Ghibli Inspired Background – Step 1: Block in masses. Without further ado, let’s look at the steps and go over the things I learned in the process of trying to paint a Ghibli style painting. This tutorial is not about the Ghibli Studio Art process but rather about how I achieved a Ghibli style look in Procreate and what I learned from it. To my knowledge, Ghibli backgrounds are painted in poster color, I, however, painted the demo in this tutorial digitally in Procreate on iPad.

Ultimately, I want to believe that we all aspire to make creations uniquely personal to us. The difference here is while simplification and stylization take place, in the case of Ghibli background paintings, simplification is done on a more micro level than the paintings of impressionists, leaving the viewer with much more detail to look at.ĭisclaimer: the goal here is not to copy Ghibli background artists’ works, but to explore their beautiful visuals as a guide and inspiration for the creation of our own work. In fact, I think Ghibli background artists do just that, they paint an impression of their subject matter (something that feels like their subject) instead of painting their subject directly. Here you can see I used artistic liberties to change the time of day, and to try to paint the idea of the tree instead of every single detail in the picture. You can download high-res versions of both at the end of this tutorial. Reference picture I took, (left) and final study (right). One day driving from my parents’ house, I saw a scene that would be a great fit for a Ghibli-like landscape painting.

Ghibli artwork has been on my mind for a while. Looking through the artwork of Kazuo Oga and other Ghibli background artists, I wondered how exactly do they represent nature in a beautiful, colorful, and serene style. In this tutorial, I decided to take a break from drawing the human figure and push myself out of my comfort zone to draw a small landscape in the spirit of Studio Ghibli backgrounds.

Gvaat’s Ghibli-like Background style landscape study

Procreate coloring tutorial