by - memod
|
I want to show you the general process of my work and maybe give you some guidance for how to work on a painting. |
|
 |
This is the first step. Most times I sketch down my idea on paper first, it's a quick way to work and you can try out different ideas. I gave the tree a somehow weird shape, to underline that it is a special one, the last. I scanned the sketch and increased the contrast a little. This is going to be the basis for my painting. |
 |
Here I created a simple colour gradient to give myself an idea of how the backgrounds colours will be later. Also I started to block in the general colours of my rocks and of the tree. It is important that you watch out not to let the background (the gradient) show through your block colours. They are the bases for your later painting, so you won't have to cover every spot with strokes. I made this mistake myself and had to do a lot of corrections later. |
 |
I started to paint the tree, by choosing a hard brush on sizes between 1 and 4 pixel. The small size allows to give the tree some structure. It's good to have a tablet so that you can use the pen pressure options in the brush rollout. I used mostly similar colours for the tree, since I wanted it to look rather bare, smoothed by wind and dust. |
 |
The first step of painting the tree was done, so I started to shade it a bit. the burn/dodge tools work great here. The shading is a very important part because it gives your shapes volume and defines were the light comes from. Anyway I shaded only a little here, since I do the main shading always in the end. |
 |
The shading with burn/dodge didn't satisfy me totally, so I overworked it by taking a low-opaque brush with very bright or dark colours and painting them over the tree. As you can see I also started painting the rocks. Here you can choose a bigger-sized brush, they don't need so much detail. I also decided to remove the very small rocks I had in the basic sketch, they didn't fit the look of image. I wanted big and smooth rocks. It's always nice to have some small details like cracks. Cracks are easy to paint. Be sure to have a small brush size, I use 1 or 2 pixels. Choose a very dark colour and paint your crack. Then change the colour to a very bright one and paint next to the dark line, following it. On cracks you can always see the light on one side of the crack, otherwise it has no depth. |
 |
Painted some more rocks and shaded them. |
 |
I felt that the image lacks of depth, so I added a big rock in front of the others. Also started some work on the background. I took a very big brush at low opacity and made a few strokes which are my sun. I never had the intention to make a really bright sun, rather wanted to keep it diffuse, like hidden behind dust. You know that when the sun sets you see the sky reddish/yellow enlightened by it. |
 |
I finished the rocks here. You may notice that the rocks to the right don't have so much detail like the ones to the left. That's because I knew I would darken that part later to match my lighting conditions. |
 |
So far all my colours were very pale and low-saturated. So I duplicated the layer with the painting and set it to soft light. You can also try out overlay if you like it more. Also I intensified my shading a lot, mostly by using dark or bright colours which I painted over the image at low opacity. The light comes out of the background, so the rocks had to be rather dark since they aren't directly hit by the light. Watch out on the tree's branches and roots, the have a bright and a dark side too. I added a small shadow of one of the roots on the rocks to underline that it is hanging free. Not quite sure if that is correct in terms of the lighting but hey, I am the artist ;) In the background I added some colour were I wanted to be a landscape later. The image needs some background for perspective. |
 |
Created some rockish structures in the background. But go further here, I suck at backgrounds and will have to practice them alot myself. And I brightened up the sun, yet kept it mellow. |
 |
That's the final step of my painting. I added some details like two birds flying there, some grass growing under the tree's roots and a little branch with leaves sprouting out of the tree. It symbolizes some hope, and makes the image less lifeless. Did a few colour corrections and...that's it :) I hope this walkthrough gave you an idea of how I work and maybe it could help you a little with your paintings too. If you have questions don't hesitate to ask me. If you like this painting be sure to check out my website www.dp-world.net to find more artworks created by me. |