Using Photoshop, I did the rough sketch in a layer separated from the Background.
Then I filled in the background layer with gradient as my base color palette. Then I created a new layer to block the color for my foreground area (characters+land).
Step 2
Explanation 2
Then I roughly laid a shadow, tones, and highlight on the characters. Notice that I kept the shadow tones purple. Then I pressed Ctrl+B to pop up the Color Balance Window to adjust the color so it harmonized with my background.
I also tweaked my background color, to achieve this look, I cranked up the yellow and cyan tones a lot with a bit of the green. It was fun to experiment with this process :)
Step 3
Explanation 3
After I was happy with the color scheme, I started to work on the characters details. As I painted, I also added the line art to make the characters more crisp.
I continued working on the foreground elements before I jumped into the background. I removed the branches on the top of the boy head, since I felt that the composition started to get busy.
Step 4
Explanation 4
I created a new layer to work on the mountains in the background.
Next working on the sky. I started by drawing the basic shape of the cloud. I kept one major shape as the dominant and the rest as an accent.
Step 5
Explanation 5
The I laid the basic tones of the clouds, but then I felt that my sky was too light that it created too much contrast with the cloud's dark tones. Not necessarily a good thing, I didn't want it to 'compete' with my foreground.
So by pressing the Ctrl+U, the Hue/Saturation window appeared. Then I reduced the lightness and made the Saturation higher. And this was the result.
Step 6
Explanation 6
Next I hide the mountain layers so I could focus only with the clouds. I started to add the highlight and shadow tones very roughly.
The next step was to soften and blend the brush works. I would pick an airbrush with pen pressure on the Opacity jitter, then start working my way trough.
Step 7
Explanation 7
After I was done blending everything, I would come back and added some crisp edges along the highlight (just on the every top shape of each clouds.)
After finishing the tones of the clouds, I started working on the flying creatures.
Step 8
Explanation 8
I made the tone colors of the creatures the same with the tones of the clouds. To smoothen the translucent look, I used the same airbrush that I used before.
On the final result, I adjusted the hue of the sky again with Ctrl+U, since I thought it was too green. Done. :)
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What do you think?
2 Comments
/compare/1418/Digital-Painting-Cloud-Tutorial
ally
posted 2008-07-08
really nice!! I would love to try this out but i think it would just turn out ribbish so i shall settle for appreciating your art from afar lol
deltaarbiter
posted 2008-07-04
Looks beautiful ethe :). I'm gonna try it out. btw, I'm thinking you can submit that tutorial @ http://psdtuts.com/. You could earn some $$ for that.
really nice!!
I would love to try this out but i think it would just turn
out ribbish so i shall settle for appreciating your art from
afar lol
Looks beautiful ethe :). I'm gonna try it out.
btw, I'm thinking you can submit that tutorial @
http://psdtuts.com/. You could earn some $$ for that.