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Description

I was noodling around in Photoshop, trying to learn how to draw in it, when I decided to hit up a Hardy Fowler tutorial. His aspect ratio and size were a bit different from the canvas I already had open, but 11x8.5 at 300 dpi worked well enough.

While I have used Photoshop since the v2.5 days more than a couple of decades ago, my usage had strictly been photo-manipulation, usually restoring old photographs, doing some logo-work, web graphics, and some 3D texture asset manipulation. I have never created a completed drawing within Photoshop (or any other digital medium).

Even so, the pipeline looked straight-forward. Macro to micro, basically. Rough-in sketch, ink the sketch, rough in the basic color for the major sections, hit up some custom shapes to add detail and direction to the color, utilize image textures to increase the detail, layer in highlights and shadow detail, etc.

I kinda cheated on the shadow detail. Hardy drew in black cracks and crevices in his drawing. But that didn’t look right for my version. So I duplicated the layer in question, and darkened it 80%, undid it, and used the history brush to selectively add in shadow detail, following the natural contours of the overall painting. Worked out pretty well, I think. Gave it a good 3D appearance.

All in all, a successful learning experience. Am off to paint more concept landscapes to refine the pipeline…

Description

I was noodling around in Photoshop, trying to learn how to draw in it, when I decided to hit up a Hardy Fowler tutorial. His aspect ratio and size were a bit different from the canvas I already had open, but 11x8.5 at 300 dpi worked well enough.

While I have used Photoshop since the v2.5 days more than a couple of decades ago, my usage had strictly been photo-manipulation, usually restoring old photographs, doing some logo-work, web graphics, and some 3D texture asset manipulation. I have never created a completed drawing within Photoshop (or any other digital medium).

Even so, the pipeline looked straight-forward. Macro to micro, basically. Rough-in sketch, ink the sketch, rough in the basic color for the major sections, hit up some custom shapes to add detail and direction to the color, utilize image textures to increase the detail, layer in highlights and shadow detail, etc.

I kinda cheated on the shadow detail. Hardy drew in black cracks and crevices in his drawing. But that didn’t look right for my version. So I duplicated the layer in question, and darkened it 80%, undid it, and used the history brush to selectively add in shadow detail, following the natural contours of the overall painting. Worked out pretty well, I think. Gave it a good 3D appearance.

All in all, a successful learning experience. Am off to paint more concept landscapes to refine the pipeline…