The Professional Photoshop Book - Volume 7 2015

03

ESTABLISH GREYSCALE

Once you have a decent line art drawing

you can begin placing the greyscale values. First,

select a middle grey, #555 in the colour picker

window, and change your brush to about 170px in

size and about 10% Hardness. At the top, choose

Multiply as the brush’s blend mode and reduce

Opacity to about 30%. Fill in your outlines with

grey, using pen pressure to paint lighter values in

the distance and darker in the foreground. Your

line art should still be visible at this point.

04

LASSO IN SHADOWS

To emphasise the shadows on the cliff

sides, tap L for the Lasso tool, and trace around the

bottom portion of cliffs or mountains that will be in

shadow. Hold down Shift to add to the selection, and

draw rock shapes on the left and a few more

crystal-shaped ones protruding near the mid-

ground. Select the Charcoal brush from Photoshop’s

Dry Media brush set and paint in a dark grey. Shade

in these areas using random strokes and keeping

the Opacity high at around 90%.

02

DEVELOP LINE ART

Now that all our settings are in place, create a standard hard round brush at about 7px size and about

70% Hardness. Hit the D key to make sure your default black foreground colour is active, and begin drawing.

Sketch outlines of mountain ranges and cliffs, working background to foreground. Keeping in mind the rule of

thirds, draw the horizon towards the bottom line and major cliffs at the vertical lines. Keep shapes generally

loose, as they will be refined later.

01

SET UP PARAMETERS

Before beginning a painting, ensure

all settings are correct. Now is a good time to

download the brushes from FileSilo. Create a

new document at 2050 pixels width, 1080

pixels height, 300dpi resolution, and 8 bit with

a white background colour. In the top right

corner of Photoshop, make sure your

workspace is set to Painting. Go to

Window>Brush and check Shape Dynamics

and Transfer as well as the small locks next to

them. Selecting pen pressure as your control,

edit the minimum diameters of both to suit

your pen tablet preferences.

FROM SKETCH TO

FINAL PAINTING

WORK IN

PROGRESS

Progress 2: A dd greyscale value

Progress 3: Add colour

and details

Progress 1: Sketch line art

Digital painting

106 The Professional Photoshop Book

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