How to Create an Environmental Painting in Photoshop

Learn how to create this fantasy environment painting in Photoshop. This picture represent a fantasy environment painting. I painted it as a personal work and used Photoshop with a Wacom Tablet. You will learn techniques and methods that I personally use for coloring.

Preview of Final Results

How to Create an Environmental Painting Photoshop Tutorial
Part 1 – Drawing

Step 1: Sketching

I often draw a lot of sketch, on computer or maybe sometimes on paper. I decide to paint kind of a fancy environment . First of all I began to see my image in my head but not very colorful. in my imagine I can see this is a vey different planet and in the evening sun is losing in a very different way. And the sky is a different color and the trees in a very different shape too. And I do imagine I’ll paint some very alien flowers. Maybe you can say those flowers are alive maybe they can walk or move. Also I would like to draw an alien animal in my sketch

And here are two sketches about my fancy environment. I started with some quick sketches to get a feeling for my environment. I don’t go too much into details. I’m just trying to find out how I want environment look like. I n this step I have to make a decision for to continue on painting. I do think I’ll use the second sketch. It is looking more dynamic and it has a creature like I want.

For the initial sketch work, Photoshop File size is 668×969. Resolution can be 72 for now. Of course later I need to make it bigger to add painting details. But not now.

Here is a closer screenshot for the simple sketch work I did with Photoshop. And of course any part of this sketch will be in the final image. You need this sketch entirely for reference purposes.

When I felt my sketch is quite nice I named my new layer name as “sketch” And now here as you see I have 3 layers. You do the same on your project. And now the first layer group is for my signature. You can add a sign your image You have a question in mind – Why so much layer for such simple artwork ? Because if I am not satisfied with the color and want to change I can make some changes via help of those layers. This step is very important.