The Professional Photoshop Book - Volume 7 2015

Paint like a pro

LEARN THE PHOTOSHOP SKILLS YOU NEED FOR PROFESSIONAL DIGITAL

PAINTING IN PHOTOSHOP, INCLUDING STRONG LINE DRAWING, PAINTING RICH

VALUE AND COLOUR, AND TEXTURING EFFECTIVELY WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

D

igital painting is not just a matter of

picking up a stylus and waiting for

inspiration to hit – you need as good

a grasp on the essential Photoshop

tools you’ll be using as you do when

designing typography, modelling in 3D or

compositing photomanipulations.

In the following guide, you will become

skilled in painting and texturing from start to

finish in Photoshop. For the beginning of the

tutorial you will be drawing line art and

painting colour overlays with varying brush

opacity, so a pen tablet is required. A mouse

will suffice later on in the photo texturing and

manipulation phase. Before diving into

Photoshop’s intuitive interface, gather

references and consider a membership to a

texture site. Mayang.com, freetextures.

ADAM VARGA

http://www.vargaa.com

@avarga89

OUR EXPERT

Adam Varga specialises in

environment concept art and matte

painting. He believes combining your

knowledge of traditional art

fundamentals and emerging digital

platforms is the key to successful

digital art.

PA INT

LIKE A

PRO

SOURCE FILES

Head over to FileSilo to get your

hands on a template for drawing

thumbnails, links to the custom

brushes used over the next few

pages, and a real-time video of the

line drawing process.

3dtotal.com, and cgtextures.com are all great

resources. Keeping the theme of a futuristic

sci-fi city in mind, gather a wide variety of

photos and resources for this project. Glass for

the buildings, vegetation and mountains for our

landscape, and skies are the bulk of the photos

we will be using. For reference, research

modern architecture, particularly Dubai and the

Burj Al Arab. Also research prominent sci-fi

artists, notably Syd Mead. His work exemplifies

the grandeur in architecture we are looking for.

For an effective piece, it’s also really

important to understand perspective, scale,

and atmospheric perspective. If you are a bit

rusty, simply web search ‘design elements and

principles’ or ‘perspective basics’ to brush up

on your knowledge, so that you can start this

tutorial with confidence.

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