Painting Rocks and Grass in Photoshop -- Art Tutorials at Epilogue

Painting Rocks and Grass in Photoshop

This tutorial was written by Patrick Keith

I will start by describing what this tutorial isn’t so there won’t be a disappointment if I fail to cover something. It is not a tutorial for color theory, aesthetics or composition and the examples provided are by no means attempting to be photo-realistic in any sense. This is a tutorial to display one way in which Photoshop can be used to simulate a type of natural media, similar to oil paint, in a way. It is also a description of the way I paint and can give some insight into the steps I use to create a digital painting. Anyway, enough chatter….

For this example I am working at half the size I normally do and will be creating this in RGB. Most of my paintings are created in CMYK mode for print output. Working at a higher resolution, even for web-based work, is more desirable since re-sampling “down” to say 72 dpi averages the pixels displayed and “tightens” up the piece, much like printing a picture at a smaller size than it was painted with natural media. It also means some details will be lost, so expect that too.

Once the document is created I fill the background with a neutral color avoiding painting over straight white since that tends to affect how the eye sees the relative colors. For particularly dark pictures I will of course fill it with a dark warm or cool color to provide a good base for the other colors.

At this resolution the brushes I use most are the 5, 9, 35, 45 and occasionally the 100 size airbrushes with the hard edge. The spacing is set to 1 to avoid any circular spreading that resembles a coiled spring.

At this stage I create a separate layer to hold my sketch above the other work as reference. If I am using a scanned image, I will adjust the Layer setting in the drop-down menu from Normal to Multiply to create a transparent image I can see through.

Here I have suggested the location of the rocks just as a map or guideline. For more complex subjects the sketch is more detailed,

I use a small soft airbrush with a medium gray color dark enough to show up against the background, but not straight black.

On another layer above the background layer, I usually do most of my painting. This keeps me from disturbing the background, especially if there is an elaborate image.

For this example I just used a muted, medium value for the rocks and foliage. This will give a good basis to build shadows and highlights. Rarely is anything so cut and dried in nature and it’s best to experiment with a variety of colors to simulate different lighting effects.

Using a 100 pixel hard-edged airbrush, I set the Airbrush Options to Multiply and sample the background color using the Eyedropper.

Here I am wanting to indicate where the shadows will fall and also create a darker version I can sample later with the eyedropper.

Usually as I paint I keep one finger on the Alt/Option button to toggle the tool between the airbrush and the eyedropper.

After blocking in a few shadows, I set the Options to Screen and spray some highlights indicating the direction of the light.

Here, the brown is a yellow-based color which is a little warmer than I wanted, so I set the airbrush back to Normal and painted a few strokes of a light, muted tan across the top.

Setting back to Screen, I sampled the yellow from the rock and began to suggest the shapes of leaves in the shrub with a 5 and 9 pixel brush.

While working on the shrub I alternated between the Screen and Normal settings as I sampled lighter and darker greens to define the shapes of the leaves.

More definition is added going back to the Normal setting for the airbrush.

At this point, I just sample dark and light colors as I paint, defining the shape of each leaf with a 5 pixel brush.

Here, I suggest a few longer blades of grass by starting at the base and making quick and curving upward movements with the pen. The colors are sampled from the leaf color for convenience, but additional colors should be used for variety.