.

I hope you enjoy the article and remember to share it with your coworkers and frinds. Also please leave a comment with some feedback.

The Ultimate Grass Brush Set – MORE INFO

This set is featuring 50 different grass brushes

PS6 BRUSHES – Grass – MORE INFO

This Kit Contains abr brush file (various brushes in different sizes), 1 preview image, 1 color chart (grass colors) and 1 ‘how to add this brush’ instruction sheet.

My Grass Brushes – MORE INFO

Four grass brushes for Photoshop.

Grass and Flower Brush – MORE INFO

Grass Brush – MORE INFO

Grass Brushes 2 – MORE INFO

Grasses And Plants PS Brushes – MORE INFO

A set of brushes made up of various grasses and plants.

Grass Brush 2 – MORE INFO

Grass Bruses Pack1 CS4 – MORE INFO

Started to work on a pic that required Grass so I made my own brushes. This is my first brush set. The second to last brushes is in the pack twice. one with scatter and one with out.

Free PS Grass Brushes – MORE INFO

Grass Brushes – MORE INFO

Brush pack contains 12 grass brushes, (6 with out effects, 6 with effect – scattering etc.) + 1 with writing on.

Grassy Brushes – MORE INFO

Foliage And Grass Brushes – MORE INFO

A set of brushes for Photoshop that do things like that picture, which was made entirely out of every brush in the brush set. Grass, the ground, that brick texture, a few bushes, and a leaf scatter and a dandelion scatter–which for some reason is pretty small. Sorry about that, but it can be made bigger and still looks okay, for foliage. And, of course, the fuzz-ball, which is huge.

Lush Grass Brush – MORE INFO

Leaves And Grass Brushes – MORE INFO

This brush pack is made for Photoshop!

Nature Textures PS Brushes – MORE INFO

Various textures found in nature, made into Photoshop Brushes. From the scales of an alligator to hay and grass.

Grass Plant Brushes – MORE INFO

This brush file contains the three ones you can see in the image, made from very large source files. You can use it both as plant, or smaller as grass. Made in Photoshop CS4.

Grass Brushes – MORE INFO

5 Grass Brushes – MORE INFO

Grass Brush Set – MORE INFO

Sweet Grass Brushes – MORE INFO

Grass Brush 2 – MORE INFO

Grass Brushes 1 – MORE INFO

Here’s a new brush set! 10 Grass texture brushes for you that will work with PS7 or newer or Gimp.

Grass +PS brushes+ – MORE INFO

Lryiu’s Grass – MORE INFO

Grass Brushes 5 – MORE INFO

The fit and final group of grass brushes for PS CS2.

Grass Brushes 2 – MORE INFO

Here is another set of hi res grass brushes. This set includes different style grasses then in my first set of grass brushes.

Paint Tool SAI Grass Brush – MORE INFO

This brush does not work like the “stamp” grass brushes in Photoshop. To get a result like in the preview you have to paint every single stroke individually, best method is to start at the bottom and go up in a quick motion, lessening the pressure so the tip becomes very thin.

GRASS BRUSH – MORE INFO

A3D Grass Brushes – MORE INFO

Just a quickie I made for a project … Eight simple grass brushes … Made in Photoshop 7.

Brush Grass Set2 for Photoshop – MORE INFO

Paint Tool Sai Leaf Brush Photoshop

11 Grass Brush for Photoshop set #2 i did them with PS7 but compatible with cs and element.

Grass Brushes – MORE INFO

20 brushes in it, made with ps7.

GRASS Brush – MORE INFO

Grass Brushes – MORE INFO

Foliage Sketches Brushes – MORE INFO

A set of Photoshop brushes composed of various foliage, in the form of sketches. These are drawn by hand and are all high resolution, with the average size being about 2000 pixels.

Grass Brush 4 – MORE INFO

Brush Pack Grass And Stems – MORE INFO

The Grasslands II – MORE INFO

A very ambitious set of 45 grass brushes. Done in PS 7.

Grass Watercolor Brushes – MORE INFO

Fur or Grass – MORE INFO

Grass Brushes For Photoshop – MORE INFO

The Grasslands – MORE INFO

Paint Tool Sai 2 Leaf Brush

Clover And Grass Brushes – MORE INFO

Here are three brushes: one clover top view, one clover side view, and one grass top view. I didn’t put grass brush for side views, because there are already so many.

Grass – Volume – 1 – MORE INFO

Leaves And Veggie Brush Pack – MORE INFO

Featuring 50+ different foliage brushes.

Free PS Grass Brushes 2 – MORE INFO

Grass – MORE INFO

Grass Brush Photoshop SET 1 – MORE INFO

6 Grass Brush for Photoshop made with PS7.

Paint Tool Sai Leaf Brush Tool

Grass Brushes – MORE INFO

Made with Corel draw and Photoshop cs2, 21 Brushes.

Grass Brush Pack – MORE INFO

The grass looks great and can be used more abstractly if you increase the sizes (looks great if you put the brushes in black on white backgrounds also). I maxed out the brush size in this pack like all my others for your benefit.

Paint Tool Sai Leaf Brush

Sarah’s Epic Grass Brushes 2013 – MORE INFO

Tribal Grass Brush – MORE INFO

Fur_Grass Or Hair HiRes Brush – MORE INFO

Grass Brush – MORE INFO

‘Tis Grass – Brush EDIT – MORE INFO

Paint Tool Sai Leaf Brushes

Foliage Swirls – MORE INFO

A set of Photoshop brushes made up of various foliage and swirls in vector designs. While some swirls are included, this set was made to be used along with the Swirls Parts Photoshop brushes set, although it works out great on its own, as well! Average size is approximately 1500.

Grasses – MORE INFO

Paint Tool Sai Leaf Brush Download

Vector Foliage-Plants Brushes – MORE INFO

A set of Photoshop brushes made up of various foliage and plants in vector designs. Includes several grasses, flowers, plants, branches, cherry blossoms, bamboo, leaves, vines, and much more! Sizes average about 900 x 900 pixels.

F-Grass Brushes – MORE INFO

10 Fantasy/Realistic grass, grass-like plants (for example algae), fur, etc. brushes for Photoshop, were created and tested at version 7.

Grass Brushes – MORE INFO

Set of 12 (high quality) grass brushes.

Grass And Plant SET 3 PS – MORE INFO

Paint Tool Sai Leaf Brush Cleaner

Photoshop Grass and Plant SET3.