Digi Paint Update 1 - How to make a digital painting using photoshop.

So I have developed some digital paintings for my year 2 visual design finals which was my main goal as most of my finals in the first year were mainly pencil drawings, one canvas acrylic painting and a watercolour painting. And this is to show progress from my appalling attempts over the summer break. I will show you my bradgate park final which I ended up saving in stages because of breaks I took inbetween, It will be quite interesting to show you the techniques I have developed over a short space of time still being a beginner and all. I will go through them step by step.

Here i blew up my brief final composition to A4 size in my sketchbook, and went over it in pen. Got it scanned and into photoshop for me to begin next step.

Here, using the drawing on an upper layer and after changing its blending options to multiply, i start blocking in the basic colours bit by bit with a big sized brush.

I begin to add more detail, preferably from the background of the the image to the front, for example, doing the sky, then the forest, then the landscape coming up to the main vocal point, the tree.

So this is my final outcome. More defining details came later as I made my brush size smaller and zoomed in adding more tonal value to where it is needed and relevant textures. I don't want to be too specific as I shouldn't be taking too long to paint this ideally. If i want it to look bang on like the photo, what is the point, i may as well hand in the photo. I prefer to be brief, stating what i am trying to achieve with the painting and giving it a style rather than realism.

adding the drawing on top just to see gives an interesting effect and even sharpens areas or shows you where you may have adjusted the image. I perhaps adjusted certain items as i believed it was better for the composition.


Hope this helps even though i am just a beginner but i tried to make it simple as there are not enough simple tutorials out there (wait since when did this become a tutorial?? 0_o). Remember it doesn't need to be perfect, if something is unnaturally off, you will know and you will fix it. The majority of your audience will not see into it as deeply as you or your critics ;) See Ya