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Hi, I have been designing new 'Nature' brushes in Affinity Photo so that I can create nature scenes, micro worlds and greeting card designs. Its only a 'rough'; needs a bit of work... I have been using Affinity Photo for a while now - ever since Adobe decided that they were going to force their users to 'RENT' their software and that they are no longer interested in lowly individual designers, they are only interested in large corporate accounts. So I switched to Affinity Photo/Designer. And I am SO GLAD that I did. They are awesome! I also have been using CorelDraw and Corel Painter for many years (longer than I used Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign). I started using CorelDraw with version 5, and Painter when it was owned by Fractal Design, also version 5. I can remember opening CorelDraw when I first purchased it and just staring at all the tools and the blank page. Previously I had only used Word. I tried to type something. Nothing. So I closed it. I kept opening it up and just looking in awe at the tools, then finally I read some of the manual, checked out the Help files and figured it out. This started my interest in digital design. Later, I became a Graphic Designer and worked for nearly 20 years at Deutsche Bank doing cover design, Powerpoint template design, redrawing logos and maps, animation and so much more. There is a whole hidden industry of design, 'Presentation Design' and 'Presentation Specialist' jobs and you can get into this market if you use Word, Excel, PowerPoint. Its a great place to start your design career. Not only London, but all over the globe - Sydney, Australia, New York, Paris, Frankfurt... anywhere large corporations have a 'Presentations' department. Check out the job opportunities by typing 'Presentations Design' in Google. Create a portfolio. And if your portfolio is good, they will train you. I usually use Painter to create my greetings cards and have hundreds of Painter brushes - gold, jewels, silver, glass, diamonds, pearls, satins and silk brushes, and, of course, hundreds of 'Nature' brushes. This is the first one I have done using Affinity Photo. It has taken me a long time to create all the brushes of stones, rocks, rock faces, trees, lichen, toadstools, twisted branches, moss, ferns and to adjust the brush settings just to begin painting with them. Hope you like it... Del Hope you like it...

Yes, This is great! I had a Dachshund too and, as dannyg9 says, it captures their spirit so well, their inquisitive nature, theit beautiful faces so full of fun and mischief. The BEST dogs...

Actually, they are two different creatures. For birds the air is their domain and they have probably seen a clear route upwards, over/through the land to the right For the deer, he has to find a ground route out of the danger zone and he's determined that is to be to the left. There's no way he can follow the birds' route out, unless his name is Rudolph and he has a big red nose.

Half of a masthead I'm working on using Affinity Designer for the very first time. All vector oil brushes including Outstanding Oil Brushes, Ult Brush Toolbox, Sav's AD brushes, CD Monet and default oil. My website: https://edagawin.carbonmade.com/ and IG: https://www.instagram.com/edagawin/

I am new one and probably my work is not perfect. I just try what all i can do or not with affinity.

Yes, that's right, because I've seen it all over the world. Over rainforests, over desert plains or over cities. You name it. These are crows asking a bird of prey to leave the area, and they often do so by harassing them, breaking their concentration and interfering with their hunt. It rarely gets dramatic, but the bird of prey simply can't really hunt in peace. It's very simple. I've seen birds of all shapes and sizes work together to be wary of the large birds of prey, and warn each other well in advance. But it's the big crows that have to fly up and and disturb the intruding bird.

I created this back in Dec 2021, but forgot to post it... Christmas Card 2021 that I created in Affinity Photo using the 'Nature' brushes, with the help of a few animals and birds... 🙂 DelN CMYK for Print RGB for Screen

@G-F-H beautiful birds! Always amazing to learn how many varieties there still exist in this world.

As I was a student of arts about 20-30 years ago, I was mainly interested in comics and airbrush painting. I had problems with both at my art academy, because the most art professors (don't know the right term in english) didn't think that comics could be art and most of them didn't like airbrush painting. I think, of course comics can be art - they don't need to be, but they can - and the airbrush is nothing but a special sort of brush, so a tool you can create art with. Today, as far as I know, they also offer comic workshops at that academy. - Sometimes the early bird misses the worm, as it seems. It is the same with computers and apps. They are tools. What you create with them can be art, but it is not necessarily art. At least not high art. In german law we have a term called "Schöpfungshöhe", that is important for copyrights. It means something like originality. I think that this is an important point. The great artists in history all had a grade of originality in some things that made their work unique and recognizable. That is it what makes them great art, I think. To be honest, I don't make the rules. It is just my point of view. But it seems to make sense. If I watch the work that the most people create with digital apps, most of them seem to be interested in recreating analog art effects. That is very interesting to me, I'm often really impressed, and I often try to do it myself, but this alone is nothing that will save you a place in the history of arts. For that it needs some sort of relevant innovation in your work, I think. Think of Van Gogh's colors and wild strokes. Something like that was never seen before. Or think of Monet's handling of light and colors. Caravaggio's masterful Chiaroscuro. Goya's genius characterization of individuals. Picasso's deconstruction of natural shapes... All these are milestones in the evolution of art. Nonetheless of course many artists create art that has not this milestone character, but is really impressing anyway. Some of the things I love may be trash for many others. Doesn't matter to me. By the way, there is an interesting progress going on in our times. As I said in an earlier post, Picasso, Braque and some others invented the cubism as photography was invented. At the moment we reached a point where photography turns more and more into abstraction. Not only in the choice of the subjects for photographs, that are often abstract shapes in nature. Even in the opportunities image editing offers. "Sharper than reality" is one of the catchphrases for what I mean. Opportunities that create mannerisms. One day, I'm sure, people will see this kind of photographs, and they will say: "Ah, looks like early 21 century". I sometimes don't like this too sharp images, because there is a point where they begin to look static and lifeless. But that might be a matter of taste. In some german news forums, there are often discussions about if Photoshoping is legitimately. There are always many purists that say that it isn't and that it kills the art of photography. As often in social media, there is almost only black and white in the standpoints. I don't think so. I think it's a new form of art. But it depends on what kind of photography we are talking about. Wildlife photography f.e. shouldn't be sharper than reality, I think, because that is not natural, not "wildlife". And especially press photography has of course to be as unedited as possible, because it has to show reliable truth.

I haven't used a background image. It's made entirely from the brush strokes and brush dabs of the 'Nature' brushes I have been creating (for weeks and weeks). It takes a lot of time to create them, but I like the result, testing the brush strokes and dabs once I have made them and then creating a scene by painting and dabbing with them. I made all the 'Nature' brushes from images - toadstools, leaves, moss, lichen, rocks, grass, branches, birds, butterflies, bits of broken tree bark. Recently, I have been taking images of lichen on fallen branches. I select the area of an image I think will make an interesting brush dab/stroke, then remove the background and save the individual object/section of an object and export it as a .png (transparent background). Then I import each individual image back into Affinity Photo and create a brush from it. Some brushes I create from several images and create a 'nozzle' and set the brush stroke for this brush at 'random' so that it cycles through all the images I have saved in that brush. I hope this makes sense. The brush settings in Affinity Photo allow you to create amazing variants of the brushes you create, setting the spacing and placement of brush dabs, rotation, twisting brush strokes, nozzles, recolouring the brush dabs and strokes, and using other seamless .jpg images of textures to paint with textured brush dabs. I have created a step-by-step tutorial in MS Word of how I create an image brush. If anyone would find it useful I will upload it here. Let me know. I'll upload a few of the 'Nature' brushes too if anyone would like to try them...

Ha-ha! Yes, hodgepodge. What a great word from the past. You don't hear it used now. 'Hodge Podge' would be a great name for a character in a children's book 😊... I like to experiment with the brushes in Affinity Photo, creating image brushes using random sections of images that I consider will make really interesting textures, images like the underside of a toadstool, lichen on a tree branch, rust, peeling paint, tarnished gold, folds in an old sheet, satin, silks, mist, clouds, the texture on an old man's cap. Then I test the brush settings, spacing, rotation, change the colours (or re-do the brush if I'm not happy with it, changing the colour, cutting bits off. etc). Then I export little sections of random bits of a texture as .png files, then re-import them into the brush as variants to rotate, set specing, etc. You get some great brushes by experimenting... I have done some interesting 'Nature' scenes using the photobashing technique and matte painting scenes using my 'Nature' and 'Atmosphere' brushes. I study the colours in a sunset or dawn, sometimes create a colour palette or LUTs from it and create the background gradient and then paint the trees, rocks, background mountains using the brushes I created, grabbing sections of buildings from various sources, re-colouring. Applying textures to change them, build onto them, add lighting to the windows, etc. I am always experimenting. Perspective and distance is challenging, but 'Practice, Perseverance and Patience' usually pays off. It's a lot of fun...

Actually, the birds going one way and the deer the other, for me, capture in the image the panic. Unlike people in a workplace they will not have been taught what to do in a fire situation nor will they have participated in a fire drill and been informed of the gathering point after evacuation and there will not be signs on the trees indicating which way to go in the event of a fire. And although when staff in a human workpace all behave in an orderly manner in a previously announced fire drill, who knows what will happen if there is a real fire. The animals may not know which is the route to safety. They may not be aware that there is anywhere outside the wood, or they may have previously stood at the edge of the wood gazing at the open meadow beyond yet never ventured there. William

Ha-ha! Well spotted! While I was putting it together I did wonder whether, if the fire is raging rapidly through the woodland in all directions, leaping from tree to tree and setting alight to the undergrowth, do the animals, in their terror, follow the same route to safety as the birds or do they tear through the woodland in a blind panic, avoiding the fire and smoke as they come across it... And I agree with you: I don't see any similarity between Piero di Cosimo's wonderful painting in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and my own, but it was a great compliment to receive from William. But did you notice that one of the deer and wild boars in Piero di Cosimo's painting have men's heads?

Re: your original 'Fire in the Wood' paintings, I am intrigued that the deer and the birds seem to be fleeing from the fire in opposite directions! Artistic licence? I find that the painting from the Ashmolean does not connect in any way for me with your painting. John

Hi guys, I just made this brushes 2 days ago. Here's the link if you want to download it: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19yzrVPnG8VIdnJzcJsHqzf8Hi6ALiIww/view?usp=sharing You can also check out the video below to see how I use these brushes. Hope you like it, thank you!

@SrPx: Thank you for your comment. The explanation of the two arts is correct and I agree it is more Art Nouveau than Art Deco, even if some elements reflect the latter. I believe Gaudi was also influenced by Art Nouveau, which probably is the reason why the work on the Sagrada Familia is pain staking and time consuming. Mimicking the organic works of nature is a huge challenge.

Every easter I make a puzzle withy cryptographic images. This year the theme was 'Birds'. Easter has of course long since past, but I just realized I didn't share my work here. I'd love to hear feedback if you have any. Everything was made in Affinity Designer! https://matth-ijs.nl/paaspuzzel/2022/

Free 'Nature' and 'Atmosphere' brushes for Affinity Photo (in one place). Even though I uploaded them, I still have trouble finding them on the forum so I thought I'd put them in one place... I am attaching the 'step-by-step' guide on how I created my 'Nature' image brushes in Affinity Photo. Its a MS Word document and explains how to create a 'Butterfly' brush in Affinity Photo using multiple images. The process is the same for any image(s) whether butterfly, rock, stones, tree, shrub, moss, lichen. At the end of the tutorial I explain another process to create a 'moss' image brush which uses simple selections that you export individually. There may be other and easier ways to do this, but this is the way I have done it because it is a method I use to create them in Corel Painter. I am not so experienced in Affinity Photo, so I don't yet know where one saves seamless textures that you create to re-use; in Corel Painter, you save them in the 'Patterns' Library. The 'step-by-step' tutorial explains... 1. How to Create a Brush Category 2. How to Remove the Background from an Image 3. How to Save the Butterfly as a .PNG (Transparent Background) Image 4. How to Create a ‘Butterfly’ Brush (Multiple Butterfly Images) 5. How to Duplicate a Brush 6. How to Rename a Brush 7. How to Create a ‘Moss’ Brush using Multiple PNGs ...which are the steps you must take to create your first image brush. You can create an image brush just by selecting a single layer, but you need to convert it to a Pixel layer first. I wanted to explain how to create one by selecting it and extracting it from its background. More complicated, but once you have done it once, you can use the same process to create any image brush. I would advise you to experiment and test out all the different brush settings. To load the brush category in Affinity Photo Save the DelN's Free Brushes.afbrushes file Locate the location where you saved the file Open Affinity Photo Double-click the DelN's Free Brushes.afbrushes file. An 'Import Brushes' message will be displayed 'Brushes Imported Successfully' Click OK Click 'Brushes' tab Locate new DelN's Free Brushes Start using the brushes I also attach several images of the brush strokes and their brush names in my DelN's Free Brushes.afbrushes. Enjoy! DelN's Free Brushes Pt1.afbrushes DelN's Free Brushes Pt2.afbrushes DelN's Free Brushes Pt3_Atmosphere Dust & Smoke Brushes.afbrushes DelN's Free Brushes Pt4_Atmosphere Dust & Smoke Brushes.afbrushes How to Create a Butterfly Brush_Multiple Butterfly Images.docx

Hi, I have been trying to create some atmosphere in a concept art piece of two towers rising up out of the mist in a valley filled with lush vegetation. I used Affinity Photo to create it, painting much of it with the free 'Atmosphere' and 'Nature' brushes I uploaded on the Affinity Forum (plus some other brushes) to create it (links below). I am fascinated by the matte painting technique used by digital artists for all the main film studios to create a visualisation of important scenes that will go into the finished film. Films and series like Vikings, Alien, Dune, Mary Poppins, Ghostbusters, Titanic, Raiders of the Lost Ark, King Kong, the Jurassic Park series of films... and the new 'Rendezvous with Rama' that is (hopefully) in production. All of 'em, really... This is from Wikipedia: "A matte painting is a painted representation of a landscape, set, or distant location that allows filmmakers to create the illusion of an environment that is not present at the filming location." If you are interested in matte painting or concept art check out the following links. There are lots of tutorials too: https://conceptartempire.com/concept-art-tutorials/ https://conceptartworld.com/category/training/ Introduction to Matte Painting Free 'Nature' brushes link (also includes a Word document on how to create your own brushes): Free 'Atmosphere' brushes link:

A buzzard and a crow over City of Hamburg / Eppendorf Canon EOS 80D Sigma EF 150-600 at 600 1/1600s Handheld Sky smoothed with denoise and bilateral blur Birds treated with mild tone map (20% / 20%) and clarity

Hello all. This is a mockup for a YouTube channel I am working on every so often. Green is representative of nature along with some other things which is the reason for the color. If you would like to see more logos and branding I have done, they can be seen here https://www.behance.net/Statement-Design

Normally, I'm not one to mess about with my own photos in an editorial sense but, after I captured this I though I would try and . . .erm . . . improve it?

Illustrated maps for village promotion and tourist places. Created in Affinity Designer using vector technique combined with bitmap using Concept Master Vol.1: Nature Brush Pack brushes and those created by myself. So far, for several maps, I have drawn about 200 objects with varying degrees of accuracy.

The problem with logos that target a specific subject, that is diverse in nature, it is difficult to select one that is covers them all. There are all sorts of angles from which peers imagine it and review it. The same goes for visitors on which the logo is used. Simple assignments can appear to be more difficult to draw than things may seem at first glance.

@DelNI would love to have your instructions and also the Nature brushes you are willing to share. I am trying to draw terrariums and similar setups. Nature brushes would be great thanks