Digital Painting Techniques

Ricardo Cordova

Digital Painting Techniques

Abstract
AI

This chapter explores the importance of custom brushes in digital painting and provides a detailed tutorial on creating and utilizing these brushes. It outlines several steps, including image manipulation techniques and adjustments to brush settings, aimed at improving texture and blending in artworks. Through practical examples, the chapter demonstrates how to leverage custom brushes to enhance the quality and originality of digital paintings.

Figures (426)

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Any artist will tell you that the link between their thoughts and ideas and the actual paintings they produce are the tools they wield. Froma traditional standpoint these have been the canvas and in particular the brushes. These are no less important in a digital context; the increasing array of brushes available and the freedom to create customized versions is paramount to the quality of digital painting today. This chapter provides an insight into the value of using custom brushes, and shows how they can be created from scratch and tailored to suit your subject matter.

brushes, so 90 percent of my custom brushes come from high-resolution scans made up of crazy experiments with ink, water and salt on drawing paper (Fig.01).

INTRODUCTION Like a lot of other digital artists out there, creating custom brushes is not only a key step in creating the art, but a heck of a lot of fun all in itself! The default Photoshop brushes are quite awesome, and | use them frequently, especially in the blocking phase, but | always end up integrating one or two custom brushes as well, for control and a personal touch. I’ve created custom brushes from just about anything | can find, including pictures, textures, doodles and digital scribbles. But

1is brush simply by adjusting the Shape Dynamics, Scattering, and )ther Dynamics settings, without having to swap out a new brush nage. Another important value to adjust and tinker with as you go is 1e Strength setting. An example of this brush in action starts with a anvas of broad brush strokes (a default round brush with Strength and lardness of 100) and then a Cutout filter applied (Fig.06).

brush settings to bring a softer, yet still textural, quality to the strokes by turning on the Scattering (Fig.09a - b). The rule of thumb here is that the higher the scatter, the softer the blending. Also, the higher the strength, the more the texture will come through. Adjusting the brush accordingly is also important at this stage.

The next step is to completely desaturate the two pictures. With both images on one layer, we can achieve this simply by going to Image >Adjustments > Desaturate. We now need to place each picture in a different layer. Select the top layer and change the properties of the

ES RN AE SS RE Re HOW TO CREATE BRUSHES FROM ANIMAL TEXTURES BY CARLOS CABRERA

layer to Difference (Fig.02a). By doing this, we will have both layers combined in one to create a new and interesting texture (Fig.02b - d). within the texture to use for our new brush. : Fig.03 shows a unique shape, which I’ve circled in red. We will need to select it with our Lasso tool (Feather = 20%), and then cut and paste itonto anew document (CTRL +C +N +V).

You will see that the new document that we jus’ created is a potential custom brush. Now, let’s duplicate the layer where our brush is (CTRL +) ) and rotate it by 90 degrees (CTRL +T) at any angle. We need to change the properties of this new layer, once again to Difference, and then repeat this step two or three times until we manage to create a textured border (Fig.04).

SOFTWARE USED: PHOTOSHOP A lot of people ask me what kind of brushes | use and how | make them. Usually, when | paint, | only use a few brushes, most of which are just Photoshop presets with a few tweaks to the brush settings. When painting a figure | normally use the standard brushes and save my custom brushes for textures and backgrounds. These are the brushes | use, although a majority of all my illustrations are painted using primarily the two brushes circled in Fig.01. | find that most of the time there are too many brushes to choose from, and most of them are just plain gimmicky. | like to stick with just a few of my favorite brushes when painting. This also helps to improve your speed, since you don’t have to look around and try and decide which brush to use next. It also allows you to learn how to paint different textures using the same brushes, instead of roahnina nn a hArnich ta naint a tavern far vinis

and erasing on top of it. Now that! am happy with my shapes | am going to open a photo to use as a texture overlay. It doesn’t really matter what kind of photo you use (Fig.03); you can use any subject matter and still geta cool-looking brush. Once you have a photo, convert it to grayscale and then go to Image >Adjustments >Levels (or Ctrl +1) (Fig.04). Drag the sliders around until you get high levels of contrast within the photo, and then click OK when you're ready.

looking brush by playing around with these settings (Fig.09). | would advise you to spend some time dragging all the sliders back and forth so that you can get a feel of what each setting does, and find which ones you like.

We will first try to mimic the stroke of a pencil - one of the main brushes | used to paint Sky Machina, along with a textured dry brush. At first, the brush creating process seems a bit tedious, but as soon as you get the hang of it you'll pretty much fall in love with it. You can create a brush out of everything you paint! So first, let’s open a new file of about 500

by 500 pixels and draw whatever you want (let's draw dots for the sake of this tutorial). Now go to Edit > Define Brush Preset (Fig.01 - 02). And that’s it! Well, that’s not exactly it, but following that the only things left to do are to rename your brush (Fig.03) and tweak it to get the effect you want, in the Brushes tab on the top menu.

averything else at 100% (Fig.18). The brush is now done, so save it anc anjoy the texture madness (Fig.19)! To get a little more diversity with the textures, | used the brushes seen in Fig.20 as well. Everything else, though, was done with the two custom brushes just created (Fig.21).

ee ee eee ee eae eee ee find when you click on Textures in the Brushes tab menu, but none of them will help us here. So let's make our own! A very quick and simple way | have found is to take a photo of concrete, or any similar surfaces, take it to Photoshop, play with the Brightness/Contrast until you have a really contrasted and uneven texture, invert the colors (Ctrl +1), desaturate it, and then go to Filter >Brush Strokes and throw an Accented Edges filter on it (Fig.12 - 15). This should do! Now all you have to do is go to Edit > Define Pattern, save it under something like Dry Brush Pattern (Fig.16), and it should arta mahralhs annasarin than nnttarn likhran;

© MICHAEL CORRIE CREATING A BRUSH FROM SCRATCH IN PHOTOSHOP BY MIKE CORRIERO ge ee

JAPANESE MAPLE LEAF BRUSH This first brush design is going to be geared toward foliage, specifically J apanese Maple Leaf, which will be used to create quick, easy batches of leaves without going through too much rendering trouble. So to begin grab any of the default brushes supplied by Photoshop and just start to draw out a silhouetted shape, in this case the J apanese Maple Leaf (Fig.01). Since we do wanta bit of depth to the brush, block in some of

LEAT DKWUOSOTI The next step is just as quick and basically a recap of what we just wen over. I’m going to create a quick variation of the J apanese Maple Leaf by getting rid of the stem and adjusting the shape of the points. First,

be saved with the new settings you've applied, and located at the bottom of your brush list (Fig.10).

In any creative process the task of preliminary work and sketching is a proven way to explore ideas before committing to the final piece. Speed painting has become common practice within digital painting and allows artists to experiment with core themes such as color, mood, lighting and composition. In an industry with an ever-quickening pace, this type of painting has carved a niche for itself within the CG sector and has become widely accepted as an effective way of communicating key ideas before any details are evolved. What follows are some different approaches to tackling a similar problem, but each demonstrating the importance of speed painting in establishing the structural devices behind most paintings.

Fig.UL We can start to give the farmhouse a little bit more detail now. For the twister | use black with 50% Opacity; this adds a cloud/smoke effect and allows you to accomplish the effect in a short space of time. After we've finished the gray coloring stage, we can start to add more detail to the farmhouse. You can see the chunks of wood on the house's roof are just little brush strokes - some of which are darker than others. This creates the effect of small, flying pieces of wood. At this stage it’s pretty obvious that you'll need to work the details in 100% zoom, to be more comfortable. We can then add some grass and a fence to the scene, and then we'll be done with the farmhouse - that easy, that quick (Fig.03)!

LHE SORKRELCHING FARI | opened a new document of 2000 by 3000 pixels and started the quick sketching phase with a 50% zoom over the whole document. In this particular step | don’t like to be held back by little details and prefer to work more on the harmony of the illustration, using quick and simple forms. Drawing in black and white is the quickest way that! know of for obtaining good compositional details without wasting too much time; it almost develops on its own and | always encourage people to try this technique. You can see how the twister and the farmhouse are there in the first view with justa couple of strokes (Fig.01). Now it’s time to add some gray colors to the sky and to the ground (Fig.02).

everything and start adding some dust and clouds around the body and base of that mean twister - look how big it is! This particular part is pretty fun, and | bet you will spend quite some time on it (Fig.06).

Now we need to make the twister something scary, and to do this we add a layer on top of

layer, and then rename this layer “color”. After this, we press Ctrl + U and the Hue window should pop up. We need to check the Colorize checkbox (it will be unchecked by default), and then set the values to Hue: 54, Saturation: 25, and Lightness: 0 (zero) (Fig.08). With these values we will get a nice sepia brown color that we can use for our illustration. We're almost there now!

The initial grayscale painting technique used with this illustration is often used by artists to clear our minds from the color of our subjects, and to cut straight to the chase. On the other

STEAM-POWERED MECHANICAL DESTROYER BY DANIEL LJUNGGREN SOFTWARE USED: PHOTOSHOP INTRODUCTION After thinking about the topic of this speed painting for a while, | started imagining something that would be suitable for a younger audience - perhaps a commercial for toys, with figures you can play with, and one of these toys being the “Steam-P owered Mechanical Destroyer” (or so the description on the back of the box would have you believe). | then thought that it would be more fun if it was a big robot, yet still friendly. The “destroyer” part was the main issue really, meaning | would have to turn it into something not so violent in order to keep the positive mood that | still wanted to achieve.

the thumbnail. If! would go on with the next

| do some more work on the background now, making the sky clearer and redesigning some of his firebox and chimneys on his back, as Moving on to adding more details and rendering (Fig.09), here I'm trying to make it look a bit more realistic; removing a lot of the black from the underlying sketch, as well as thinking of cast shadows and bounce lights from the ground. | put a few strokes on his head as well, trying to figure out what! want that part to be like.

I'll use Photoshop CS3 for the entire painting process. | open a new 2200 by 1200 pixel canvas and create a new layer. The scene that I’m going to paint will be an alien world, but | don’t want it to be too differen

from Earth - some minor changes will do. So the first thing to do is to : determine the colors - green and yellow sound cool. Now, let's block them in. | always use large, textured brushes when I’m blocking colors, so I'll do the same this time too. By using yellow, green and gray, | quickly create the background and foreground. | want to have two light sources in the scene so | put two suns into the green, alien sky. So that’s it for this step (Fig.01) - let's now go into more detail.

with a very low Opacity of between 10 - 20% (Fig.02). | work in this way until | can see some shapes evolving (Fig.03).

realistic images - or colors, if you like - can be achieved quickly with the use of custom brushes and blending modes in Photoshop. The software used to create this speed painting is Photoshop CS2, along with a Wacom Intuos 2. So let's begin...

evolve a painting. Try not to get too dependen on tutorials; dare to experimenta lot, even if you don’t know where to start - just scribble around. There are a lot of forums out there with speed painting threads, so post your work a lot and see what feedback you get. There are people out there willing to help you so use their advice wisely. However, do try to think about the problem for yourself, and try to solve it as best as you can. If you have a hard time starting to paint, then make studies from paintings by some of the Masters, or of screen shots from movies - that should help you to ge started, at least.

ALIEN HOT AIR BALLOONS BY NATHANIEL WEST

When first starting a piece | begin by laying down a rough grayscale sketch (Fig.01). It is very important to have a good value structure first and foremost, with values grouped together to create a graphic and dynamic piece. | would say that this is the single most important stage in a painting, and should be worked out before beginning with color. If your value structure works, then the rest of the painting will follow easily. But, if your value structure is off, then you will find the next stages of the painting to be hopeless efforts until the value structure has been corrected. Often, a painting is not dynamic simply because the lights and darks have not been pushed enough, thus resulting in a “flat” appearance.

dramatic. | add in some highlights on the edge of the foreground to help separate it from the landscape, and then happily call the painting done (Fig.06a - c).

texture option checked, and | angle the brush to the perspective of the image (Fig.06). The main change here is to separate the values of the atmospheric perspective of the image where the objects seem to become closer in value as they recede into the space (Fig.07). you have dark next to dark, you lose the edge (although sometimes you may want that). STEP 05 After adding a figure to set the scale, | decide that | want to create an uneasy feeling for the character. Having verticals in your image creates stability, and so angling them to the left and darkening the values of the image seems to help create the illusion that I’m aiming for. | then paint out one of the center pillars of the image in order to give the feeling of more hope, and to lose some of the repetitiveness (Fig.05). FINAL THOUGHTS Atthis point! was happy with the image because it conveyed the mood, environment and scale | had initially hoped for. If this image was to be used as a piece of concept art, it would give the 3D artista good starting point to work from. If it was a matte painting then the use of photographic textures would be the next step, as well as cleaner edges and greater use of the Selection tool. creates stability, and so angling them to the left

light, dark, light, dark - it’s never ending! When STEP 04 At this stage, adding some perspective lines helps me out with the repetition of objects, and in defining the shapes discovered in Step 01. At this point it’s a good idea for me to check the values in the image. The order of values | used were: a value of 10 for the foreground, a value of 4 for the mid-ground (the area where the light hits the floor), and 6 for the background (Fig.04). A good way of thinking about this is: light, dark, light, dark - it’s never ending! When (Fig.04). A good way of thinking about this is:

What was once a traditional art form has now adapted to become a purely digital practice. This very particular discipline allows film makers to create scenes that would prove either too expensive or impossible to film, and has become one of the staple ingredients in this industry. This chapter looks at the techniques behind matte painting and explores the value of photography and painting skills to seamlessly blend two distinct attitudes.

The base image needed to be cleaned up first before anything else (Fig.0la). The second stage was to create an extension of the image, following the concept of leading onto a matte painting in which the National History Museum would be setin a natural environment, as if in existence sometime in the future. | started off by taking the base image of the National History Museum and painting/Clone Stamping the people out of it (Fig.01b). The Lasso tool

The concept sketch was drawn on white paper (Fig.06). | then turned the horizon line in order to achieve an effect similar to that of a film camera. | scanned the sketch and opened the file up in Photoshop CS2. The black and white picture was showing, and on top of that! built up a layer of color using the Multiply blending mode (Fig.07).

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is considered a combination of several Lovecraft stories. It features Randolph Carter, a mystic whose unique gifts allow him to walk through dreams. He uses these talents to locate Kadath, a fortress of the Gods. Carter's adventures include traveling to good and evil dimensions, talking to cats, and sailing on the seas. After reading this novella by H.P. Lovecraft | was mostly interested in the idea about The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Before starting, | searched the internet for

| created a new layer under the sketch to use as the fundamental color draft, with the Opacity set to 60%. | removed the original black and white sketch at this point as | no longer needed it and was happy working with the blocked-out colors as a guide. | started building up my scene using the photos that! found as reference, layering them up following my concept (Fig.08 - 09). | found the main objectin the sketch looked too clear at this point, and Kadath’s fortress was being “squeezed” by the two iceberg cliffs, so | decided to move them apart to open up the scene a bit (Fig.10).

one with the most contrast between the sky and the rest of the image. | duplicated the blue channel and used the Curves to increase the contrast until the black and white image separated the sky from the foreground. To create texture on the mountain on the right, | used a

You'll notice that, for this piece, | was using photo references of mountains without skies. | removed the sky from the mountains by looking at the color channels from the original image and selecting the

photo of an iceberg (see Fig.05) and created a Clipping mask layer (Alt + click between two layers) on the layer of painted ice. | changed the upper layer’s Opacity to 60%, and then cleaned things up using the Eraser tool. On the left, | used another photograph of a mountain (Fig.11) and rotated it. | painted out the forest from the icy mountain in Fig.11.

foreground (Fig.14) was painted thoroughly using a small standard brush (sometimes as little as 1 pixel), and custom brushes with 50% Opacity to achieve cross movement (Fig.15). The picture was finished off with lots of mist to achieve good depth of field. | also decided to add an observation tower to increase the interesting features of the composition (Fig.16). The man in the boat was also hand-painted (Fig.17). To paint Kadath itself, | used a clear-cut, jitter brush, and the Clone Stamp tool, taking reference from the photographs which | cut up into three parts (Fig.12 - 13). | painted the walls and lengthened them. | hand-painted and copied the stairs several times to increase the imposing height. Painting the snow and ice was very tedious. Most parts of this piece were painted using a hard brush (between 1 and 4 pixels in size). The block of ice in the

tones and contrast areas on various sections of the picture. Here you can see a breakdown of the final set of layers used to complete the image (Fig.18). With all layers combined, the final image was complete, as Can be seen in Fig.19 (5600 by 5200 pixels in size).

plan your image. Sure, as artists we often tend to rush ahead under the heat of passion, but as professionals we should first of all learn how to tame that fire, and to make it last as long as we need it to, especially when we work on big and long-term projects. will lose their leaves in winter; however, we have no information of what's behind them and we can’t recreate that information from other parts of the image (we are not going to change architecture, so no Clone Stamping!). This case is perfect tutorial material, because we will do more than just the average summer to winter; we will see how to geta little creative, even if limited by certain restrictions. SOFTWARE USED: PHOTOSHOP

SEASON CHANGE: A WINTER SCENE MATTE PAINTING BY TIBERIUS VIRIS

which also doesn’t load the image too much. We already have a lot of positive space so we need as much sky as possible to compensate. The general process of replacing the background involves the following steps: After applying all the changes | have ended up with what you can see in FigO5. It doesn’t seem very “cold” right now, but that’s just because there's a lot of greenery in the scene which affects the overall mood. However, if you look at the original image you'll see the difference already (see left of Fig.01 for reference).

photo behind the big tree in the foreground. Since we don’t know exactly what was there, we have a lot of freedom for this step (unless we are given specific instructions, of course), so it’s up to us to choose what to place in there. For this tutorial, I’ve decided to replace this part with some pine trees, obviously covered with snow. The fastest way to do this is to find a nice stock photo; it doesn’t have to be a full forest - two trees are enough. You can then duplicate them all around and modify their edges for variety. However, do pay attention It is now time to powder some snow over the two trees inside the castle ground, to match in with the rest of the scene. This is done with a hard round brush with a Scattering effect applied. In the end, | roughly paintsome snow in front of the castle as well, to get a better idea as to whether | am on the right path, and also to spot any flaws (Fig.09). fo the scale. In this image, one of those front towers has the height of a two-to-three story ouilding, so the pine trees should be scaled accordingly.

Now we're done with the last step, | feel the need to connect the group of trees with the distant mountain for more natural depth. This is achieved by adding a distant forest in between and painting some mist over it to help integration. | also enhance the mist at this point by adding more details to it (Fig.08). Finally, we need to adjust the water in order to give ita frosty, cold, wintry look. What contributes the most to this effect is some

the shadowed parts (a gray or a slightly blue- tinted white). Painting snow involves working alternatively with these two colors. In Fig.11 you can see a suggested palette for painting snow and ice with realistic shades (not too saturated). drastic desaturation and snow painting on the places where the lake meets the shore. And don't forget about reflections! Once it’s been frosted over in places it will reflect much more detail than in the original photo (Fig.10). way to correct this, at least partially, is to create a gradually increasing brightness from left to right, but we'll address this later.

Begin by adding snow on the edges and small parts where the snow would naturally fall. Then move on to the roofs and bigger areas (always do this afterwards because it will be easier to spot details before you do it). The hardest part of this process is to think about how the snow would actually look on the structure and not PAINTING THE SNOW Atlast, we get to take care of our castle. For some, this might prove to be a boring step because it involves a lot of thinking and detail painting. You have to go in and check every spot where snow would naturally fall; a high quality original will help the process a lot. When painting snow, use a rough brush to create irregular shapes. Choose two colors: one for the regular snow (a white) and one for

WHAT ARE WE AFTER? So we've taken our sunny castle and subjected it to the wrath of winter ... Now let's see how it will handle fire! We will assume that some heavy explosion took place just 15-minutes ago in the upper part of the castle. So, with that in mind, we will focus less on adjusting the rest of the scene and more on how to create the pyrotechnic effects. Let's start as we should do by thinking things through. which are supposed to be “invisible art” and not contain any moving elements such as smoke, water and birds, and so on (which are later added to the live plate by means of compositing). However, as before, we will assume that this is an establishing shot or an illustration of some sort and carry on tackling this brief. So let’s get started!

| must say from the beginning that fire and smoke have an illustrative character and are not the subject of classical matte paintings,

INE PFOCess OF FEPlacing WIE SKY DY USING a mask is the same as in the previous article on the winter scene, so | won't go into too much detail on this again here. Now we need to tone down the rest of the scene to match both the sky and the scenario. We will have to bring down the saturation and also darken it. We will bring down the saturation using a Hue/ Saturation layer and we'll darken it using two identical Levels layers, half valued (Fig.02 - 03). The reason | used two layers is because | wanted to simulate hints of light passing through the clouds by painting in the second one’s mask, and | thought this would give me better control. The result of my adjustments can be seen in Fig.04.

SCENE PREPARATION As mentioned at the beginning of this tutorial, we'll consider this to be an illustrative piece. Itis therefore very important that we sell the subject using appropriate moods and lighting to emphasize the feeling. For this very reason | choose to replace the sky with an overcast one, in order to bring more heaviness upon the scene.

Next we will break the monotony of the highlights in the original photo by creating scarce cloud shadows. We will do this by simulating random cast shadows by painting into the mask of a Solid Color layer with a fairly dark color set to about 65% Opacity (Fig.05). Note that because the distance between the clouds and the land is relatively high, the shadows cast are always going to be blurry and rather diffused. If the clouds are quite small, or the sun manages to peak through, you will see those typical cloud shadowed areas on the land.

Fire is very simple to paint if you start with the smoke. The fastest and easiest trick is to pick a middle-toned orange, set the brush transfer mode to Color Dodge, and paint over the smoke. Or, use an extra layer and set it to Color Dodge transfer mode. The latter offers you better control as you can later apply filters to just the fire alone, without affecting the smoke. With smoke, it takes a while to achieve the desired effects, so be patient and experiment! You can download the photo (J PG) used as a plate in this matte painting tutorial from to evolve a bit faster than the camera shutter, plus it's a moving element of course. For this, use Filters >Blur > Motion Blur and choose the direction of your smoke. The intensity should be around 10 to 15, depending on the size.

ARS & ESSE Re SS A Aes You've seen how Photoshop can be a great tool and how, with only an average knowledge of it, you can achieve some pretty nice effects. But matte painting isn’t actually just about Photoshop, and all that! have shown you so far have just been the basics, which are meant to give you a taste and to get your attention. You are now standing at the beginning of a wonderful road, but you should know that matte painting is much more than photo manipulation and, as the name suggests, involves a lot of art theory and real world understanding, too. That's why in this tutorial, we will try to understand these aspects and see what matte painting is really all about.

SOFTWARE USED: PHOTOSHOP in around 1959 for the movies and was done optically, by painting (literally) on top of a piece of glass to be composited with the original footage - hence the name “matte painting” (painting done on glass with a mask = matte). Nowadays, digital matte painting is less about painting and more about virtual set creation, yetit retains its old name because it shares the same goal with its grandfather. Matte paintings are used widely for any kind of application that requires a virtual set. But, of course, movies are still where they are used the most; the goal being to produce realistic environments (sets) where actors can perform naturally, as if they were really there.

into consideration how the atmosphere on the planet would behave when deciding upon how much haze you should have. in the distance tend to fade towards the color of the atmosphere because there’s more “air” between our eye and them, which acts as a filter and only lets certain light frequencies pass through (light is an electromagnetic wave, by the way). This translates into low contrast, high brightness and low saturation. You'll tend to know this effect as “haze”. ¢ Scale - Again, it’s very important to match the scale of every element. You don’t want a tree to be as tall as mountain, even if it might sound cool in a fantasy setting!

than scale it up and paint to compensate for ; lost quality. The trick is to choose the right scale. Look around the area where you want to place the object, see what else is there, and then scale it in relation to the surrounding objects. other reference objects around it would make us believe the pine tree is still young (because we know an adult pine tree should be much bigger). However, take the same house and put it next to a whole forest which isn’t taller than half of the house, and you'd know something was out of whack! The one that is wrong - forest or house - will depend on the other elements that are in the scene. See Fig.04 for an example (which is exaggerated for the purpose of this tutorial).

SCALE: IN THE REAL WORLD Scale seems natural and quite a trivial thing for many people. Yet, together with perspective, it's the main source of errors for many new artists (and not only them). Itis important to have a good understanding of these aspects because, together with depth, they are the main elements which create the illusion of distance. The human eye and the brain relate to objects in the scene versus already known sizes in order to determine how big another one is (or in our case to spot errors). It’s all contextual and relative. For instance, we all know how big an average house is from our daily life experience. Seeing it in an image next to a pine tree which is half as small and with no

Level 2 - The second difficulty level is when light doesn’t match, but the shadows are not too hard-edged (either overcast or with low intensity/blurred). In this case, the typical process of correcting the element is as follows: WORLD Last but not least, another important element of a successful matte painting is light - that is the way that objects are illuminated and shadows form; something that is so natural, yet, as before, can also be a great source of errors. Light can be your friend, but also your enemy. Use it properly and it can make your scene dramatic while at the same time hiding imperfections (in fact this is the main “trick” used by matte painters: hiding imperfections in shadows or mist). However, use it improperly and it will destroy your scene. The main mistake that you can see among new artists is having ohiects lit from different directions. like

Similar to being an environment artist, many find themselves dedicating their time to character and creature design which involves a very differ- ent set of skills, namely knowledge of anatomy. Creature design forms a huge part of many projects stretching from video games to film and TV, and covers both animals existing in the real world through to aliens - think of films such as J umanji and the Star Wars saga. This chapter will offer a vision of the issues to consider not only when painting animals but also in the creation of original designs.

Baa ae defaults will do just as good a job as any fancy custom creation if used correctly. Whatever brush I’m using, | have my graphic tablet set up the same; stylus pressure controls opacity and nothing else. | use the square bracket keyboard shortcuts to control the size of my brush while | work, and | vary this regularly to break up the marks I’m making. The brushes | use fall into three basic categories: soft edged, hard edged and texture I'll mention which I’m using as | go along and it really doesn’t matter exactly what brush is being used as long as they fit into those basic categories. The standard Airbrush, Dense Stipple 56 (Natural Brushes set), and Rolled Rag - Terry 120 (Faux Finish set) Photoshop

time experimenting with this area of the

nce I'm happy with the placement of values n the composition, I'll begin to define the significant forms a little, again working with just 1 couple of tones to keep things bold (Fig.03). take the opportunity to tweak the position of he demon’s hand here, so he appears to be ooking more directly at its contents. What is le holding? It needs to be something bright to Jraw the viewer's eye to that point, but | still vaven't decided quite what it should be. | often eave trivial elements like this undecided as | ind it helps to keep me interested in the picture 1s it progresses. Generally speaking though, his is bad practice and |’d recommend working hings like this out thoroughly at this stage. character, but that’s as far as my concept goes at this stage so | just doodle around for a while. The hunched-over pose was suggested by imagining the character's spiteful, covetous personality; | find it really helps to try and get into the spirit of the image I’m working on so there’s a fair amount of face-pulling and growling going on while | scribble away. As you can probably see, I’m not that fond of working with lines, so as soon as | have something that feels right, however rough, I’m ready to move on.

| begin by color picking from the area of the painting that | intend to work on (the shoulder and upper arm in this case), then shift that color to be slightly brighter to provide me with my mid-tone, perhaps also shifting the hue to make it slightly warmer depending on where I’m working. I'll then use a soft brush to dab this color back onto the area | want to This process continues around the image, taking care to work within the overall pattern of values laid out at the beginning (Fig.07). For the most part I'll remain at 25% magnification for this stage, though I'll zoom in to 50% here and there where | want to tighten things a little further. An abstracted background such as this can be very useful in balancing out the composition. The flow of the picture up to this point is very much on the diagonal, from bottom left to mid-right, through the angle of the rock and the placement of the demon’s limbs (Fig.08b). I'm hoping to balance this by introducing a contrasting flow in the background (white arrow). If I’ve done it right, the flow should converge on the demon’s open hand, reinforcing it as the principal focus in the image.

working into the background with some brighter tones, trying to up the contrast around the demon's face and hand to hold the focus in that area. | think I’m just about done at this point, so | leave the painting to rest overnight so | can look at it with fresh eyes in the morning. FINAL RENDER Time for a final render pass! | follow the same technique as before, dabbing with a soft brush and refining with a hard-edged brush, but with progressively lighter tones (Fig.10). | don’t want to overload the painting with details, so I'm treading very lightly and trying to pick out only what's necessary - the shoulder, arm and fist, the demon’s face and the skull in the hand. | know I still have highlights to come, so I’m not taking things too far. | also added a few simple pieces of jewelry to help add some interest in those secondary areas not picked up in this render pass. Again, I'll jump to 50% zoom here and there for the more detailed work.

CONCLUSION AND CRITIQUE The painting feels complete, so | add my signature and give it a gentle pull with the Levels tool in Photoshop to add a little extra punch (Fig.18). Done! Now is a good time to look back and see if the image is a success. It’s often interesting to compare the final product against those early value sketches to see what's changed - | think that comparison holds up well, with the composition and basic distribution of values remaining consistent throughout. | like the way the demon’s flesh has ended up, though some more variation in hue across his body would be an improvement, in my opinion. The jewelry does its job connecting the less well defined areas of the character's body, but looks a little like an afterthought - perhaps some more significant metalwork, maybe a belt or ornamentation on the horns would help to solve this? There are always lots of little niggles like this that | try to remember for the next time. The big one this time around is to make sure | have the contents of demon's hand worked out well before | start to paint! FINAL LOUCHEDS | really hated that glowing eye from the earlier version so | paintina more conventional eye here, choosing a yellow/green hue that will hopefully stand out from the blue/green in the background (Fig.17). | also feel that the background is a little unbalanced, so | use a soft brush to stroke across some of the textures around the edge of the painting to reduce their contrast, which should draw the focus more towards the center, and touch some of the blue from the horizon into the top of the picture in an attempt to balance the distribution of colors a little better.

In this tutorial I'll provide you with the necessary information to create your own unique concepts - from scratch. This series will discuss verbally and visually the philosophy behind the make-up of a conceptual creature. Throughout this tutorial you'll gradually obtain a reference library stretching from the basics in animal anatomy to much more complex ways of exploring what is actually possible and plausible, or what would be considered thinking “outside the box”. There really are no limits to what's considered a conceptual creature!

Amphibians range from frogs to newts, salamanders, toads and caecilians (Fig.05 - Axolotl - Vertebrate - Amphibian). They are capable of living both below and above water with both swimming and terrestrial traits.

Mammals largely fall into the quadruped and tetrapod group. Arthropods make up a large range of species including insects, crustaceans, arachnids and myriapods. Crabs have four pairs of walking legs and two pinching limbs (Fig.04 - Ghost Crab - Invertebrate - Crustacean). Arthropods are characterized by segmented bodies, jointed limbs and hard exoskeletons protecting their inner organs. Invertebrates make up approximately 97% of the Earth’s entire species!

need to breech the surface of the water (03). This creature has some modified differences that set it apart from any known amphibians. It has a heavier, sturdier jaw lined with rows of sharp teeth. A pair of fin-like appendages is found on the rear to act as rudders for quick maneuvering underwater (04).

Setting it apart from modern day lizards, this creature has a body structure similar to that of a mammal (Fig.11). It has long legs designe Fig.10 shows a large carnivorous bird containing talons on the ankles of its feet and a deadly fork pronged beak (01). Like its ancestors and the inspiration for its design, itis an egg laying creature. (02) It creates a nest underground that is lightly covered with dirt. (03) Itis also equipped with rear facing horns to defend and protect the back of its head and neck during attack. (04) Adding yet another means of attack and defense I've given it a tail with a split spiked tip.

This concept is a combined mixture of my knowledge and memory of

LOWERED HEADS AND SHOULDER BLADES This creature's lowered head allows it to charge, making good use of its horns (Fig.22). The eyes and ears are conveniently located atop the head where the vision isn’t obstructed by the horns. If you decide to design something like this, understand that the weight of those horns

and its head need to be counter balanced by a stronger neck and short strong legs to distribute the weight toward the rear.

SS FMOw CREATURE DESIGN FOR LOW ATMOSPHERIC CONDITIONS BY PASCAL RAIMBAULT

| am going to refine the sketch a little bit now, focusing on the head a little more. | have added holes to the head; the purpose of these holes

| am pretty much detailing the body by going down the neck and rib cage at this stage, mainly using the Oil Pastel for details and the Airbrush to get more of the volumes. | want this creature to have holes all over its body and a fleshy feel to the skin. It has to be skinny also, as mentioned previously. | am using featherless chicken and furless cat photos as a reference, to get ideas about skin rendering and skin folds (Fig.05).

—_— ee _N Here | am adding rough colors and reusing rocks from a photo | took in New Zealand, in order to get a sense of the lighting and environment. This rock was actually a small one, butit's a good base for a paintover. | am using three layers at this stage: character, rocks and sky. | use Painter's Airbrush for the sky and the round oil pastel with low opacity to add color over the character. If we look at the rock's lighting, the main light (which is the sun) is coming from behind, and we also get an ambient blue light coming from the sky (Fig.03).

the right knee to improve the composition. The middle toes are now also smaller on the creature, which was done to break up the uniformity of them and the rather boring proportions. As the final finishing touch, | add more contrast to the image, and that's it- done (Fig.11)! makes sense to add more of a wet skin effect to it. The neck shape was a bit too straight for my liking as well - itwas not looking organic enough - and so | changed ita little here. The creature has so many holes on it that! wanted the lower neck to look almost like an external organ. This makes him look a little more fragile, butit’s OK as he has adapted to escape most dangers by jumping very high (Fig.10a - b).

that the brush leaves uninterrupted lines when used. With the brush size set quite small, select the Smudge tool and start dragging outwards from the edges - you may wish to alter the strength on the toolbar to around 55%. You can see how this has made a difference in the latest version. | also use a standard Airbrush set to between 1 and 3 pixels wide and add in some more hair to help blend the sections. Remember that you do not really need to illustrate every strand of hair, but rather just a few here and there to suggest the illusion of fur.

PAINTING ANIMAL EYES BY STEPHANIE R. LOFTIS

STEP 04 Here comes the fun part of painting an eye! This can very easily go wrong though, so you can make a new layer if you want to feel safe. | basically follow a star-shaped pattern with the pupil being the center. | first take a dark colored, very tiny brush and draw from the center downwards, in quick strokes (Fig.04).

Now you can start working on the other details associated with a convincing pair of eyes: the dots of light reflection, the eye lids, and tear ducts. It’s basically all just about taking much lighter colors that stand out in order to give the illusion that the eye looks moist. You can also add eye lashes, too - | can’t think of a furry creature that doesn’t have eye lashes!

To paint the eyelashes | take a light brown color - | don’t want them to be bright white because they'll cross over the eyeball just painted and will stand out more than | want them to. You just need to paint quick strokes for your eyelashes, and then outline them in black so that they don't get lost in the other colors of the eye (Fig.10).

This is a subject that has preoccupied artists for centuries and is essentially a vehicle for studying the human condition, and as such forms a necessary part of this book. As opposed to focusing on the subjective aspects of painting people, this chapter chooses rather to deal with the technical issues related to painting human characteristics. | think it was Miro that once said that one cannot jump into the air without ones feet being firmly on the ground. Itis with this sentiment in mind that our chapter aims to show how to go about painting the human body, and thus enabling artists to use it as a form of expression.

The question is: Why is red and blonde hair more complex than painting dark hair? Well, to be honest, it’s not that easy to explain, but let's try it like this: When you have dark hair, you just have to setup a basic “black” pattern in which you start to give some “white” highlights, and finally you might add a colorful shimmer of red or blue to the whole thing to make it appear more lively - and then you're done! When you want to paint blonde hair, the result you want to come up with has to appear anything but dark or black. So you have to work with more colors at once. If you want to have a nice blondish

of her head unnoticeable, so that it stays in the dark base color that we applied earlier. This also helps us to see the head - and so the hair connected to it- as a three-dimensional object. yellowish highlight tones are applied. Because the darkest color shines through, or makes its way between the yellow strands, it gives the hair more depth and also makes it appear livelier because more than one base color (yellow and red) is applied. appears in this artwork we could generally split the image into two halves. On one we work with the lighter colors, and on the other we work with the darker colors. This makes it much easier to stick with the mood you are looking for, without losing it. So, while on the left side we can continue working on the bangs by adding some highlighted strands with our speckled brush, we can give some reddish tones to the right side of the image, such as the back of her head, to give it all a more lifelike appearance. We keep the reddish tones only applied to the parts of the head which are nearest to the border lines (the lines drawn on the image with arrows). | leave the very back

So you have painted this lovely woman with beautiful eyes and an even lovelier face, have maybe even used the other tutorial in this book to attach some wonderful hair to her, and now you come to the part that you have so patiently avoided ... the lips. The lips are what really make a female illustration, especially when you're looking for the kind of “kiss me” pop-out lips which drive men crazy. To learn how to paint lips at their best, | have decided to work up two examples for you in two different color schemes and from different angles, so that you have the best base for your future female paintings.

HOW TO PAINT LUSCIOUS LIPS BY ANNE POGODA

little white dots and strokes to the lips. The strokes should be bent so that they follow the roundness of the lips. It also works best if you paint dots which vary in size, to avoid the lip structure looking boring (Fig.05).

Now it’s detail time! Pick the hard-edged Airbrush again and setit to a rather small size of your desire. Create a new layer and attach many

STROKES AND DOTS What we'll do now is add some strokes and a few dots to the lips, which is quite simple but will make them “pop out” more. Adding some dabs of highlight will make the lips look glossy. Also, picking a dark red to carefully work on the lips with curved lines which follow the shape adds detail and makes them seem more realistic. You can also feel free to add a few lines of highlights to the lower lip to add more ee Se) ie a ee ee ee

ee all current lips layers to save working capacity again. Then you can create a new layer to work over the lips with the soft-edged Airbrush - Opacity 30%. This merges the colors together and you will get away from the edgy vector look. It will also take away some of the detail but don’t worry, we'll bring that back in steps 5 and 6 (Fig.12).

shapes. | am not working from any photo references So we will see how this turns out.

POIWaGYS StaGILUUL WILT a UGIN SIHIOUUCWe TUL the shape of the head (Fig.01). | then come in with a basic skin tone and put in where the face will be. | can then come in and putin the shadow shapes for the eyes and nose. Atthis point! can also begin to set up my color scheme. A general rule when painting faces is that they are more yellow around the forehead and more blue/green around the mouth. One thing to keep in mind is that you do not have to pick a blue color in order to make something look bluish. For the area around his mouth, for example, | picked a desaturated orange (Fig.02). | knew that this color would look bluish due to the colors surrounding it. If you place the same color against different faces is that they are more yellow around the

backgrounds you can see how different each one looks, even though it is still the same color. 05), and then later on paint the hair on top of the head. This helps me get the position of the hair in the right place.

Now that! have all of the basic shapes in place | can start going into more detail (Fig.08). The first part | wanted to work on was the eye. Since eyes are usually the focal point in any portrait, it’s necessary to be able to paint them correctly and understand how they work. A common mistake | see in a lot of people's painted eyes is that they look very flat. One reason is because most people don't really understand the planes of the eye. The eye is a sphere, and that sphere has an effect on the maccec arniind the eve like the evelide The The first part | wanted to work on was the

Fig. eyelids should wrap around that sphere. Not only does the eyelid wrap around, but it also has thickness. Think of these planes kind of like a box; since my lighting is from the top, the top plane will catch more light, whilst the side is darker. Another error that a lot of peopl make is that they make the eyes too white anc they forget the shadows to help the eye wrap around. Again, the eye is a sphere; the top will catch more light, and as you move around the sphere the light falls off and gets darker. If you study the Masters, like Sargent, you will see that their eyes are not white but red, yellow, and orange. So far I’m not really happy with where this portrait is going so | start making changes (Fig.09 - 10). Now, all of a sudden, he kind of looks like Norrington from Pirates of the Caribbean, so | decide to change it again (Fig.11 - 14) by adding a black background and changing his features. The great thing about working digitally is that! can make these changes easily. If | don’t like something | can change itin a few seconds, instead of having to repaint entire areas. This medium also allows me to make more daring decisions than | normally would if | were painting in a traditional medium.

FINAL TOUCHES Now comes one of my favorite parts: the ear (Fig.19 - 20). | have no idea why, but! really enjoy painting ears. It’s weird, | know. | think the thing | like about them is that they have a lot of very unique shapes and structures, and a lot of people tend to overlook them. Within such a confined area you can still find tons of plane and color changes. | wanted to make him look more like a rough and tough kind of guy, so adding some more

Something about the face is still bothering me here, so | change it again (Fig.15 - 16). By cutting off more of the right side of his face and moving his ear back, | can change the angle of his face (Fig.17). He was getting a little lost in the darkness, so | threw some light in the background (Fig.18). The traditional painting trick for portraits is to put the dark side of the face against a light background, and the light side of the face against a dark background. moving his ear back, | can change the angle

(Fig.22 - 24). | felt like his nose was a little too short (usually the width of the eye is the same distance from the corner of the eye to the top of the wing of the nostril), so | selected the nose and went to Edit > Transform > Distort, and pulled the nose down a bit.

facial hair is an easy way to do that (Fig.21). For the stubble | use a custom brush. You can easily make your own brush for this purpose by painting some random dots and then going to Edit > Define Brush Preset. The new brush will be in your brush library at the end. After you make your brush, don’t forget to change the settings, like Scattering, Size, and Opacity. | am nearing the end of the painting now and making some minor adjustments to the face

Something was still bothering me about the face but! couldn't put my : finger on it. | asked my girlfriend about it and she thought that his hairline was a little too high (Fig.25). This can easily be changed by selecting the area that you want to move, and then going to Edit > Transform > Warp. The Warp and Distort tools are one of the hidden gems of Photoshop. These two tools have made my life a lot easier. The Warp tool allows you to pull and push different parts of the selection, and can actually make things turn without having to repaint them. Once you hit Warp, a grid will pop up on the screen where your selection was (Fig.26). If you click and drag different points of the grid, your image will move according to the direction that you pull. Once you have everything in place, you can apply the changes by hitting Enter on your keyboard.

As you can see, this painting went through many different changes before | knew where it was going (Fig.27). With the help of my knowledge of anatomy and some tools in Photoshop, | was able to come to a complete illustration. A

| begin my painting process by creating a new A4 document in Photoshop CS2. The first step is drawing the lines of the torso. | start by drawing the main sketch on a new layer with

PAINTING REALISTIC SKIN BY EMRAH ELMASLI

After painting over the lines (Fig.11) | can start the detailing process. The best way is to examine our own skin to see what kind and amount of detail ithas. Skin has details like freckles, hair and spots. I'll now try to apply these details to my painting. | can start with the freckles and spots. One of the best ways to produce freckles is to create them traditionally by using a brush and watercolors. All you need to do is to spatter some watercolor paint onto white paper. After creating the spattered effect, you scan it and make it ready to use digitally. Using Photoshop, | desaturate the spatter texture and adjust the Levels until it becomes pure black and white (Fig.12). | then copy this texture onto my painting and apply it to the suitable places.

Finally, my skin painting is complete (Fig.20). This is the method | use to paint realistic skin textures, and | hope it will be useful for you too the colors with the help of Color Balance and

to make the noise look messy and unbalanced (Filter > Brush Strokes >Spatter). | apply Blur on the same layer twice (Filter > Blur > Blur) (Fig.19). And lastly, | decrease the Opacity of the layer to 4%.

least as a base to build upon. In this tutorial, I'll be showing you how to paint separate facial features, with some tips and tricks on how to achieve skin texture. This should not only be useful for beginners, but also for those of you who are already pretty good at painting but would like to learn a bit more and push your

PHO Helo YIVe SUITE SHaVe W UIE SUIIUULIMIYy area of the eye. | suggest you paint beneath the sketch layer, either directly on the background, or (more conveniently if painting an actual portrait) add another layer beneath the sketch layer. Choose a default round Paintbrush with the Opacity J itter set to Pen Pressure, and pick an orange-brown tone for the shadows and a yellow beige for the highlights to start with the shading. Keep it light: let the background color work for you! We also want our brushstrokes to follow the natural curves of the eye socket and lids (Fig.03).

Now let's add color to the iris. | choose a medium-to-dark color for this as a base, and then add a slightly lighter shade on top. This already gives the impression of a little depth. Now add the pupil. Note how in the three- quarter view it doesn’t appear rounded, but slightly oval; this is due to the perspective (Fig.06). Don’t forget the little bright dot of reflected light as this will help you in the next few stages of building up the detail of the iris!

Accentuate the skin around it with some more highlights, especially on the outside where the light would hit the strongest. Once that is done it’s time to think about the eyelashes. We'll add a new layer for them as it’s easier to paint them that way without fear of ruining your eye. Choose a small round brush with Opacity and Size] itter set to Pen Pressure, and start painting in the lashes with flicking motions. Unless caked in mascara and tortured with a lash curler, eyelashes don’t usually curl upwards all that much (Fig.11).

Using a small round Paintbrush with Opacity and Size J itter set to Pen Pressure, we Can now paintin the eyebrow. Pick a nice deep brown, as well as a medium brown for this. Smudge the hairs ever so lightly. P ick color from the surrounding skin and use it to break up the brow a little.

The last step of every painting always consists of adding all those tiny details that make it “pop”; that make it look realistic even when it retains a painterly quality. Using separate

and use this as your base color for the ears. Once you've filled them in (remembering to paint beneath the sketch!), pick a red-brown color - not too saturated - and block-in the shadow areas, bearing your light source in mind (Fig.16). I've also hinted at the hairline a little. When painting fair-colored skin, the ears tend to be slightly redder or pinker than the rest of the face due to the amount of blood vessels running through them. If light shines through them from behind, it becomes even more apparent. Bearing this in mind, | now choose a warm orange to refine the shadow areas, and a light pink to bring out the highlights (Fig.17).

Let's block in some colors, sticking with the round Paintbrush. | tend to switch off the Size J itter for this to get good coverage, whilst still keepinc the benefits of the Pen Pressure Opacity. Pick a medium flesh tone

It already looks pretty good now, and there really isn’t that much left to do, unless of course you want to paint every skin pore. As a matter of fact, ears tend to not get too much attention in most portraits, and even less so in full-body character paintings. Often they are just hinted at, as itis enough for our brain to recognize the correct shape of an ear to imagine the rest. In any case, we should now add some more pronounced highlights, as well as enhance the orange-peach tint of the skin, as it gota bit washed-out by all the blending. For the latter, add

Now is the time to clean up the edges of the front view ear a bit and also to fix a few things that in this case have nothing to do with the ear, namely the neck and hairline. We'll also work on blending the colors a bit more and smoothing out any rough brush strokes that may have been left over. Try blending with the contours of the ear’s shape, rather than by random smudge strokes (Fig.19).

I Seats, Dan etree Now add a new layer underneath the sketch and stick with the round Paintbrush, though you may want to switch off the Size J itter option. Pick a slightly lighter color than your flesh-toned background, and add a few highlights around the lips - this will help you to determine the light source and keep it steady. Use a slightly darker reddish tone for some carefully placed shadows. Then pick a brownish-red color and vaguely fill in the shape of the lips. Try and place your brush strokes to follow the curve of the lips, as this will add some instant volume (Fig.24a - b).

FrOM Mere ON, US dll AVOUL SHAVING dala details. In my case, | wasn’t quite happy with the lips’ shape, and altered it a little. It's easier to change things before adding lots of detail, so make sure you are happy with your work before you dive into the last phase. Using the same brushes as before, we soften as well as refine the lips. Pay attention to the fact that the “line” that separates upper and lower lip is not really a line, but a shadow. Therefore, soften it- enough to not make it look like an actual line, and notso much that it blends in with the rest (Fig.28).

There is not much left to do now other than more refining. If you are going for a soft and dreamy kind of portrait, leaving everything slightly blurred with just a few focal parts is just fine. If you’re going for something more photorealistic or graphical, bringing out the So from here on we shall refine the nose, working with what we've already got, using the standard round Paintbrush and the Smudge tool set to Finger Painting, as before. You can of course make alterations if you are not really happy with what you've done. You may want to start with refining the nostrils. Refrain from painting any sharp lines here; rather, make use of a softer Paintbrush and paint shadowy blobs. The same goes for the “outlines” of the nostril where it curves in on the surrounding skin. Blend these areas with care: you don’t want sharp lines, but neither do you want everything to be completely smudged (Fig.34). Once you've got all that, choose a nice, light color and add the first proper highlights, namely on the tip of the nose and down the bridge, and some also around the nostril.

Now you're all set to start painting faces! set it to Overlay or Soft Light, and reduce the Opacity as needed. You can repeat this as often as you like or want. You can do the same thing with a Texture brush to simply add some skin texture. And there you have your nose n= wae

basic template to build upon. | created the skin tones on a single layer and then added the white of the eye (or sclera), the iris, and the pupil all on separate layers. | added some Gaussian Blur to the three eye layers to avoid any sharp lines. Itis good practice to keep these layers intact for now to ease the process of making any color alterations as we progress.

In Fig.02b you can see some of the darker paint strokes that define the eyelid, as well as some pinker shades that run around the sclera. There are also some lighter accents that help form the bottom lid. Try and vary the colors across your painting, whilst keeping them within a similar tonal range. You can select pale reds through to yellows, browns and even some cooler bluish tones. Remember that variety is the key to creating a convincing look! symmetry. | added an extra layer on which | painted in some more flesh tones to soften the image.

In today’s world of ever-increased specialization, many artists have adopted roles specific to certain areas of expertise. One of these is an environment artist, and, as well as creating original designs, it often involves adjusting an established scene and creating variations. This chapter looks primarily at how a base image can be manipulated to reflect different weather conditions, and shows how the same scene can be transformed dramatically to convey a diverse range of moods.

will see your last Wave effect duplicated with a nice opacity. Repeat this step three or four more times and you will create a perfect cloud shape. These effects have much better results if you change the parameters of the Wave filter before applying the Fade effect (Shift + Ctrl + F) (Fig.03 - 04).

needs more light and shading work, don’t you think? Check the bottom of the cloud: it doesn’t have a great amount of shadows at the base, and so to fix this simply create a new layer in Multiply blend mode, and paint using a brown color at the base of your cloud. When done, change the Opacity of the layer to around 40%. Now create another layer in Overlay blend mode, and paint with a big soft brush at the bottom of the cloud. (Note: Remember not to paint using a high opacity brush - always use 50% or less when painting clouds or smooth surfaces.) The shadows are okay now, so let's start work on the highlights. Repeat the same procedure that we used for the shadows: create a new layer in Overlay mode and paint in the highlights using gray. Try to follow the direction of the clouds to create volume (Fig.07). The

Let's now go back to our cloud to smooth the edges. For this you can either use the Smudge tool (R) or paint several strokes using a low opacity brush (I always use the latter technique). When you finish you should have an image such as Fig.06. It looks good but it

your image now, the shadow changes into a greenish-gray (Fig.09). This shadow color stands out the Sandstorm effect. You can then create another new adjustment layer and play with the Curves. | always use these last few steps to tweak my paintings, and it’s also a good way to check if everything is okay or needs to be changed at the end.

If you don’t have too much of an idea about what a particular scene looks like, then | always recommend you use the internet to find some photographs that can help you in your work. Years ago, artists needed to have hundreds of books in their studios to help them find good reference images for their works, but now, with the internet, we have the opportunity to instantly find the images that we are looking for. So, find some good reference images of what you need, and study the colors and atmosphere of them. You can learn a lot if you look at and study any images, not just works, but now, with the internet, we have the

It's not a huge change of color, but this is just the first step. Now we have to work hard on the clouds. This may be both the hardest and most enjoyable part of the painting, as we have to create a cool twister mixed in with the clouds. For the dark color of the twister pick a dark blue color (RGB 93, 117, 130), and for the brighter area of the twister select a sky blue color (RGB 137, 163, 179). With these two colors we are going to create a cool-looking twister... artists’ works. You can learn lots of things fron photographs, too. in transforming the scene and adding a twister.

Are you prepared to transform a calm landscape base image into a scene featuring a dramatic twister? Okay, well let's begin!

A simple way to smooth two colors is using a brush with a low opacity, so let's try using 30% or 40% for this image. Pick the brighter color and paint over the darker color with a low opacity. Then select the Eyedropper tool (press the Alt key) and pick this freshly mixed color. Continue doing this a couple of times ani you'll see how the edges of your cloud begin to smooth, without the help of the Smudge tool. clouds in a new document before you continue with the twister. To create tne etrect of the clouds and twister, | use a custom brush. First, | will show you how you can paint clouds easily using this brush. The first thing we need is a base color, so let's use the dark blue color that we picked before, and paint an irregular cloud shape. This brush has the pressure Opacity turned on, so you can create some nice and interesting effects with it. The next step is adding light to this cloud shape, so pick the light color and paint on the area of the cloud where the light hits. Use the pressure of your pen to smooth between the dark and bright area of the cloud (Fig.02).

Fig.03 shows the path of my brush strokes when creating these cloud formations. It’s easy, don’t you think? Try doing a couple of extra Ready? Okay, so now let's paint the twister ... With the dark color (RGB 93, 117, 130), paint the twister’s body and mix it in with the clouds. Spend some time painting and smoothing the clouds as this is the most important part of this illustration, so do your best here. Now, with the light color (RGB: 137, 163, 179), paint the edge of the twister’s body. With this last step you are going to separate the twister from the background. Pick an earth color and paint the

over the clouds with this green/gray color (RGB 164, 178, 170). Now itis dark; you can see just how dramatically the image has changed from this adjustment (Fig.06). It's now time to destroy the farm. Create a new layer and paint - using a hard round brush - the trash, earth and wood that will be flying around the base of the twister. This is a fun part, so spend some time putting the details in here (Fig.07). You can paint cows flying around the tornado too if you like - or maybe even a farmer? The farm is ready and the tornado looks scary now, but we still need to add the Wind effect to the entire scene. Create another layer and paint

base of the twister with this color. Try to paint something like what you can See in Fig.04.

the image, in order to enhance the different areas. In Fig.09 you can see the layer without the Overlay properties. Compare this with the final image (Fig.10).

Our first step is to change the ambient color of the entire scene. Let's pick a gray/brown color

(RGB 83, 71, 65); this color is going to give us the stormy, ambient color that we are looking for. Create a new layer (Hard Light 100%) and fill it with our ambient color. Do you see how it changes with only one color (Fig.01)? And this is only the first step! Let's continue.

reflection, change the layer properties to Overlay; this will create the Reflection effect on the floor.

Well | think we can now say that this image is finished (Fig.12). | hope this tutorial has helped you to try some of these steps or techniques in your images. Practice every day and force yourself to speed up your skills, because in this business speed and quality are very important!

Now let's smooth the snow a little bit, on the ground. Create another layer and start painting with a soft round brush at 50% Opacity. Try to use the Eyedropper tool a lot - this is very important - and please do

You can use a photograph for the clouds, but remember that the photograph must be grayscale, because we don’t want to change the blue/gray color of our own sky. But now we have a problem ... The sky is too bright to be a stormy sky. So let's fix this really quickly. Create another layer and fill it with a gradient. Use the colorRGB 81, 91, 103, and change the layer’s Opacity to 48%. Don’t fill the whole image with the gradient, just the upper middle section (Fig.05). still need some adjustments. The snowflakes need Motion Blur, so go to Filter > Motion Blur and set these parameters: Angle 20, Distance 25 pixels, and then add a Gaussian Blur (3%), too. To increment the Snowflake effect, you can duplicate the layer and transform it a couple of times and obtain an image such as Fig.07. attention to the trash can in the foreground, and the farm in the background. To do this, create another layer (Overlay, Opacity 77%) and fill it again with the Gradient tool and the color RGB 58, 60, 66, from the top right corner to the left corner. Now, on another layer, paint the windows from the farm in orange. Add another layer with Soft Light properties, and set the Opacity to 68%. Play with this last layer to change the amount of light coming from

Now it’s time to add some little tweaks and the image is then done. We need to draw more

your skills in this final step and add more details. When you feel that the mage is done, save it and upload it to your portfolio! You can see how | added more snow detail on the ground and mountains in the final image Fig.09); | did this with several low opacity strokes in the dark area of the

In the Color Balance dialog box, select Shadows and move the Cyan value sliders to -23, the Yellow values to -10, and leave the Magenta and Green values at zero. Now go to Midtones and move the value sliders to Red +9, Green +3 and Yellow -70. Now we have the shadows and midtones finished, so it’s time to change the highlights. Click on Highlights and move the value sliders to Red +100, Yellow -44, and leave the Magenta and Green values at zero. What do you think (Fig.01)? select Color Balance. Adjustment layers can be used for making many types of adjustments to your work, without actually doing anything to the original layer. This is perfect if you have to do modifications to your final image, so remember that these kinds of layers allow you to make non-destructive corrections to your images. For example, if you create a Curves adjustment layer, you can go back to the Curves dialog box later and change the settings at any time.

Yt NY TAIN LN VU Nes FA YIN L INGL SOFTWARE USED: PHOTOSHOP Before we begin painting we need more information about the subject. In this case we have to transform this image (Fig.00) into a warm desert. The first thing you have to do is find all the material you can get from internet about the subject: images, photographs, references, and so on. From this material, check the type of color schemes that usually have a desert-like, warm environment. If you check one of your reference images you will see that the colors are usually warm orange hues in this type of environment. One of the perfect examples of this kind of weather would be a photo from Africa, where you would see how the horizon line disappears because of the hot weather, and you'll find that the heat waves distort distant objects. Well, this is exactly the weather effect we need, so let's begin.

We've finished with the sky and the color scheme of this scene now, so i's time to change the ground a little. Create a new layer and move it below the sky and the adjustment layers; select the default round brush and paint a cracked, dry earth near the trash can. If you prefer, paste a texture instead of paint, but remember to change the blend mode of this layer to Pin Light or Hard Light, with low opacity (Fig.04).

Now it’s time to add a simple sky. You can find one of these on the internet, or - even better - create one yourself. | painted this sky using the default Photoshop round brush with a low opacity (something like 30%). | painted the sky on the right-hand side because | felt that the image was going to be too heavy on the left side. When you paint the sky in a new layer, change the blend mode to Hard Light and move it below the adjustment layers. This step is very important because the sky must have ne of these on the internet, or - even better

Now we are going to create a heat reflection on the horizon, so go to Image > Duplicate and click on Duplicate Merged Layers Only. In this new merged image, select the Lasso tool and draw a Selection over the farm, as you can see in the next image (Fig.05). Press Ctrl +C to copy the selected image and paste it (Ctrl + V) onto your original painting. Now, on this new farm layer, go to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical, and position itas a reflection of the original farm. With the Eraser tool (E), erase - with a soft round brush - the contours of this flipped farm. If you change the blend mode of this layer to Overlay you can see how the reflection looks more real. We've almost finished the painting now, so let’s move on to the final step.

In this last step we're going to use the mask mode to do a smooth selection. So press the Quick Mask mode icon in the tools palette (or

“ANOTHER RAINY DAY”: PAINTING A CITYSCAPE BY DAARKEN

| continue to work all around the canvas and Alter! Nave all Me MalN SNapes IN place | need to put in the base color of the buildings (Fig.02 - 03). Using the same brush | paint the buildings in the background with less pressure, as opposed to the buildings in the foreground. Usually things further away are softer, and things closer are sharper. Even when | know a building isn’t going to be dark in color, | will still block in the silhouette as a dark color because that way | can get some of the dark color to show through (Fig.04). This will give the surface some more texture and depth; rh a i | er cn ors

this brush because it is very versatile in the fact that you can get soft shapes as well as hard edges. You can also rotate the brush to get brush strokes in different directions.

The brush | used to simulate rain droplets on the rear window of the car is a type of speckled brush (Fig.08) (| also use this brush a lot when | am painting facial hair on men). The red tail lights look okay right now, but! really wanted them to feel like they were glowing. An easy

| wanted some more color harmony in my piece, so | decided to change the Color Balance of the illustration (Fig.13). An easy way to do this without actually changing your painting is by clicking on the half-black, half- white circle at the bottom of your layers palette; doing this will open up a window in which you can choose different options to change. | chose Color Balance. The Color Balance

cause an illustration to either succeed or fail. Most of the time | use the hard round brush for when | am painting elements such as railings, poles, and wires. | try not to use the Shift key for drawing straight lines, but instead | just do them freehand. Doing this will give more life to your painting and it won't look so mechanical. Some of the lines look pretty straight, but that is only because | will keep redrawing the same line over and over until | am satisfied with the way it looks. Remember that the Ctrl +Z (Undo) hot keys are your friends.

dialog box will open, and it is here that you can change your colors. | pulled the sliders towards more Yellow, Magenta, and Cyan. You can also change the tonal balance by selecting Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights. It is fun to play around with these different settings.

painterly feel, and not something that looked too photorealistic. You can see from the detailed shot that the cars are pretty loose, especially the ones that are further away from the viewer (Fig.18). Even when | am painting something this small | still paint zoomed out to about 25%. This allows me to keep things looser, and | can also judge what it will look like zoomed out at the same time.

Fiy.éu of focus away from the rest of the piece. | didn’t want the sign to be too much of a focal point, and | had been avoiding finishing the rest of the text. In the end | finished the text, but | tried to Keep the value range between the letters and the background fairly similar so as to not call foo much attention to it (Fig.22).

During this tutorial | will try to outline one way to go about painting water that is representative of a calm sea. Now, this is a subject that varies greatly and is dependent on so many factors that it is almost impossible to lay down strict rules and guidelines. Water by nature is highly fluid and transformable, and therefore does not have a particular form to it. Itis both transparent and at the same time very reflective, and so is always at the mercy of its environment and surroundings in the way itis perceived by the human eye. Itis also affected by light, weather conditions and gravity, and so Can appear in an infinite number of ways. A WOLCTICH UF IGSt HOWIIY TaVIGS IVUNK WIL Gi opaque compared with a still pool for example, and the color of the ocean always reflects the sky above it. Therefore the way we go about painting water is always reliant upon a number of issues and aspects in our scene, and all of these must be considered before we begin. As | have already mentioned, this particular tutorial concerns a relatively calm sea and so the only real issue to be mindful of is the sky. If we were to include land masses or trees, for example, then these elements would undoubtedly have a bearing on our painting.

than 2 pixels, and again, on a new layer, fill in with an orange yellow and set the blending mode to Color at around 25% Opacity. In Fig.09 you can again see the before and after effects of this, and how the yellow has been limited to the lighter areas.

These subjects are two of the most popular themes explored by modern digital artists today, and together form a large proportion of popular artwork adorning desktops around the globe. More than any subjects, these two allow an expansive base for creative freedom, and thus have attracted and inspired many artists who have become well respected within this field. Over the next few pages we take a look at how three very different artists approach varying subjects and exploit their tools to good effect. Ranging from the ancient through to the futuristic, we see how each has been inspired by this genre to produce imaginative pieces.

click on the Brush tool, and then right-click on the canvas. Your Brush menu should now open. In the top right corner is a small triangle button - click on it and go to Load Brushes, then select the file that you have downloaded. As for what size of a file you should work in, | always paint at 300 dpi and usually around 3000 pixels wide. This artwork is 2404 by 2905 pixels. Rigperetie a SOFTWARE USED: PHOTOSHOP AND PAINTER have them. Now that we have our reference material, we can start the illustration. PAINTING ARMOR: EUROPEAN KNIGHT BY DAARKEN

GATHER INFORMATION The first thing | usually do when | get a project is to collect all of the reference material that | am going to need. Most of the time you can find everything you need by just Googling it. For this project | gathered some images from different museum websites. It is a good idea to start building up a large reference folder on your computer so that the next time you need some armor references you will already

One thing you always need to be aware of when designing a character is whether or not they could actually function. It’s nice to make them look cool, but a lot of the time, especially in the gaming industry, the character will need to be able to animate. This is where your references come in handy. Study how real armor is put together and try to figure out why it was designed a certain way and how it works. | felt like the character was leaning too much, so | rotated him a little counter-clockwise, and gave him hair and a beard (Fig.04d).

INDUD VETITAILL Usually | block in more of the armor shapes before | work more on the head, but this time | am going to finish up the head first so that | can focus more on the armor (Fig.04a). | want this guy to be a rough and tough knight, not just another big brute but one that is proud and charismatic. Another way to make someone look more heroic is to elongate their proportions. Usually | make them around 8 - 9 heads tall. Now that | have the head down, I can start blocking in the armor. | wasn't really sure what the armor was going to look like, so | just started throwing down paint (Fig.04b). The shape | put down for the pauldron didn’t really make any sense, so | start cutting away pieces and trying to give it some more form and function (Fig.04c).

There are many ways to paint in the highlights, one of which is to use the Color Dodge tool (Fig.05a - b). | know people always say avoid

Again, whenever you are painting something, be sure to remember that there are several parts to describing form, such as the core shadow, reflected light, and the highlights (Fig.10).

| wasn't really feeling that his pose was fitting with what! had in mind, so | changed around his stance to a more confident pose (Fig.08 - 09)

yurpose of this tutorial. Open a new document nd draw a few “C” shapes. Make thatinto a yrush and go to the brush controls. Click the 0x next to Shape Dynamics and under Angle itter set the control to Direction. Doing this vill cause the C-shapes to follow the direction )f your brush. Also click the box next to Other Jynamics so that you can have opacity control vith your stylus. First lay down one row of ‘hain mail by painting from left to right, then /ou can paint the next row simply by painting rom right to left. The reason we can do this is yecause we Set the Angle J itter to Direction, lowing us to paint the C-shapes in both jirections without having to rotate the brush. This will let you get the basic idea down. Now yo back in and pop in some highlights and REE purpose of this tutorial. Open a new document

Itis a good idea to occasionally take breaks from your painting so that when you come back to it you can see mistakes you have made more easily (Fig.16). You should also regularly flip the image horizontally to see any flaws. | felt like his head needed to be a little bit bigger, so | enlarged that and changed his left arm as well (Fig.17).

top of that! use the Color Dodge brush to pop in some more highlights (Fig.14c). Go through the same process on the legs as we have used with the arms (Fig.15a - f).

As an oversimplification: if you can paint clouds, you can paint nebulas! The way to approach painting nebulas is to think of them as multicolored layered clouds (an interstellar

© DR. CHEE MING WONG PLANETS AND STARFIELDS BY CHEE MING WONG

consider how the nebulas themselves form an aesthetically pleasing composition. Simply duplicate and apply the Free Transform tool (Ctrl +T) to rotate and shrink the overall image. You can repeat this step a few times, until you reestablish a more pleasing overall image (Fiag.05). foreground are mixed into the background, anc vice versa. Repeat this until you achieve an overall, even blending.

analyze the image in a new perspective and pick out errors or differences notseen before. Sometimes expanding the canvas frees up new compositional opportunities

Block in: Use a large brush and project some rough shapes. Subsequently, select out areas to add more blocks of shapes.

Blend: Now soften everything by working those two values back and forth to gradually show only the stronger light source (from the left), and faintly add a rim light (from the far right). To accentuate the overall form, you can lighten the immediate background around the derelict vessel in order to make it read better. gasses, such as radon, from out-gassing or micrometeorites. In addition, the solar wind can charge (a photoelectric effect) fine layers of moon dust that may present as electrostatic levitated dust. Coupled with exposure to cosmic rays, solar flares and solar wind, and the frequent impact of micrometeorites, this presents a hostile and relatively harsh, demanding condition. Closer inspection of the lunar landscape shows: BARREN WORLDS Knowledge of atmosphere, and the lack of, accounts for how accurate and realistic our depiction of any Earth-like (blue) environment versus an alien unknown climate (for example an atmosphere with high methane content resulting in a green sky). As such, we will focus primarily on our companion, the moon, to provide a basis and working understanding for us to transfer to other exotic environments.

center of the Shackleton crater. Each cubicle is interlocked by short, sealed rings. | also took the liberty of considering an external power source/reactor that relies on He3 Deuterium fusion, assuming that the shielded reactor cores on the far right were relatively safe. In the main quarters, habitation is serviced by a dome-like structure with a central lift system to connect all levels of the base together. And finally, on the far left of the drawing, both a research and advanced propulsions works unit is coupled with the external hangar bay/ transport bay area. one side facing the Earth permanently, and all other areas facing away are known as the “dark side of the moon’).

hundred meters across in an ocean of eternal darkness. Of particular interest is the almost perfectly circular Shackleton crater, which NASA plans to colonize in the near future. The key features of the Shackleton crater are:

Initial Set-up: This rough thumbnail (see Fig.15) aims to simplify and tackle composition, form, and lighting all in one pass, utilizing a simple two-point perspective and focusing on the main dome which is protruding from the crater floor. Retro Design: |n the design, a marriage of the best elements of retro space and futuristic designs are merged, namely the white featureless planes and curves accentuated with angular tones; these few things bring a certain familiarity whilst still providing an evocative composition. Perspective: Using a simple one-point perspective | aligned the main horizon and various objects with the main vanishing point (located slightly off center, to the left) (Fig.16).

and explore the farthest regions of our known solar system. But first of all, let's take you back to the beginning ... to the birth of the solar system THE SOLAR SYSTEM - A FIERY BIRTH AND ITS DESTRUCTION Imagine going back roughly 10 billion years after the Big Bang. A large star is about to die, having expended all its fuel, and from this its core eventually collapses inwards until it explodes as a supernova - sending a shock wave through the galaxy. Itis from the remnants of this long distant star, and many others, that eventually a new star is formed - our sun - via the fusion of hydrogen atoms in a process called “nucleosynthesis”.

Finally, we will end our exploration of barren worlds here with two alternate images (Fig.21 - 22). Fig.21 shows a final monochromic illustration which is more suited towards a lunar-styled environment and projects a more brooding, cold feeling. Ultimately, | love color and have also produced a more impressionistic space art version in Fig.22, blending in the main primaries of gold and deep blue/violet. And here is the final image for this part of our tutorial (Fig.23).

Blending: The next part brings the illustration to life as it allows the establishment of mid- Colored Approach: We start by depicting a loose bluish-green background with flat washes

over the canvas. Incorporating a circular stylec composition, the illustration is planned to spira outwards from its point of origin - the dying sun. ILLUSTRATING A DYING STAR For our first painting we will look at illustrating the last moments of a dying star, transitioning before it explodes in a spectacular nova (which in the case of a large star is a Supernova), for itis from the remnants of a dead star that the raw matter of a new star and solar system can come into being. In this instance it is probably more interesting to take a more impressionistic approach to space art, whilst working from a position of informed knowledge (Fig.24).

tone values, allowing various colors to bleed into one another and providing a softer, more realistic feel of an expanding cloud of gases (Fig.25).

it means adding a subtle blend of gold, jade, ; and turquoise with faint highlights and glows to make it all work together (Fig.26). Using similar principles to those before, we can continue. LLLUSI RATING Dik DIRE TL OF A SOLAR SYSTEM Following the death of a star, a vast and widespread cloud of raw material is scattered across a region. When sufficient interstellar clouds (giant molecular clouds) of raw elements collapse under gravity, the center gets heavier and heavier and the rotation also gets faster and faster. Eventually, clouds of hydrogen become fused together until sufficient mass is reached to form a proto sun disc in a process called “Stellar Accretion”. It is this process, through which a star is born, that a stable solar system forms. And itis this transition between the formation of a stable Stellar Accretion and a proto sun that we will try to illustrate in this tutorial, at this point (Fig.27). Flat Washes: P aint in a background of deep saturated blues and greens initially, and then sprinkle a scattering of faint stars.

too easy to use Color Dodge or add highlights straight away. If you do wish to do this here, try to limit these actions purely to the central portion only.

In the initial stage we start with a rough layout of the proto stellar disc, using just pure deliberate color choices on the main canvas. Early On: Other issues to consider are the use of Color Dodge and brighter glows. | would like to stress that, in the initial stages itis often The Problem of Establishing Highlights PCR PEEEINGEE RP Gkes WTC GIGS UOEVILE UllS the proto sun - as a geometric ring, and others as faint arms within a red disc. For the purpose of clarity here, we will first depict the thin edges of the arms, and subsequently lay in the red proto disc.

As a backdrop, let's use our own natural satellite, the moon, in full color, to depict a barren planet. Often, the lunar surface is depicted in a bland gray, or a false desaturated blue color. However, the advent of webcams and improved technology now show that the moon is indeed more colorful than previously thought (color photography provided from the 1994 DSPE [Deep Space Program Science Experiment] Clementine satellite). The key issue to consider when drawing any large circular object on a curved body, such as a planet, moon or asteroid, is the perspective.

EXAGGERATED DEPICTION OF CIRCULAR CRATERS

Palette: A color palette of dark, mid and light tones will help in the overall production of the image using only color. Optionally, one can choose to start outin grayscale and work out the base values based on the reference of the near and far side; however, it will take some work to make it appear painterly and naturalistic in the final outcome (Fig.32). regions made of basalt which give a dark green-blue color cast).

Initial Layout: Using the Circular Marquee tool, paint a base of light yellow/gray in large flat washes to represent the base of the moon. CLOSE-UP AT FULL RESOLUTION: STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO PAINTING BASALT

Base Shapes: Using the dark tones, lay down

Before we start, here are the two brushes | often use, especially for blocking in rough sketches. As you can see they’re simply the two

Here's the image after some polishing (Fig.15). The actual rendering process can seem quite dull, even on a loose piece such as this one. | was pretty much moving all over the place, sampling colors and working on things in no particular order. But it’s really nothing special, just the same old things | did during the block- in only repeated ona finer scale. I'll do my best to sum up some key steps: particular order. But it’s really nothing special,

This part of the book is perhaps the overture to what has preceded, and allows a glimpse into the thought process and creative approach behind three artists. Each addresses the human condition in diverse ways and hopefully, through comparing the different stylistic approaches, we will gain an insight into both the technical and emotive aspects that run through their work.

| think | might use for the sketch (Fig.01b). | always try to use very loud colors in order to enhance the surreal situations that you find in my pictures. draw the sketch in Photoshop using a small, pressure sensitive paintbrush (Fig.0la). The background and the sketch both have their awn lavere | then cetiin the hacic colore that

luminous spots you apply to the hair, the more it will shine and the silkier it will look. This time | didn’t want to use effects like that because | wanted the hair to look a bit shaggier, for the reasons | mentioned before (Fig.04).

SOFTWARE USED: PAINTER, PHOTOSHOP, ARTWEAVER, GIMP not too sure about a layer. Normally, however, | like to work without layers, as | would with a traditional drawing.

SETTING UP IN PAINTER Firstly, | begin by launching Painter. | prefer this software for global creation as there area Tip: If | want to make a 16-9 ratio, | simply enter 1600 by 900 pixels. For my workflow organization, | like to work with the Hue/ Saturation/Light, a panel of custom tools (more short-cut tools than custom) and a standard color selector. | like to keep the layer panel reduced next to my toolbox, to keep an eye on whether | need to add or change an effect if I’m

a representation of the two circles of the eyes and the focal point in the middle where detail will be observed first.

Fig.04 is a mirror image of the work, which is a good way to refresh your eyes and spot any mistakes. During the process, | mirror the

and the horn with the final layer. My prefered method for adding these cool details is an easy technique which | have learnt from forums and websites: Save and go to Photoshop, and duplicate the background layer; apply a Bevel and Emboss effect on the new top layers; draw with the Eraser ... easy! You can change the parameters of the effect to have colored shadows/light, and alter their direction (Fig.08). The only thing to take care of is the frame on the border that appears around the second layer (Square, embossed appearance). At the end of your engraving work, apply the effect and erase the border of the top layer. You can now collapse your layers and repeat the process to include a lot more detail.

violet around the corners of the nose; and (4) add more red and saturation to the nose and ears. fo add color, we create - on the top of our ayers (I collapse them all, so | keep only one lack and white layer open) - a layer with he Color layer blending mode. This layer vill transform the gray value in the color tone applied to that value. | start to apply a green ‘olor over all colors, and add additional colors 0 the painting step-by-step (Fig.17). | first Jiscovered this technique used in a 2D paintinc utorial by Steven Stahlberg.

(http://www.daz3d.com), which is likely to have models with the ability to move their arms, change their pose, change lighting and background, etc.

why | find my working method most efficient: using 3D software which is

Fora Windows user, the ideal method is to work with Artweaver; | work with Painter and tend to use GIMP in the same way | would use Photoshop on my Mac. Itis ideal to beain vou

Bump maps are not supported, but a trick is to quickly airbrush a sphere onto the base layer (Fig.35). On a separate new layer, add some

SOFTWARE USED: PHOTOSHOP (AND CINEMA 4D) All the work was done in Photoshop with just a little assistance from Cinema 4D; I'll talk you through now how it all came together. a pontoon boat sitting comfortably above the water (and alligators), but | instantly imagined going back in time and being there on a small skiff, gliding through those spooky waters at night with nothing but lamplight. That basic idea is the one | expanded upon for this digital painting. THE MAKING OF “KEEP A SHARP EYE’ BY RON CRABB

INTRODUCTION The digital painting, Keep a Sharp Eye, had its genesis in my desire to return to my roots as an illustrator. Most of my recent commercial work consisted of matte painting work for film and television, which has occupied a lot of my time for a number of years now. More recently I've found myself longing to get back to some figurative work and do some storytelling with my illustration abilities (it's the variety of things | get to do that makes me love being an artist). To that end, | came up with an idea to create images that feel like they have a great story behind them, even though that story hasn't been written yet. Keep a Sharp Eye is the first in the series that I’m calling “Illustrations from Untold Stories”. The digital painting, Keep a Sharp Eye, had its

| pieced together my model references, combining body positions with preferred facial expressions, and did some color correcting to get close to the desired lighting and coloring. During this process | decided to make a slight change in lighting and to get rid of the bright moonlight that! had indicated in the rough sketch. | felt that having it darker, without an overly bright rim light on the characters, would make it moodier; more like a classical painting than a movie poster. | would still add some ambient moonlight, but much less pronounced than originally planned. | wanted that torch to really pop.

Tip: All through this process | keep all my elements separated into many Photoshop layers. | combine as | go, once I'm satisfied with each layer. | positioned the corrected photo layers and roughed some quick positioning sketches over them. | then moved the photo reference off to the side and began sketching in more details (Fig.05). | did this for two reasons: one, it’s more fun to draw than trace; two, it allows me to make the changes | want to make and be creative. For instance, | often make a man’s head slightly smaller in relation to his body size and his hands slightly larger. It's a common illustrator tip | picked up from a Norman Rockwell book ages ago. | also make kids’ eyes Slightly larger - it adds to expressiveness. None of itis dramatic, but | think it helps the storytelling.

THE WATER Since everything in the upper half of the image needed to be reflected in the water, | naturally had to do the water last. But it wasn’tas easy as simple copying and flipping the image. The reflection would have a slightly different angle on the people in the boat and the boat itself,

AFTER SOME FEEDBACK Here's where the global community of artists came in nicely. Once this image was posted | got some great critiques that! went back and applied. They included better rendering of the flame and some lighting adjustments to the boy and girl to account better for light fall-off. | had knowingly cheated the lighting (artistic license again), but apparently a bit too much (it’s great to have the whole world of artists available to giv you some good advice - use them!).

STURMGRUPPE DAHL JOHN WALLIN LIBERTO PHOTOSHOP & ARTRAGE

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Channel extraction, 80
Christensen, Jan Ditlev, 274
Cinema 4D software, 240-1, 246
Cityscapes, 186-91 Clipping mask layers, 76
Clone stamping, 68-9, 76
Cloud effects, 85, 167-71, 174, 176, 179-80, 204, 213-14
Cold-value hues, 79 Color: complete projects, 226, 228-30, 233, 235, 238 creature design, 95-6, 105, 110-11, 114, 118-19, 123-4 environments, 166, 169-72, 174, 178-9, 182, 186-92 human fi gures, 128-34, 137-8, 145-7, 150-3, 155-8, 161-3 matte painting, 75, 79, 82, 86 sci-fi /fantasy, 199, 204-5, 207-9, 211-12, 215 speed painting, 41-2, 45, 48-51, 54-5, 57, 59-60, 62-3
Color Balance, 189-90
Color Correction, 68-9, 71, 242, 245
Color Dodge setting, 87, 188, 199-200, 202 Compositional methods, 233
Concept creatures, 100-11 Contrast adjustments, 79, 146-7, 213
Correction layers, 231
Corriero, Mike, 34-7, 100-11
Crabb, Ron, 240-7, 271
Creatures, 16-19, 93-125, 229 Cropping in fi gures, 221-2
Daarken, 20-5, 136-43, 186-91, 198-203, 266-7
Dahlig, Marta, 260-1
Darkness effects, 40-1, 50, 85, 172, 180, 205-8
Defi nition, hair, 129
Delon, Mélanie, 30-3, 263
Depth, 88, 89-90, 150
Desaturation of images, 16, 28 Detailing: complete projects, 227, 235-6, 244-5 creature design, 97 environments, 82, 181, 187-90 human fi gures, 133, 135, 137-8, 146, 152, 156 sci-fi /fantasy, 199-202, 205, 210, 212-13, 216-17, 222-3 speed painting, 46, 55, 56-7, 61
Dijk, Jesse van, 265, 274-5
Distance see Backgrounds; Depth Distort tool, 142, 166
Dixon, Matt, 94-9
Dociu, Daniel, 252, 277
Dodge tool, 51, 188
Dominic, Simon, 272-3, 278-9
Dots, 135, 173, 180
Drawing see Sketching Dual Brush option, 27, 35
Duplicating layers, 55-6
Ears, 140, 153-4
Edge control, 188-9, 206
Elmasli, Emrah, 48-50, 144-7 Emboss effect, 233-5
Environments, 74-7, 79, 81-3, 165-95, 204-17
Eyebrows, 149, 151
Eyedropper tool, 179
Eyelashes, 124, 151-2, 161
Eyes, 98, 106-7, 122-5, 138, 148-52, 160-3
Faces, 46, 128-43, 148-61, 226-7, 235-6, 242-3
Fantasy images, 197-223 Female portraits, 128-35
Fire effects, 50-3, 84-7
Flat washes, 213
Flattening images, 16
Flipping images, 55, 57, 91, 202
Fog effects, 54-6, 175, 179
"Following through" shapes, 137 2D images, 232-9 3D software, 236-7, 241-2, 246-7 Adjustment layers, 77, 79-80, 83, 89-90, 146-7, 182-3
Airbrushes, 94, 114, 120-2, 128, 130, 132-5, 145, 233
Aleksander, Nykolai, 148-59, 258
Anatomy, 93, 100-3, 114, 142, 144, 148 Angle of views, 90
Animals, 16-19, 93-125, 229
Armor, 198-203
Barren environments, 207, 211
Basalt, 215-16
Base colors, 110-11, 132, 134, 187
Bauriedel, Marco, 68-73
Bevel and Emboss effect, 233-5 Biped creatures, 101, 109
Birds, 94-9, 101, 103
Black and white sketching, 40-1, 74-5, 232-3 see also Grayscale techniques Blending: environments, 168, 173, 183-4, 194-5 human lips, 135, 156 spacescapes, 207, 212 speed painting, 48, 54-5
Blocking in color, 128-9, 137, 153, 186-7, 199, 207
Blonde hair, 128-31
Bone structure, creatures, 103-5 Bounced light, 210-11
Broeckel, Alex, 268-9
Brunet, Marc, 26-9, 258
Brushes, 11-37, 227-8, 230, 238, 243 animals, 16-19, 94-6, 114, 119-22 environments, 168, 171, 175, 179-80, 186-9, 193-4 human fi gures, 129-35, 141, 145-6, 149-52, 155-6, 162-3 i n d e x Multiply layer mode, 51, 55
Muscles, 145-6
Musin, Sergey, 74-7
Nebulas, 204-7
Neck design, 109, 115-16, 154
Oil brushes, 130-1 Opacities: brushes, 22, 27, 30, 32, 51, 87, 131, 133-4 environments, 168, 172, 177, 180-1
Organic custom brushes, 12-15
Oroc, Nicolas, 250
Other Dynamics setting, 13-14, 18, 22, 27, 35, 86
Overlay mode, 42, 53, 168, 173, 184, 194-5 Painter software, 112-17, 128-31, 198-203, 232-9
Pen Pressure setting, 27, 31-2, 35, 86
Perspective, 44-5, 63, 69, 71, 90-1, 208-9, 214-15, 245
Peterffy, Levente, 50-3, 54-7, 252, 274 Photo references see Reference materials Photoshop: 7.0, 16-19, 40-3, 122-5 brushes, 12-37, 51-2, 188 creature design, 94-111, 118-25 CS, 132-5, 218 CS2, 20-5, 30-3, 54-7, 198-203 CS3, 48-50 environments, 166-95 human fi gures, 128-63, 226-47 matte painting, 68-91 sci-fi /fantasy, 198-223 speed painting, 40-65
Planning images, 78-9
Pogoda, Anne, 128-35 "Pop out" lips, 132, 133, 135
Pupils (eyes), 107, 123-4, 150, 160
Quick mask mode, 184-5 "Radiosity", 146
Foregrounds: environments, 187 matte painting, 80-2, 88-9 sci-fi /fantasy, 213-14, 217, 219-20 speed painting, 48, 60-1, 63
Forms, sci-fi , 210-11
Freckles, 146, 159, 227
Fur, creatures, 118-21, 123
Futuristic design see Sci-fi GIMP software, 232, 237
Glazing color, 59-60
Glow effects, 49, 176, 187-8
Graphics tablets, 94, 122
Grayscale techniques, 42, 44, 59 see also Black and white sketching Ground textures, 210
Hair, 128-31, 137, 141-2, 146, 153-4, 228-9, 231
Hand-painting scenes, 76
Haze effects, 89-90
High altitude effects, 112-13 Highlights: creatures, 97, 111, 115-16 environments, 168-9, 176, 182, 193-4 humans, 130, 132-5, 145, 150, 152-4, 155, 158, 161-2 matte painting, 70-1, 83, 87-9 sci-fi /fantasy, 199-202, 213, 219 speed painting, 45, 61
Horizon line, 192, 194
Hues, 79, 209
Human fi gures, 63, 127-63, 198-203, 221-3, 226-47
Ink experiments, brushes, 12-15
Jaws, creatures, 102, 106-7
Jedruszek, Tomasz, 271, 278
Jones, Jaime, 252-3, 263
Kutsche, Michael, 258
Lacoste, Raphaël, 270
Lakes, 52-3 Layering: complete projects, 226-7, 229-32, 235-6, 238, 242-4 creature design, 95, 96, 118 environments, 167-8, 173-7, 182-3, 188, 193, 195
Levels adjustment layers, 83, 90
Liberto, John Wallin, 256-7 Light: creature design, 97, 110-11, 115-16, 119, 124 environments, 168-71, 176, 182, 186, 187-8, 193-5 faces (human), 128, 138, 149-50, 153-5, 160-1 human fi gures, 136, 140, 145-6, 158, 227, 242-4, 246
Ljunggren, Daniel, 44-7
Loftis, Stephanie R., 122-5 Lunar landscape, 207-11, 214-17 Male portraits, 136-43
Mammals, 101, 103, 106-7
Masking, 76-7, 80, 85, 184-5 Matte painting, 67-91
Merging layers, 230
Mirror images, 233
Model shooting, 241
Moonscapes, 207-11, 214-17 Motion blur, 87, 180
Mouth construction, 106-7
Raimbault, Pascal, 112-17
Rain effects, 174-7, 186-91
Resizing images, 233
Recktenwald, Brian, 12-15
Red hair, 128-31, 228-9, 231 Reference materials: creature design, 100-1, 103, 112, 114, 118 environments, 167-8, 170, 174, 182, 186 human fi gures, 128, 136, 144, 160, 236-7, 241-2 matte painting, 74-5, 83, 91 sci-fi /fantasy, 198-9, 218 speed painting, 44, 62
Refl ections: environments, 82, 175-6, 184, 192-3 human fi gures, 146, 150, 162, 245-7
Rendering, 42, 44, 46, 96-7, 110-11, 222, 236-7, 246
Revoy, David, 232-9
Reworking designs, 97-8
Rotating images, 206
Rough-ins, 205, 209
Round brushes, 24, 27, 62, 149-50, 186
Rust effects, 56-7
Salt experiments, brushes, 12-15 Sandstorm effects, 166-9
Saturation reduction, 79, 85
Scale, 81, 89-90, 214, 221
Scattering, brushes, 14, 18, 22, 32, 35, 85, 162-3
Sci-fi , 197-223
Sclera (eyes), 107, 160-1
Seascapes, 192-5
Season change effects, 78-83 Shadows: creature design, 111 environments, 168-9, 177, 182 human fi gures, 132-3, 150-1, 153, 156-9 matte painting, 85, 87-9, 91 speed painting, 41, 63
Shape Dynamics setting, 13-14, 17, 22, 27, 35, 85, 227
Shape parameters, brushes, 85, 86-7 Sharpen brush, 69
Ship images, 54-7
Signs, cityscapes, 190-1
Silhouettes, 50-1, 56 Sketching: creature design, 95, 113-14, 122 human fi gures, 144, 149, 226-7, 230, 232-3, 240-2 matte painting, 74-5 speed painting, 40-1, 44, 51, 58-9 Skin: creatures, 103-5, 114, 116 custom brushes, 22-4, 30-3 humans, 137, 144-7, 152, 154, 159-60, 162, 235-6
Sky effects, 80, 85, 172, 180, 183 Smoke effects, 84-7, 204
Smooth-textured brush, 31-2
Smudge tool, 151, 153, 155-6, 158, 160-1, 234 Artweaver software, 238 custom brushes, 13-14, 119-20 GIMP software, 237
Snow scenes, 74-7, 79, 81-3, 178-81
Software conversions, 237-8
Solar systems, 211-13
Souleiman, Serg, 62-5
Spacescapes, 204-17
Spannuth, Kai, 280-1
Speckled brushes, 24, 30-2, 129-30, 135, 187 Speed painting, 39-65, 67
Stars, 205, 211-13
Storm scenes, 166-9, 174-81 Strands of hair, 130
Strength settings, brushes, 13
Sunset effect, 193-5
Surzin, Lubos de Gerardo, 252 "Surgery", 79
Teeth, 102, 106-7, 134 Texture: creature design, 103-5 custom brushes, 16-20, 22, 24, 27-8, 31-2, 52, 94-6 environments, 177 human fi gures, 144-7, 159, 234-6 sci-fi /fantasy, 200, 202, 210 speed painting, 48, 52-3, 56-7
Thumbnail sketching, 44
Thunig, Chris, 254-5
Tilbury, Richard, 118-21, 160-3, 192-5 Tornado images, 40-3, 170-3
Transparency, layers, 243-4
Tung, Graven, 218-23 Twister images, 40-3, 170-3
Uhlig, Daniela, 226-31
Under-painting, 95-6
Value structure, 59-60, 63, 95, 98, 205, 209, 218
Veins in skin, 146
Viris, Tiberius, 78-91
Warp tool, 36, 142
Water effects, 69-71, 81-2, 175, 192-5, 245-7 Water experiments, brushes, 12-15
Wave effects, 166-7, 192-5, 218-19, 221-2 Weather conditions, 165-91, 221
West, Nathaniel, 58-61, 264
Whorls, 206
Wind effects, 86, 172-3, 221
Winter scenes, 78-83
Wong, Chee Ming, 204-17, 278
Yanner, Kieran, 258-9
Zimmermann, Loïc e338, 263

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