From Sketch to Finish: New Dawn

Hi! Today I’m going to give a step-by-step breakdown of how I completed a painting.

First I started out with a basic sketch of three people. I clipped the line art layer to a new layer and changed the colors a bit so they would be more cohesive with the environment later on.

After that I focused primarily on the background, painting out the sunrise I wanted to capture and the grassy hill I wanted the characters to be placed on. I used a smudge tool to blend in the many shades and colors involved in the sky as well.

Next I filled all three characters in with a grey color. This is so that later when I fill in the base colors they won’t stray outside the lines.

Once that was taken care of, I clipped a new layer to the grey and added basic shading and highlighting with multiply and add blending modes. Then I created a layer under those to fill in the base colors.

After that, I added a layer on top of the line art and made shadows and highlights that would also affect the line art color. I then redrew the sun at a higher position than it was before so that it could be seen, and added random sparkles in obscure places with low opacity so they would add a finished look to the piece. I’ve also started clipping a layer to my signature and using an airbrush to fade out the edges so it blends in more with the scene.