How to Draw a Colorful Fantasy Dragon Battle Scene in Photoshop

How to Draw a Colorful Fantasy Dragon Battle Scene in Photoshop
How to Draw a Colorful Fantasy Dragon Battle Scene in Photoshop
step34

Step 35

Create another new adjustment layer: Brightness/Contrast. Hide some areas affected by this layer. Please see the illustration picture

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Step 36

Now hit Shift+Ctrl+Alt+E to stamp all the visible layers. This will create a new layer. With this layer selected, go to filter > blur > Gaussian blur. Then set the blending for this layer to soft light at 70% opacity. Next, create a new adjustment layer: Exposure. Create this new adjustment layer clipping mask in order to effect only the Gaussian layer.

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Step 37

Create a black new document of 900 pxl wide and 900 pxl high. We will manipulate fire for the dragon.

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Step 38

Create a new layer. Take Brush tool in the tool panel. With white color, stroke a shape like the one I created (1) Now activate Smudge tool. Choose a very soft brush. With Strength of 60-80%, start to smudge the shape (2) Vary the size of the brush to 5-10 pxl and keep on smudging until finding the desired shape. See the result I created (3).

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Step 39

Next, create a new adjustment layer: Color Balance.

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Step 40

Create a new layer and place this layer underneath the fire layer. Put the cursor on the fire layer thumb, hit Ctrl and while the cursor is on the thumb click the mouse. This will make selection on the fire. Now go select the new layer and hit Shift+F5 to fill it. Fill the new layer with black. Click the eye icon on the background to hide it. Now there it is… we have the fire. Select the all fire layers and merge them..

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Step 41

Drag the fire into the canvas. Duplicate it one time. Now Hit Ctrl+T to activate Free Transform tool. Wrap the duplication layer.

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Step 42

Here is the result I created so far.

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Step 43

Create a new layer. Take Brush tool. Choose a very soft brush and set the opacity to 20%. With black, stroke the upper part of the scene and some area in lower left corner.

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Step 44

Create a new layer above the dragon layer. Create this layer clipping mask. Hit Shift+F5, fill it this layer with black. Set the blending of this layer to color dodge. Take the Brush tool. Set its opacity to 7%. Make sure to set the color of the foreground to #fd7b0f. Then, with the new layer still selected, stroke the brush gently to the chest and around the stomach.

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4 comments on “How to Draw a Colorful Fantasy Dragon Battle Scene in Photoshop”

  1. First of all I love this and have learnt a lot but....
    Couldn't get the fire selection bit to work, every time I pressed Control which I assume is command on the mac and clicked the thumb nail it selected the whole thing. I tried making my own selection but I ended up with a black outline and no colour. Baffled !

  2. That's really cool and very helpful.
    I tend to use reptile scales for the texture of the dragon - I just take a picture of my pet lizard XD
    But still, thank you :)

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