In art, there are no wrong answers. That is especially true with digital art. There are a million techniques to produce the same piece of art. Some designers start out with a sketch, others create their artwork without a plan of any kind. In this tutorial, we will explain how to create a fantasy digital painting without a sketch. Let’s get started!

Preamble

This piece has been painted using a graphic tablet, a Wacom Intuos 4. The tutorial can be followed and accomplished without the use of a tablet as well, but painting with a mouse is not something I’d recommend. You have less precision (at least, with the common mice) and you have no opacity or flow jitter. With the mouse, it’s going to take you longer, be harder and it’s probably not going to look as precise and nice, which is why, if you want to get into digital painting (and you probably do, since you’re reading this), I seriously recommend that you to get a graphic tablet. For starters a Wacom Bamboo Fun is one of the best around and the price should be generally around $50.

Step 1 – Before starting

I’d like to start this tutorial by stating that this is not only going to be about THE actual painting. There is no point in explaining you just what I did without telling you why and how. Otherwise, you’d end up with a bad painting without having learned anything new. You’re reading this to learn something, so I’m going to teach you what you need to know in order to make a digital painting, based on my experience. I’ll explain my points of view, my thoughts during the process of creation, and some of my techniques. I can’t assure it will be the best way of doing it, because probably it’s not. But it is my way, which has been developed during years of practicing and it’s the one that currently works best for me.

I began this piece with no clue of what it will be like at the end. I almost never have a precise idea of what I want. I find it a boring way of making art. If you already know in your mind how it’s going to look like at the end, then there is no fun. You won’t be surprised of the result and you won’t enjoy experimenting at all! Instead, I like to let the mind and the hand flow free, waiting to have the right idea. You’ll understand better what I mean once you see the first steps of this painting.

Almost forgot: the only brush I used in this painting is the evergreen Hard Round Brush, which is the first brush you find in the Photoshop preset. There are people that when starts painting digitally, usually thinks that a lot revolves around the famous "custom brushes". They couldn’t be more wrong. With this tutorial I’ll show you that you can do anything with just the most common brush in Photoshop.

Step 2 – Let’s start!

Ok – here’s the first thing I do every time I start a new painting. I choose the background color. Why is this one pink? No real reason. It just inspired me in that particular moment.

We have a color. We’ve done a lot already. Really. I’m serious. If you decide a background color, then you automatically narrow the field of the kind of environments you can create. It’s pink, so we know that it won’t be a jungle, for example!

Ok, now we know a little bit more about the direction we’re going to take. We can do more, now: let’s add some colors.

You may wonder: "why these colors?" Orange is for fire, so I’m currently planning to have fire in the final image. It doesn’t mean there will 100% sure, but just that in that specific moment I wanted fire in it. That desaturated blue instead is there because it gives contrast to the warm colors there are in it now, and because I’m planning to paint rocks next and usually blue/grey are the kind of cold colors you find in rocks.

Now I’ve been adding more: a sky, a river (or a sea, or a lake) and a few darker brush strokes. We can start seeing something more from it, some sort of structure. Painting is not that different from sculpting, in my opinion. You start from one block, then you create more shapes until you get something recognizable and then you add details until you reach the desired level of realism.

From now on, I will just keep working on the structure, trying to create recognizable shapes that I like.

In the following image I did something interesting that is worth mentioning. When good ideas aren’t flowing, I always do this. In Photoshop, New Layer > Image > Apply Image, then with the newly created layer I experiment. What does it mean? I move it around, stretch it, flip it, set it on blending modes (usually darken and lighten are the ones that work better), use random filters, and so on. In this specific case, I flipped it horizontally and vertically and set it on lighten.

Then I added some clouds at the top and made it look like it was some sort of ‘smoke’ that’s being blown out by the clouds. At first it looked like a good idea, then after a few seconds I started hating it. But, hey, wait a second! Idea! It also looks like a mountain lit by sunlight, if fixed!

Then I just kept painting details. I added a statue inside the cave and painted some mountains (image below) to add depth in the image by ‘exploiting’ the previous layered brush strokes. “Layered” means that, using the pressure of the tablet’s pen, we have different layers of the same color that vary depending on the pressure made with the said pen. You can use the same “technique” when painting mist or clouds above something like mountains, in this case.

Step 3 – Colors, colors, colors

Now we might have something. So far we created an interesting environment with nice and warm colors and a small and vague story about a statue. But I knew I could do better, which is why now there’ll be more experimenting!

Again, Image > Apply image and let’s start move it around. In this case, since the painting was getting too ‘dark’, I decided I wanted something brighter in the middle of the rock structure. First, I tweak a bit the colors using the Selective Colors options, then I press Command/Ctrl+I and voilà, now the colors are inverted and so, if before were dark, now are very bright!

Same thing as before, this time using multiply and luminosity blending modes.

Now let’s try to ‘sculpt’ out some shapes from this mass of colors.

Step 4 – More details, more story

As done already before, Image > Apply image. This time I just moved it more to the left as I wanted the rock structure more centered, since it was clear that it was going to be the main focus of the image.

Alright! Now I have finally decided the composition and the main character of the image (well, actually not, but we’ll talk about it later). As you can see from the image below, I attempted to create some sort of ‘rock monster’ by just adding two eyes. It looked awful. It looked like one of those inflatable crocodile that luckier kids than me had.

Since it was looking so bad, I decided to take another try. It wasn’t working again since there were no eyes, but whatever. When I don’t get good ideas for something, instead of wasting time on that I just move to another area of the painting and work on that. I improved the general shape of the monster, added some sort of ‘hands’ and a few reptile characteristics, like those things on his back.

So I decided that I didn’t want a ‘statue’ in it, but a person. It wasn’t looking like a statue anyway, so good for me. I’m really bad at drawing people, I’ve never really practiced on anatomy and such, so my knowledge of human body isn’t that great. No problem, though. When I don’t know how to paint or draw something, and this happens more often than you might think, I Google. I wanted to draw a person sitting on a throne in a bored position and yet still communicating power. As if “Oh, I’m so powerful that I can allow myself to be bored”. You get what I mean. I hope. Well, anyway, as I said, I googled. In this particular case, I looked for some photographs, or drawings, or paintings, of kings on their thrones. Googled “king on throne” and tons of references magically appeared. Now we can select a few images that can help us understand the right anatomy and check them out while learning how to draw that specific pose.

Let’s zoom in

I’ve also re-painted the eyes, but now the monster looked like Bear from Bear in the Big Blue House, so that wasn’t looking great either. :)

Step 5 – Forget

I liked the painting. I really did. I saw potential. But there was something that wasn’t working. I didn’t know what, so instead of wasting countless hours over-thinking it, I tried to stay away from it for a few days. I worked on other projects, went out, saw friends, and overall my goal was to forget about it and, after those couple of days of relax, once I was ready to sit at the computer again, I could give it a fresh look, almost as I was watching it for the first time.

Well, it worked. I immediately decided that the main problems were two: the canvas size wasn’t right for the kind of image I wanted to paint and the story was too ambiguous. The piece needed some fixing in order to guide correctly the viewer into a more defined and well-made storyline.

Images > Canvas Size… and changed them from 4592×2500 pixels to 4592×6084 pixels.

Now, we do Images > Apply Image, Then with the Rectangual Marquee Tool we select a few pixels of the bottom of the current layer (so not the bottom of the canvas, but of the layer!) and, with the Move Tool, we drag the selection down. We do the same thing with the top part of the layer. The same procedure for the top part as well. We should get something like this:

For a better understanding:

Now, Again: Images > Apply Image, then I made a selection of the upper part of the image (the sky), SHIFT+Command/Ctrl+I, clicked ‘backspace’ on the keyboard to erase the part of images that are of no use to me, flip the layer vertical, go to Edit > Transform… and transform it with the Perspective and Distort tools until I get something like the image below:

In order to understand slightly better what I said, check the image below. Basically, you can see that I used parts of the sky in the ground.

Step 6 – Our hero!

Now, main character! This is the idea that I had once I sat back again at the computer and gave me the inspiration to finish the piece. As I said earlier, I am unable to paint and draw people. I never did it, so I have no idea how to do it. But this painting is also about learning, right? The human figure in this painting, even in the finished image, is not perfect. People more qualified than me in anatomy can spot at least half-dozen of mistakes, but I’m learning, so mistakes are still allowed!

In the following image I painted (on a separate layer, obviously) a poorly painted silhouette of a man with a big coat on his shoulders. Obviously it is always recommended to use references when painting or drawing, it’s not cheating, just ‘remembering how something is’. There is a very nice journal written by neofox with a lot of links to sites where you can find all sort of references. Recently I’ve also bought for 6$ one of those wooden human mannequin for drawings, which is incredibly helpful!

And then a poorly painted sword.

Note that, below the character layer, I painted a soft orange ‘halo’. I did it because, without it, there is the risk to confuse the shapes of the character with the ground, so when I have to separate two things I often use this trick!

I’ve also painted some rocks to improve composition; good composition (in landscapes in particular) is one of the fundamental of a good painting. I always reccomend to read an incredibly useful, long and well-written article by Johannes Vloothuis: "Landscape Composition Rules". It’s a must for everyone who wants to paint, in my opinion.

Step 7 – The Ground and The Fire

The ground wasn’t looking great, too simple and a bit boring, maybe. So, as always: experimenting! I took a part of the painting (check the image below!), copy-pasted on the ground, used the perspective and distort controls and then set the layer on the blending mode “Color Dodge”.

Same thing as before, but this time with a different part of the painting and a different blending mode: “Overlay”.

Again, set on “Color Dodge”.

One more time, on “Soft Light”.

Now here’s an image to show you how I painted the fire coming from the mouth of the monster. Number 4 is how it looked when the image was finished. You can also see from there how I made some of the details in the painting.

And, finally, some adjustments to the anatomy of the character. Still very bad, but that’s ok. During the lapse of time between me actually painting this piece and me writing this tutorial I studied anatomy and worked on some characters and now I’d probably paint it 10 times better but, as I said, that’s ok! There’s nothing bad in imperfection.

Step 8 – The mountains

Google is full of images to get references from, we already established it earlier. This time, as well, I searched for more photographs to learn from. I couldn’t find any image of a sky during sunset that completely satisfied me, so I just looked at different images and tried to learn something from those. These are the results:

In image #4 you can see a close-up and see the details. As you can notice, the brush strokes are not perfect at all. This is because of two main reasons: first, it takes much longer. Second, better brush strokes would have been useless. Once it get resized for the web, those big brush strokes you see in #4 will be just very small details.

I’ve also detailed a bit more the other mountains in the background.

Step 9 – More details on the monster

At this point of the piece it really is all about details. Words are of little use for you anymore, all you need to do is watch what I did. In this step I will be adding textures (and so details) on the monster, in order to make it pop out more in the picture.

In the image below I added a big and blue/cyan soft round brush set on blending mode Overlay.

Now, with the small hard round brush I painted all the small details. Below there are two images, the second one shows the details at around 90% of the original sizes.

Again, more soft brush strokes to make more ‘shiny’.

And more details, again.

Step 10 – The sky

Until this point I wasn’t satisfied at all of the sky and it was pretty much all was left to do in order to call this piece done. So let’s get into it.

This is how, more or less, it was before this step.

I had the feeling that it wasn’t working, so I removed the right part of the clouds and it immediately felt much better. More breathing space, more depth.

I had to make some kind of sky, though. But, instead of painting it, this time I used a shortcut and went straight to my own photo collection and looked for a nice and simple sky. This one:

In the tutorial assets you can find a small pack of 5 sky photos, including this one, made by me. Feel free to download and use them any way you want! :)

So as I was saying, I wanted to use a photo for the sky. So I took it, opened it into Photoshop, imported into the painting document, rotate it and then set it on Soft light.

Filled the ‘holes’ left by the photo..

Now, with a cloud brush (Dan LuVisi has some nice ones) I merged clouds and sky better.

Final Image

Liu Kang is one of the most iconic characters from the world of Mortal Kombat. In this tutorial, George Patsouras will discuss how to paint a Bruce Lee-inspired Liu Kang in Photoshop. Since this will deal with portrait painting, you can use these techniques to recreate the Liu Kang painting, or you can come up with something entirely on your own. Let’s get started!

Step 1

The first step is to create a new document for your painting. Simply go to ‘File’ > New

Step 2

You’ll be asked to decide on the dimensions of the canvas, as well as the resolution. Type ’300′ for the resolution, as this is standard printing size and will allow us to achieve a fairly detailed portrait. Make a habit of working with a large canvas when painting! Now we can decide on the canvas size. Usually for portrait work I find that 9 inches by 11 inches works best, but there are no rules when it comes to this. Just go with what feels right – remember, we can easily crop, expand, and further manipulate the image if needed, so don’t be afraid to experiment to achieve the best results possible.

Step 3

Use the Gradient tool (G) to fill in the canvas with a very light gray tone to ensure our eyes won’t be overwhelmed during the sketching process. Since we’re going to be tackling the line work first, color won’t even be considered at this point.

Step 4

We’re almost ready to begin sketching! Before laying down a single stroke however, it’s essential to study any useful reference material before beginning on the subject. In this case I referenced some screenshots from the original ‘Mortal Kombat’ movie, as well as the 2012 video game, and even Bruce Lee, whom the character itself is inspired by. I envisioned Liu Kang having his hands posed together, so I looked at some reference photos of that as well (hands can be very difficult to draw/paint, so reference material in that regard is especially helpful). My goal with this image was to pretty much mix up all the incarnations together to come up with something unique, while staying true to the character.

Once we have our references in place and have a solid understanding of the subject matter, it’s time to begin drawing. I create a new layer, and select a pure black color as the foreground color. I use a fairly small hard-edged brush (anywhere from 8px to 12px should be fine, generally speaking) at this stage with a very low opacity of 20%. This ensures that my preliminary work will be fairly loose, and will enable me to focus on gesture and proportions without getting caught up in details. Keep in mind that these are just guidelines, if you feel something else for you works better, than don’t be afraid to experiment and alter the tutorial to fit your needs.

I start by drawing a circle for the head, and draw a vertical line directly in half to establish the line of symmetry on the face. Then I draw another ‘axis’ for the eyes, which also helps establish the perspective of the face. The technique I use for drawing heads is exactly the same as those discussed in Andrew Loomis’ ‘Drawing The Head and Hands’. The ‘ball and plane’ method ensures that the face will always be correctly proportioned at any angle, so I highly recommend this material if you’re serious about drawing heads.

Once the head is loosely established, I begin to quickly draw the hands, thinking of them as huge blocks as opposed to individual fingers. I quickly mark down where the fingers are as well. Remember to think of hands as a bunch of cylinders when drawing and painting them; This will not only make it easier to draw and paint, but you’ll also get more believable results using this technique as well.

Step 5

Once everything is vaguely defined and readable, it’s time to begin refining the sketch to give it a crisper look. You can do this in two ways, really; You can clean up the existing layer using the Eraser (E) tool, or you can simply create a new layer on top of it and draw over the existing line work. I generally prefer the latter as my line work is always a bit messy on my first pass. In this case, I lower the opacity of the original layer down to roughly 60%, and create a new layer titled ‘sketch’. Using the Brush tool with an opacity of 25%, I draw over the existing line work and fill out the details as well.

One thing that I need to mention at this point is that the composition is pretty much symmetrical, which means we don’t necessarily need to draw the whole image; Just half would suffice, as we can easily duplicate it and flip it around. Firstly, drag a guide to split the composition in half. To do this, make sure the rulers/guides are activated (Command/Ctrl + R). Simply hold down the vertical ruler and drag it halfway on the image to create a new guide, which will split the composition in half. You can move the guide again if you wish to ensure that the composition is split evenly. Once that’s done, simply refine the line work on one side as much as you can. When it’s finalized, simply duplicate the layer (right click on the layer, and select ‘Duplicate Layer’) and flip it horizontally (Command/Ctrl + T, right click, select ‘Flip Horizontally’). Make sure it’s placed properly on the image (i.e. not too close to the existing layer, and not too far). Here you can see the final line work:

Step 6

The next step is the easiest one, and arguably the most important – picking a color theme. I knew right off the bat that I wanted warm tones throughout the image, as that would fit perfectly with the character. I use the Gradient tool (G) to quickly fill in the background color with a fairly dark red-ish color.

Step 7

With our color theme in mind, it’s time to establish our basic colors for each element of the painting. To keep things organized, keep everything in layers. In this case, I created a layer for the Skin, Bandana, and Hair and named them accordingly. The trickiest color choice would be the skin; We need to pick a color that’s a nice balance between peach and the general color theme of the image. The trick is not too go too crazy with the saturation, and keeping the skin tone fairly bright in comparison to the background.

Choosing the local colors for the bandana and hair is much simpler in comparison; The bandana is basically a brighter and more saturated color variation of the background, while the hair is simply a much darker and slightly less saturated variation of the background color. I apply the colors on all the said elements exclusively with a hard edged brush set too 100% hardness for a crisp and clean definition, and make sure not to paint outside of the line work we’ve already established.

Step 8

Once our base tones are clearly established, the next step is to decide on the lighting. Ask yourself where is the light source coming from, and shade accordingly. In this case, I choose a standard 45 degree light, which is excellent for helping define the forms of the figure. I decide to focus on shading the skin, so I pick a darker, slightly more saturated red-ish tone for the shadows, and a much brighter, slightly more warm color the highlights.

My color choices are fairly close to the base color we established, as I prefer to work in fairly limited color ranges at this point to focus strictly on values. Some artists actually prefer to work strictly in grayscale to focus on values first, and add colors at a later stage. Personally I find that method fairly time consuming, but I do value it’s importance with values and lighting, so I make sure to focus on that during the beginning stages of the painting process. Also remember that colors can easily be changes early on, so if you’re not happy with your color choices early on, don’t be afraid to scrap it and change it for something else.

Step 9

Once we have our light source defined, the next step is to push it even further to make it even more evident. Doing this is as simple as picking a much brighter highlight color the skin; In this case, I simply select the lightest tone with the color picker tool (Alt+ left click) and pick a much brighter, and slightly more yellowish tone to reflect the highlight color. Always remember to do some slight variations for your skin choices for a more believable result. For example, don’t just simply use the same color tone with just the brightness adjusted; Also do some adjustments to the color as well; For example, if you’re painting skin against a red background, make sure this is reflected on the figure by playing up the reddish tones in the shadowed areas of the skin. Also make sure your highlight color has some variation to the tone as well; Usually a bright yellow tone as chosen here will yield fairly believable results.

Step 10

We’ve worked on shading the skin long enough; Now it’s time to paint the hair! The technique is the same as shading the skin; Begin by painting the highlights reflecting the same light source from the left. Pick a brighter, and slightly less saturated and more warmer tone, and begin shading the hair. Think of the hair as big strands first, as opposed to thin lines, which will give you a ‘straw-like’ effect which we don’t want. To avoid this, use a larger brush than you think you need; Detailing the hair too early will not only be very time consuming and difficult, but the results won’t be as good and natural looking as if you would obtain using larger brushes at this point. You’ll notice that I barely even touched the right side of the hair at this point, as this area is fairly shadowed. You’ll also noticed I tried out some ‘Bruce Lee’ inspired scratches on his face as well.

Step 11

I decide the background is a bit too saturated and reddish for my tastes; I want more natural looking tones that would also compliment his skin tone better as well, so I decide to quickly alter it by using Photoshop’s Hue/Saturation tool (Image > Adjustments > Hue Saturation) and altering the tone slightly for a more greenish-yellowish hue.

I enhance the results even further by using Photoshop’s ‘Color Balance’ tool (Image > Adjustments > Color Balance), and play up the greens on the ‘Shadows’ options for an even more natural looking effect. I notice the shading resembles fire a bit as well, which is excellent given the character utilized this as well. I use a large, soft edged brush to add some slight ‘flames’ as well. I don’t want them to be clearly defined as that would take away too much attention from the figure. Instead I choose to be subtle to keep the focus on the figure.

Speaking about the figure, we need to do some slight color variation on him to reflect the new background shading as well. I again select the Color Balance tool (Image > Adjustments > Color Balance) and play up the greens a bit for the shadows. This unifies the image and really brings everything together. I also decide to do some more shading work on the hair, picking again a lighter and slightly more yellowish-tone to reflect the shading already established. I also uses smaller brushes at this point, but with fairly soft edges to keep the hair nice and smooth. Additionally, I use a soft-edged brush with an opacity of 33% to blend the harsh transitions on the skin for a much more smoother and natural looking feel.

Step 12

I’m happy with my color choices, but I’d like to push them even further to really help the figure pop out of the background. To do this, I decide to play up the complimentary colors here, so I introduce more Cyan and Greenish tones for the background. I paint everything manually at this stage with a fairly large, and soft-edged brush. Using complimentary colors neutralizes the color tones, which is great here as we want the focus to be on the figure, and not on the background. Of course, we also need to find a good balance as well, so I do keep some of the warmer tones on the left side of the image, to not only unify it with the figure, but to also play up the lighting we have already established as well.

I also decide to play up the cuts on his face, so I choose a slightly brighter tone and paint in the lighter parts of the scar, and also randomly place them surrounding that area to give his skin more texture as well. The technique is a bit random and messy, but ironically that works well for the effect we’re trying to achieve here, so don’t be too ‘careful’ here. Just go with what feels right.

I also vaguely introduce a greenish-blue tone on the right side of the skin; This would be coming from an invisible light source to the right, but would also keep to the tones we’ve established on the background (it’s essentially a much brighter and saturated variation of the more greenish tones in the background). Not only does adding this tone help unify the figure more with the environment further, but it also helps bring out the structure and from of the anatomy of the face as well, which is always a plus. It’s worth noting that I handle this in a new layer; Adding another light source this late during the painting process is a bit risky, I admit, so I make sure to keep it on a separate layer in case I’m not satisfied with the results. This is why painting with a program like Photoshop is very beneficial, you never have to worry about taking these types of risks since reverting back to the original image literally takes seconds to do. So don’t be afraid to be bold and experiment!

Step 13

I like the effect that the added light source brings, so I decide to play it up more by incorporating it on the right side of the image. To help unify the image, it’s important that all the elements of the figure are affected by this light source, as that would be the case in real life. I add the bright blue/green tone on the right side of his face, the right side of the hands, and finally, the right side of the hair. Again, I’m using several layers here just to make sure I don’t mess anything up, and merge them only when I’m completely satisfied with the results. It’s worth noting that I’m using a soft-edged brush for this step; The added light source doesn’t need too much definition as that would be too distracting, so a softer look is definitely preferred in that regard.

Conclusion

I’m satisfied with how the image is turning out, but I want it to be a bit darker and grittier, so I decide to give him more scars. Again, this is a fairly risky addition, so I make sure to handle it with a new layer. I pick a darker and much more saturated tone for the cuts and bruises, and make special care in making sure that they follow the form of the anatomy for a much more natural looking result. After I’m satisfied with the effect, I merge it down with the skin layer. At this point I also decide to introduce more ‘reddish’ tones on the bandana. To do this, I select a fairly bright and saturated red tone and apply it on the bandana with a soft edged brush, with a fairly low opacity. This creates great color harmony and helps to separate the hair, bandana, and skin more, which is always a plus.

The image is pretty much finished at this point; I simply have to do some slight color enhancement with Photoshop’s ‘Color Balance’ tool, playing up more Cyan and Greenish tones for the ‘Shadows’, and more Yellowish tones for the ‘Highlights’ to unify and enrich the color tones even further. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and make sure to leave any questions/comments here, as I’d be more than happy to answer any inquiries. Happy painting!

With the right knowledge, the brush tool in Photoshop can be extremely powerful. In this tutorial, we will use digital painting techniques to create a photo realistic illustration of a swan inside a wine glass. This concept will begin as a sketch and then slowly build up to the final result. Let’s get started!

Tutorial Assets

The following assets were used during the production of this tutorial.

• Swan Photo
• Color Wheel Plugin Courtesy of Len White
• Brush File (Example)

Step1

First, let’s take a look at the brushes that we will use. We only use two basic brushes here, brush 1 is used to soften hard edges and make gradient transitions, its advantage is no need to pick color when paint in grayscale, you can gradually build up a gray scale of any level with a pressure tablet using pure black and white. Brush 2 is actually a basic hard round brush with shape dynamics option on. Brush 2 has very vivid edge. We use brush 2 mainly as a texture brush and sketching pen. You can see the detailed settings in the following images.

Step 2

The concept of this painting is a crystal swan bathing in a glass of water, light shines directly from top. There are three materials in the painting: crystal swan, water, and glass. Before painting, we need a swan photo for reference.

Step 3

We will not just copy the outline of the swan in the photo. But extract the shape of the neck and mouth. We will draw a swan out of the two curves mostly. Wing and tail is minored to avoid competing with the curves that I chose. Let the audience focus on the neck and mouth. This is my initial intention.

Step 4

Create a new layer. Press "D" to set foreground/background color to black/white. Draw a basic shape of swan and glass with brush 2. The line doesn’t need to be perfect, just enough to bring your idea down on paper.

Step 5

Let’s do more on the sketch layer. Create a new layer on top of the sketch layer. Now we add more detail to the glass shape, and add a water level, also notice the mouth tip in the edge of glass rim, it’s the detail I want exactly in my mind.

Step 6

Here is the final version of my sketch, detailed and cleaned for grayscale tone and coloring.

Step 7

Now we will do our sketch in another way, you can see the route of sketching is really not important, no matter which way you take, the most important point is where to go, you must have the image in your head first. Know what you desire most. The decision making stuff is in the whole process of painting. We will begin with brush 2 but bigger brush size to draw a black curve block like this to indicate swan shape in pure simple way. Notice the beautiful curve of neck, mouth, belly, and little wings and tail, which I keep small to avoid distracting audience’s attention.

Step 8

Detailing the shape.

Step 9

Pick a lighter value to paint glass shape.

Step 10

Clean the edge.

Step 11

Go to Filter > Stylize > Find Edges.

Step 12

Now you have the sketching layer in a different way.

Step 13

Before we block the sketch layer, use the image below to demonstrate the light and value of this painting. The widest light path shows the main light stream coming from top, traveling through semi-transparent swan, water and reflected mostly in the bottom of the glass, then reflected all the directions out, make a bright light source in the image. It’s the first and brightest spot in the image. Some light goes through the bottom to light the glass holder. The other four light paths light the head of swan and wings and tail just emerged from the water. Create a beautiful highlight on them. Keep these light positions in mind, we will use it later in blocking and coloring.

Step 14

This is another demonstration made only by brush 1. We can see the tone mainly lies in three levels, 0, 50, 90. It transfers the idea clearly enough, though lots of brush strokes makes the image a little dirty.

Step 15

Now we start blocking the image on the sketch layer. Activate sketch layer, use Magic Wand tool (W) to click on the background, we will select the background area, then create a new layer on top of the sketch layer with the selection on.

Step 16

Choose Gradient Tool (G) to make a line as indicated below. This fills the background with a gradient look.

Step 17

This is more detailed version of the value we used to fill some of the blocks. But you have no need to copy it exactly as I do. Just play around the value I mentioned in Step 14.

Step 18

Here are the block layers we will make. Note we put them in separate layer for future selection and coloring.

Step 19

Now we select the head of swan as in step15, and use Paint Bucket Tool (G) to fill the value. These blocks are more flat than the blocks filled with Gradient Tool, so Paint Bucket Tool is preferred and also we can use brush 2 with big brush size.

Step 20

Here we have an image showing the exact value we choose. Again you don’t have to copy the numbers exactly, just pick around the number I demonstrated in step 14.

Step 21

Make all the layers we have so far made visible including the sketching layer which will be at the bottom of these layers. Image like this will come out as below. Group all the layers. Name it whatever you want. Press Command/Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E to emerge all the layers, yet saving the original layers. It’s useful when you want to go back to do some correction. This layer group will be used frequently later in selection for coloring and adjusting.

Step 22

Now we have the basic valued laid on the sketch layer. Every tool will be taken to make it more realistic and eye-catching. Look at the image, we will find the circled areas are a little bit too bright, so darken the areas.

Step 23

We will use a curve adjustment layer to darken the areas we mentioned above, this is how we do it. Activate the background layer, click the adjustment icon on the bottom of layer panel, or go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves, it will pop up a window as indicated below, click the hand icon and move it to the area you want to darken, then drag down a little bit. You will see the result come out. Stop at where you think is proper. Press "D", set color to black/white. We will use brush 2 painting on the darken areas to mask.

Step 24

Then press Command/Ctrl + I to reverse selection.

Step 25

Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, Radius 56.1, you can put in any number you like just make sure it’s big enough to soften the edges. This blur technique will be used frequently afterward in any situation, which makes hard edges or borders.

Step 26

Apply the same technique to the other two blocks. And at last we have this image, no big change but you can see the difference.

Step 27

Now look at the belly part of swan in the water. How dull it is. In real world, distinctly separated blocks are unusual, let’s make these part flow into the neighborhood a little bit, create some motions to let it look like more realistic and alive. Look at the arrows in the image, that’s where brush works.

Step 28

Use brush 1 to lighten or darken the areas spotted in the image. Press "D" to set color to black/white. Press "X" to switch between black and white. Use white to lighten and dark to darken. That’s the advantage of brush 1, no need to pick color during painting. All you need to do is press "X" to switch. Use very little pressure, make small alteration.

Step 29

Result seems not so good, but not bad either, so we will just keep it.

Step 30

Now we are going to make the sketch line emerge into the surrounding areas. Activate sketch layer, make foreground color to pure white by pressing "D", then press "X" to switch. Then Select > Color Range, fuzziness 30, click Ok. As the color picker is already set to pure white, which is the background color, so Color Range command will select the background area. Then activate the swan layer we are working on. Press Command/Ctrl + Shift + I, make reverse select. Now we have the sketch line selected.

Step 31

Choose brush2, with a brush size just a little bigger than the sketch line width. Press Command/Ctrl + H to hide the selections. Then pick color from both sides of the line then draw on the line. This will make the line disappear into surrounding blocks.

Step 32

Adding highlight. Use brush 2 with pure white. Highlight position is indicated in Step 13.

Step 33

Next is the detailing stage. In the image below we spot three areas need further improvement. Water level is flat, no reflection, and the part between wing and body is not filled yet. Light at the bottom has a very ugly edge. Use brush 1 to improve.

Step 34

Enlarge the image we will see some irregular white dots, let’s eliminate these by median filter in a quick easy way. Go to Filter > Noise > Median, Radius 1 pixels, this is important; radius should be 1 pixels exactly. More will change the shape of swan.

Step 35

Still some dark dots left. This time we will use brush 2 to cover it. Just pick the colors around the dark dots by color picker. Then paint on it.

Step 36

Now we are going to work on the edges as shown below. Edges are quite important if you want to paint something realistic. Look at the mountains far away, you will notice that textures, details are lost first, then color lost in further distance, vivid edges still survive even at the farthest place. Interestingly, that’s just how we paint reversely, edge with basic shape, color, then details. Look how I work on the edge of glass and its holder. It’s a quick tip to make your picture convincing.

Step 37

Let’s review our original concept, which is a bathing swan in a glass of water. Now the swan is in good shape and also glass. But water is just flat. It’s time to work on "Water". As a swan is bathing in the water, the wing and tail must be wet. It should have more reflections, which means more highlights. And the left neck part of swan should receive more light reflections from glass. And we need more contrast below the wing. Again using brush 1 to improve. Note that all the changes we have made in every step are all very subtle separately, zoom in and out of the image frequently will help you to "see" the difference you made.

Step 38

In this step we work on three parts. Part one is cleaning some minor strokes in left part of glass, part two is softening the light bottom more, part three is smoothing the brush stroke part on the right and drag it along the rim of glass mouth to the left. Use Smudge Tool to work.

Step 39

Now work on the negative space to make glass step out from background. Use the curve adjustment technique mentioned in the previous steps to darken the space around the glass. Don’t forget to mask and blur after curve adjustment. It’s another way to bring a sharp edge.

Step 40

Remember the mouth I mentioned in the very first beginning of the tutorial. The mouth tip under the glass is a very small yet exciting part of this image. So let ‘s highlight it. And the crack in the back part of the belly. It seems not bright enough, but we don’t want to break the balance we have already created so far, So let’s darken the part around it to make it look more bright.

Step 41

Now let’s take a little break. Try to move our eyes to other part of the image rather than swan. We will notice the two parts we found do not fit into the image really well. Again, use curve adjustment technique to darken it.

Step 42

Finally, look at our image, everything seems so perfect, all we need to do is coloring now. But wait, our initial intention is a realistic swan bathing in a glass of water. Realistic, The swan is beautiful and do have a shape which is convincing enough to make people believe it is a swan. But texture is missing. In a real world there is no perfection. Use brush 1 with brush size 1 pixel and color pure white to make these white dots over swan. And brush 1 to paint some cracks and shadows as indicated below.

Step 43

It really seems perfect now. We’ve done all we could. Use the technique in the previous steps, move your eyes from the part you want to perfect. Usually it is not the part you focus on causes the problem but the part you ignored. So let’s try to unfocus the swan, move our attention to the water and glass. Yes, Water, glass is as transparent material as swan, or even more, yet they have no little highlight reflection, that’s the weird part of this image. So use brush 2 with the same settings as previous step to add highlight. Note the highlight dots on the glass, the position is well chosen not randomly picked. It doesn’t conflict with the edge of glass, yet implies the curve of the glass.

Step 44

Now let’s go to the coloring part. When working with color, keep color temperature knowledge as indicated below in mind is important. It means that a color makes hue shifts as it goes lighter or darker. And middle tones are often more saturated than lightest or darkest part. So if you pick color from color wheel to paint, let the color goes in a curve as indicated below, also make sure hue changes as value and saturation changes. It’s the key of coloring.

Step 45

Pick color and use selection we have already made separated layers for selections. You can use Paint Bucket Tool (G) to fill or brush 2 with proper brush size. The color layer will look like this finally. Pick color as mentioned
in the previous step, you can see a clear hue shifts from yellow to red, and saturation goes higher in the middle tone in the image below. A tip in realistic coloring is: most colors in real life are rather dull. Don’t make mistake of
over-saturation. Keep it low at first. This is the principle of traditional painting. But in the digital painting era, it’s always easy to go back. And over-saturation can help you identify the part you dislike quickly. If you don’t like it, just de-saturate it. So next, we will go the step of over-saturation, lower it if we dislike, raise it if it’s too desaturated. Until we find balance in color.

Step 46

Make the color layer on top of the grayscale layer. Change layer mode to
"color".

Step 47

Let’s over-saturate it by click on the adjustment icon on the bottom of layer panel, choose Hue/Saturation. See more detailed settings in the image below.

Step 48

Use the sketch layers to select background, then activate image we are working on with selections on. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Radius 41.1 or any number it seems proper. Just to make image seem smooth.

Step 49

Now the whole image seems too saturated, we need to lower saturation down except the swan. Swan is the part we want our audience focus on. Good painting are always coming out from good contrast. When you find something wrong in your painting, don’t blame the wrong part first, try to work the part around it. That’s the negative space painting way. And in the following color adjustment steps, the exact color code will not be given. Actually, it’s the fun part of painting, you could try for yourself under the tips mentioned in the previous step. Let your eye be your judge, if you dislike it, then just modify it. Eye tells you everything.

Step 50

Now we will de-saturate the part indicated in the previous step. Create a new layer, layer mode set to saturation. Pick any color just on the left of current color of the image that means a de-saturated color. With background and glass holder selections on, we paint it by brush2. And blur it if there are any hard edges. Final results will look like this. Don’t worry about the ugly look of the results, it only affects the saturated part.

Step 51

Merge the layer using Command/Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E, we will have a de-saturated look. The left part seems not fully de-saturated. Let’s do it again, using same technique. Pick a less saturated color and paint on a new layer with brush 2, layer mode set to saturation, blur it if there is any hard edges. As we are use hard brush 2, so a Gaussian Blur is always in need.

Step 52

Now it looks Ok with the whole image. But we still need some color highlight to make the image come to life. Select brush1 with brush mode "Linear Dodge (Add)", pick the color where you paint as pointed out in the image below. Then paint with pressure gradually increasing.

Step 53

Press Command/Ctrl + J to duplicate the image. Layer mode "overlay", down the opacity to 33% to make more contrast.

Step 54

Go to Hue/Saturation adjustment as in the previous steps.

Step 55

Paint some shadows on the glass holder with brush 1 to compensate the volume loss during the process of color adjustment.

Step 56

Zoom in/Out the image a little bit to observe. Find out the glass part is far saturated than we want. Ok, I confess I forgot this part in the de-saturation step. Let’s do it again as in step 50.

Final Image