Celyn Art

Drawing Homes: Adding Depth 🌳💛 (Step-by-step guide - Week 18) (Patreon)

Published:

2026-04-28 14:28:12

Edited:

2026-04-28 14:55:33

Imported:

2026-10

Content

Hi everyone!! 🤗

For this week, we’re focusing on creating depth in your illustrations and making them feel more alive ✨

We will be working with simple landscapes and cozy houses, and exploring how you can use foreground, middle ground, and background to add dimension to your work.

I created two illustrations for this week: one where the house is surrounded by trees up close, and one where the house sits further away in a landscape. It’s a fun way to see how distance and layering can completely change the feeling of your illustration.

You’ll find my step-by-step process, base layers, and final illustration below, together with the materials I used 🥰

Plus! some extra tips on how to create depth into your illustrations!

Tips for creating depth in your illustrations

Start by thinking in layers: what is close, what is in the middle, and what is far away. This helps make your illustration feel more interesting. Here are some tips:

Use bigger, more detailed shapes in the foreground.

Keep things softer and less detailed in the background.

Overlap elements (like trees or greenery in front of your house) to create depth.

Use lighter and softer colors for things further away.

Add texture (like grass or paths) in the front to guide the eye into your scene.

Forest home 🌳

In this illustration, the house feels cozy and tucked into nature. Everything is a bit closer, which makes it feel like a very warm illustration.

Note! This will be the illustration for the worksheet this month as well, which I will post tomorrow!

Some tips regarding this illustration:

Let the greenery overlap the house slightly to create a sense of depth.

Use darker greens in the foreground and lighter greens behind the house.

Details like the path or bushes lead the eye toward the house.

Keep the background simple and not too detailed so the house stays the focus.

I used the following Tombow brush pens as a base layer:

Tombow 126 (Light olive)

Tombow 133 (Chartreuse, Light Green)

Tombow 772 (Dusty rose)

ombow 912 (Pale Cherry)

Tombow 991 (Light Ocre)

Ecoline 374 (Pink Beige)

Tombow 020 (Peach)

For the second layer, I used the following Faber-Castell Pencils:

Faber-Castell 278 (Chrome Oxide Green)

Faber-Castell 283 (Burnt Siena)

Faber-Castell 217 (Middle Cadmium red)

Faber-Castell 157 (Dark Indigo)

Faber-Castell 108 (Dark Cadmium Yellow)

Open field home

In this illustration, the house sits further away in an open landscape, which creates a calm and spacious feeling.