Dry Sea Tuitorial : How I work

Here's a basic look at how I work and the verious techniques I use in Photoshop and painter to create my paintings. My tools are Photoshop cs, Painter 8, a Mac G5 imac and an A4 Wacom Intuos 2 graphics tablet.

Firstly I open a new A4 file in photoshop and use a small brush to sketch out the shape of my character and the verious details that I want to incorporate into the final painting.

After I'm happy with the initial sketch I open a new layer for the backround and put it onto mutiply mode, then I colour the blue sky with the gradiant tool so it fades into white at the bottom, I used the tool serveral times until I was happy with the shade of blue.

At this stage I start to form the shape of the clouds and used a small white brush to make the fluffy edges, I also shaded small parts of the clouds to give me an idea of shape and volume for later.

After I have completed the basics on the backround I switch back to the forground layer and start to block out the colours, shades and highlights with flat colour. This gives me an idea of where the shadows might fall in reguards to the light source and whether or not I like the colours without wasting my time on shading and then deciding I don't like the colourscheme.

At this stage I have decided I like the colours and the shadows, this is what I call "colour foundation"

Now I switch programs to Painter and use the blend tool to blend all the ugly lines between most of the shades to make the character look more realistic and to give him much more volume. Then I go back to Photoshop and work on the clouds with differant shades to give those more volume. I do this using a smallish soft edged brush. Also I make any small changes that I'm not happy with.

After everything is blended and I'm happy with the figure and backround I start to add detail such as sheen and damage to his suit, texture and finally cropping of the image to give it maximum effect.
Finish.

cupcake

07/02/05 @002

Very Good
Cupcake

MrBlue

07/09/05 @280

Very detailed description. The images make it even more vivid.
Great job!

Pereculum

07/26/05 @779

Thanks for the info on My Picture. The refrence photo i used was labled Jack, so... Anyhow. I really enjoyed you show of "How i" and thought perhaps you might do a similar one in animation. It will take longer and be a pain in the rear, but the end result is very satifying. To see your work develop from sketch to finish. I think this, or any of your work would be a good show. Thanks for sharing.