10
ADDING DETAIL
With most of the elements of the painting
blocked in nicely, it’s time to focus on individual
areas. Bring your attention over to any part of the
image you think is lacking and start to render it out.
Remember, you aren’t going for incredible detail
here, more the illusion of detail; you want to save
areas of highest detail for your focal points. Change
your brushes frequently to add varied texture to the
painting and don’t be afraid to be bold with your
brush strokes.11
CLOUD RENDERING
To paint the clouds, use a hard square brush to lay in the forms in combination with the Smudge tool
to soften and stretch the undersides. The mixture of hard and soft edges lends believability and weight to the
shapes even though they’re still quite abstract. The Smudge tool can be used for painting rocks and other
forms too – experiment with different brushes in conjunction with it! John Silva has some fantastic smudge
tool presets available at http://johnsilva.deviantart.com.12
ATMOSPHERE
A nice way to separate the elements of your painting and give the illusion of depth is to add atmospheric fog or haze. Take a large soft brush set to low opacity
(10-20%) and select a light tone from the sky. Use this to gently paint in atmosphere behind the rocks to separate them from each other, increasing in thickness as you
recede back through the image. Erase or use a layer mask to tidy this layer up when you are finished; less is more.DIGITAL PAINTING