05: Initial Darks
Here I’ve started to build up the dark areas of the image, working in photoshop with a hard round brush at about %50 opacity.
06: Initial Lights
Here I’ve begun working in some of the highlights. Again, working with a hard round brush at %50 opacity.
07: Secondary Texturing
Once I felt comfortable with the basic values, I started applying various textures… Stipling, grunge,folds, and tears… anything that was going to break up the surface of the piece.
(Note: each numbered step from here on out reflects a separate photoshop file that was flattened and incremented for each step.)
08: Color Overlay
Once I had enough textures going on, I jumped into color-land. Working on a new layer set to “color” I very quickly laid out a gold-green gradient as the basic color tones.
Ah… now to the actual painting. For the most part, I stuck to the general system of:
a) Color block-in on a layer set to “color”.
b) dark build-ups on a separate layer set to “multiply”
c) dark mids, mid tones, high mids, and highlights were built up on their own layers respectively. (I mean if I was paying attention… often times they just got jumbled up on the same layers)
I “mixed” my pallet as I went along, saving it in a separate file so I wouldn’t lose it.
09: Rocks and Foliage.
Working from the background to the foreground, I began detailing and rendering the image. I used mostly hard round brushes at various sizes, usually at %50 opacity or less.
10: Groundcover
Working on the ground and grass I switched to more textural brushes… creating them as I went along.