How to Paint Venice in Photoshop

This tutorial will take you through the steps of drawing and painting a street in Venice. Part I is the drawing, Part II the blocking in, and Part III the final painting and detail.

Preview of Final Results

Painting a Venetian Street: Part I

Resources

· Venice Street Stock Photo

Step 1

Open a new project 2400 x 2800 pixels at 300 pixels/inch.

Step 2

I will be using a reference photograph from Dreamstime for this digital painting.

Step 3

Fill the background with color #7BB0E9.

Step 4

Set the front swatch to color #93C0EA. Use the gradient tool to set a soft blue grading background, the light on bottom and dark blue at the very top of the picture.

Step 5

Make a new layer, “outline”.

Step 6

Drag two slices onto the picture at 4” and 4.75”. Where the two meet will be the vanishing point.

Step 7

We are going to build a very basic protractor. This will help you duplicate the lines I am drawing and will help you get the correct proportions.

Step 8

Draw a long horizontal line.

Step 9

Shift + Click using the ellipse tool to draw a circle. It should automatically be on a different layer. Right clock on the layer box and rasterize the layer.

Step 10

Copy the circle and paste it onto a new, temporary layer. Fill the circle with white (#FFFFFF paint bucket tool) and resize it so that it is slightly smaller than the first circle. Lay it over the first circle so that there appears to be an outline of a circle. Merge the layer down so that the two are on one layer.

Step 11

Erase the bottom half of the circle.

Step 12

Transform the circle (Ctrl + T) so that the two ends touch the horizontal line and make a half-circle.

Step 13

Copy and paste the half circle. Re size it so that it is a smaller half-circle inside the larger one.

Step 14

Sharpen the edges of the circle. Make a dot at the midpoint of the horizontal line. Draw a line straight up from there to the top of the circle. Mark this 90 degrees. Mark the left side of the horizontal line 180 degrees and the right side 0 degrees.

Step 15

Draw two more lines halfway between the 90 degrees and the 0 degrees and the 180 degrees. Mark them 45 degrees and 135 degrees.

Step 16

Mark off eight lines on each side of the 90 degree lines at even intervals.

Step 17

Mark each as its degree mark (starting from the right, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, (90 degrees), 100, 110. 120, 130,140, 150, 160, 170). Merge all the layers onto one layer, erase the long 45 degree and 135 degree lines, and your protractor is done!

Step 18

Copy and past the protractor onto your project and set the layer opacity to 60%. Re size it so that you can easily read all the numbers. For now, turn it upside down and line the midpoint up with the vanishing point.

Step 19

Using the line tool with a weight of 5 pixels (color #000000), draw a diagonal line from the vanishing point to a point slightly to the right of the left outer corner. The angle of the line should be approximately 48 degrees.

Step 20

Draw a second line at an angle of 122 degrees.

Step 21

Draw two more lines, one at a 122 degree angle from the vanishing point. Start the other halfway between the right side of the vantage point and draw it to slightly above the right side of the image. Draw both with the 5 pixel line tool.