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Procreate Eyvind Earle Brushes

Procreate Eyvind Earle Brushes

Here I show you the Stayf Eyvind Earle BrushSet I made for Procreate. It is a set of 17 gouache brushes and they are available on Gumroad.
Tap on this link to download the Stayf Eyvind Earle BrushSet for Procreate.

The Stayf- Eyvind Earle Brushset for Procreate
Stayf-Eyvind Earle BrushSet Procreate

The first three brushes I created are to paint with a taper. They are round brushes

Stayf Eyvind Taper is an opaque brush to paint the silhouettes and precise strokes.

Stayf-Eyvid-Taper Dry is a gouache brush where you can paint with less water on your brush, creating a dry brush edge. It is similar to painting with a dry brush on paper

Stayf-Eyvind-Taper-Wet is a tapered brush with some dilution and it pulls paint that is already on your canvas. This happens when you add more water to your brush and paint over a dried surface. The gouache is activated again and blends more. This brush also has some texture to it.

Eyvind Earle also worked with airbrush and stamps to create structure I the underpainting. I have made a set of structured brushes to mimic that effect.

Stayf-Eyvind-Bush, a brush you can use in two ways. It is a very big brush you can paint larger areas with like a background style, or use it as a stamp to create structure in foliage or the bark of a tree.

Stayf-Eyvind-Structure is a structured brush to create structure with a bigger grain.

Stayf-Eyvind-Nozzle is a stamp brush that mimics an airbrush or toothbrush technique that was used to create random splatters on a painting to create random patterns.

Stayf-Eyvind-Bark is also a stamp that mimics the spatter effect that was done with a mouth airbrush or using paint on a toothbrush and releasing it on your painting. Most of the time a section of the painting was masked with paper.
I also created some foliage brushes to paint bushes and leaves of a tree.

Stayf-Eyvind Leaves is a directional brush you can draw strings of leaves with. It is a tapered brush, so when you press harder the leaves become bigger.
Stayf-Eyvind-Leaves-Scatter is a brush to create an underpainting for foliage. It is a randomised brush so the strokes are not repetitive.
Stayf-Eyvind-TreeStamp is a stamp brush to create strong shapes in a tree. This brush has also color dynamics in an analogous way. There is a slight change in color dynamics.
Stayf-Eyvind-Dots is a structured brush with color dynamics set to the tilt of your Apple Pencil. The you tilt it the color changes.
Stayf-EyvindFoliage-Flower is a stamp brush to paint flowers fast. This brush also has color dynamics, each time you paint a flower the color changes.
Stayf-Eyvind-Foliage-2 is a brush to paint leaves in a string. This brush also has color dynamics. It enables you to paint a bush or foliage fast with dynamics.
Stayf-Eyvind-Fern is a stamp brush that randomly paints fern.
Stayf-Eyvind-Plant is a stamp brush that paints a plant. Just tap the screen and a plant is painted. The harder you press the bigger the plant.

And the last brush is a stamp brush as well it paints typical Eyvind Earle trees in silhouette. Tap on the screen and the silhouette is created. This brush is called Stayf-Eyvind-trees.

With these brushes you can paint in the style of Disney artist Eyvind Earle using the same techniques but now digitally in Procreate.
Here is a Sleeping Beauty background painting I made in Procreate with the Stayf-Eyvind Earle BrushSet:
Eyvind Earle Sleeping Beauty background study Stayf Draws

Eyvind Earle

Eyvind Earle painting background Sleeping Beauty

Eyvind Earle was an artist that worked at the Disney Studios and was the artdirector and background painter for Sleeping Beauty. There is a book about him which is called Awakening Beauty: The Art of Eyvind Earle that was published by the Walt Disney Family Museum. I was always in awe of the art of Sleeping Beauty and could never figure out how these backgrounds were painted. I have been a big Disney fan since I was very young. I bought the movies on VHS and later on Laserdisc and then on DVD. I especially liked the Special Editions, because they had segments of the making of. Now I have Disney Plus and watched Sleeping Beauty again in HD. Which is amazing and really shows the great art for each scene. It is like you are watching a moving painting. There are also some specials about the making of, which also shows Eyvind Earle. Now I wanted to find out how these paintings were done. So I gathered all the material I could get my hands on. On the Special Edition Laserdisc there was the movie Four Artists Paint 1 Tree’ which shows a small tutorial of Eyvind Earle on how to build up the backgrounds. He explains to Walt Peregoy, another great Disney artist who later designed the background for 101 Dalmatians how to paint in his style. Here is a video about Eyvind Earle and some tutorials he made:

Sleeping Beauty Inspiration

Earle drew inspiration from the illuminated manuscript the ‘Très Riches Heures de Jean, Duc de Berry’, an opulent Book of Hours from 1419. Another inspiration were Medieval  tapestries. In the late fifties animation artists were inspired by fine artists like Matisse, Cezanne, Klee, Modigliani and Picasso. It was a modern approach of painting. The innovative animation studio UPA was a trendsetter in making modern animation which drew inspiration from these artists. You could see the shift in style in advertisements and children books illustrators. The style became more graphical with painted structures. In 1953 the Disney Studios released the short animation ‘Toot, Whistle Plunk and Boom’ that won an Academy award. Eyvind Earle painted the backgrounds for this animation. The backgrounds of Sleeping Beauty were a mix of the Medieval paintings and the modern style of the Fifties.

 

I also found these step-by step paintings in the book Awakening Beauty: The art of Eyvind Earle:
Eyvind Earle step by step tutorial

I first made studies in Procreate following these steps and started to create a brush set to paint in that style.

They used gouache to paint the backgrounds. In order to get a better understanding of the characteristics of gouache I started to paint on paper with real gouache. I studied what you can do with gouache and what kind of techniques you can use. Eyvind Earle uses gouache in an opaque way. When you mix colors in gouache they end up lighter when you lay down darker colors and dry up darker when you apply lighter colors. When the painting has dried you still can activate the gouache with water.

Here is the time lapse video of me painting an entire Eyvind Earle background with the Procreate Stayf-Eyvind Earle BrushSet:

Drawing is fun and practice makes perfect!