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.

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Preview of Final Results

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

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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.

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Step 2: Color Palette

The second thing here you to choose color scheme. I want to do something really colorful colors for the environment . I do think my final colors will be warm colors of autumn. Some orange, green , yellow, red, brown…and so on. I decided for background a dark blue color . Other colors are for the character face and his clothing. Open an another file and save your colors. And always keep open that new file when you are painting.

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Step 3: Choosing a Brush

For my environment I am going to use only s standard brushes with some different pen pressure settings. Let me show how I arrange my brush. Chose a simple standard brush

After that from brush panel choose “Other Dynamics” and make the setting as seen on the below picture. And After you click on “Other Dynamics” panel you will see the options. “Control” option is Off.You must change it. Click on the little panel.

And choose “Pen Pressure” And also you can see the brush at the bottom of the panel.

Make the numbers as seen. From the bottom of the panel you must have noticed how different strokes it has now.

Now try your brush. See how soft it is and make some strokes with your new brush settings and try too see how it is painting. You see the soft strokes of the brush and nothing too fancy about brushes since some of you wondered.