Before you start: This is a fairly advanced tutorial–definitely more difficult than the clouds tutorial. It covers my whole painting process, from sketch to finishing touches, and can be applied to either Photoshop painting or oil painting. The example in question is a digital painting, but I will also describe how I would render the same effects in oils, for anyone who would like to follow along on a non-electronic canvas. You will need a pressure sensitive tablet of some sort if you are going to do this on the computer: a mouse will NOT work for some of the techniques I am going to describe. If you are using oil paints, you will want at least one large brush (1 inch across or more), one medium flat brush, and a small detail brush. You should also have at least some experience with whichever medium you intend to use, because this tutorial assumes your knowledge of basic terms and techniques.

I have written this tutorial for everyone who has asked me how I paint the way I do. This tutorial will tell you EXACTLY how I do it. No tricks; nothing held back.

So, without further ado–the tutorial:

Step 1:

I don’t always start with a line drawing, but in this case I knew I was going to be doing a tutorial with this image, so I did a simple sketch to make it easier to follow along. I put my sketch on the topmost layer so that I can switch it on or off as I draw, and I can always see it superimposed on my painting when I want to. When I paint with oils, I use an overhead projector to do the same thing. Once you’ve got your sketch in place, and you’re satisfied with the way it looks, the first thing to do is choose your palette. What mood are you going for? What’s going to be in this painting? In my case, I’m going for a dark, brooding feel, with fairly dramatic lighting, so I’ve chosen a palette mainly composed of reds, greens, yellows, and mixtures thereof. I’ll be using a little blue, as well, for the brightest highlights, but I like to keep my palettes fairly limited.

If you’re going to be painting digitally, the larger the image, the easier it’ll be to work with. This is going to end up being quite a small picture, so my full-scale version is only about 3000 X 1000 pixels, at 300 dpi.

Step 2:
Anyone who’s done my clouds tutorial will remember this. Yep. The infamous blob time. For those who haven’t seen the clouds tutorial, what this means is that you’re going to get a couple of big brushes, and start glomming on the paint. If you are using Photoshop, you can use the pressure sensitivity settings to put on more than one colour at a time. For an oil painting, I like to use two or more brushes, each loaded with a slightly different colour of paint. If you look at the image above, you can see that I’m really just scribbling in lines and values, without any regard for neatness at all. The area I’m painting is going to be rapidly flowing water, so I’m brushing in rough lines where the ripples are going to be. The finished painting is going to depict a rat floating down the river on a log. I always work from background to foreground, so I’m beginning with the sky and water. In the beginning stages of a painting, I find it’s really useful to just paint away with abandon, exploring textures, values, and forms. Shapes begin to suggest themselves when you paint this way, and you often end up with very interesting effects. If you’re using Photoshop, just use the Paintbrush tool set to a hard-edged setting. The only Photoshop tools you will need to use in this tutorial are the Paintbrush, the Eraser, and the Layers window.

As you can see, my brushstrokes are VERY general. This is NOT supposed to actually resemble water at this point. Don’t worry. We’ll get to that. Not worrying is a very important part of the way I paint. Although art is my job, it’s also my favourite pastime, and worrying would ruin the enjoyment factor. So trust me. Mess around with the paint. Make an ugly canvas. I promise it will be beautiful by the time you are finished.

Step 3:

In this stage, I’ve painted in the areas where the sky and sea will go, leaving a big hole where the rat and log will be. If I were painting in oils, I might underpaint the whole image at this point, but to be honest, I don’t usually do that. I just leave ‘holes’ for the foreground elements. Most people will tell you not to do that, in case you change your mind. They’re probably right. At any rate, you will notice that the sky seems quite a bit softer than the sea. I used soft-edged brushes in the sky region, to suggest where clouds will go. I’ve used mostly browns and olive greens so far, with the darkest browns on the left and the lightest greens on the right. My light will be coming from the sunrise on the far right-hand side, and even at this early stage, lighting is something to consider.

Step 4:

Now, I am adding some warmer hints of brown, yellow-green, and red, to suggest light refracting in water. If you have a look at some photographs of river water, it is never all one colour. So experiment–put in shades of red, blue, yellow, and green. Try other colours, too, just to see what they look like. You can always paint over them if they don’t fit. My favourite colour for water is bottle green–that deep, bluish green that some beer bottles have. I use a lot of that for the shadowed areas, and a pale, glassy green for the highlights. As you can see, my lines are still not smooth, but very general. A good thing to do is to zoom out (if you’re using Photoshop), and work on the picture at about 25%. That way, you can get an idea of how things will look all together, and plan the surface of your water. The inset on the image above gives you an idea of what I’m talking about, there.

Step 5:

In this step, I switched from a hard Paintbrush tool to a soft one. If you’re using oil paints, use thinner washes. What I’m doing here is working on the contours of the flowing water, and developing my lighting and colour scheme further. I’m going for a fairly impressionistic look, as opposed to a realistic one: I am implying moving water by the arrangement of light and colour on a single plane. I want a sense of motion here, rather than a convincing illusion. If you’d rather have a more realistic result, you will need to use a more volumetric approach. That is, instead of painting flat areas of colour, you’ll want to concentrate on the shapes formed by the water. I’m using light and dark colours to make ‘motion lines’. For a realistic effect, you can use light and dark to suggest form instead.

I noticed that the bottom of the picture was looking rather flat and boring, as far as colour went, so I added some stripes of deep fuchsia, combined with the green underneath, the stripes ended up creating a rather nice range of greens, reds, and yellows. (I think it’s nice, anyway.) Note that I have added some little random flecks of light green, as well as the flowing lines. Varying the brushstrokes (in hardness, length, or width) helps make the painting interesting. It also suggests bubbles and splashes of water, which is great, since I’m painting water.

Step 6:

Here, I am using hard brushes again, to refine the surface of the water. I have added some pale, pale white and blue highlights using a small, hard paintbrush. As I work on the river, I’m also working on the sky. I want the two to merge ambiguously at the horizon, so I’m using much the same palette for both. Notice in the picture above that while the zoomed-in shot (left) looks rather rough and brushstrokey, the zoomed-out image is beginning to look nice and smooth. One can use soft brushes and Photoshop’s smudge tool, or a paintbrush, if you’re using oils, to smooth things out at this stage, but I like to leave the brushstrokes in. Especially when I’m painting things like skies and bodies of water. I like the way the brushstrokes add to the effect of light scintillating on the surface. A tip, at this point: When you’re doing your shading and modeling, don’t use pure black or white. When you see the finished version of this image, you will see that there is no black OR white in it. Sometimes, if you’re painting a very sharp, graphic image, black and white are fine, but for this kind of painting, you don’t want them.

Step 7:

In this step, I am adding the log my rat will be sitting on. The transition between log and water is sloppy right now, but don’t worry about it. Both Photoshop and oils allow you to paint right over things, and that’s exactly what I’ll do later on. Right now, though, I’m just adding the log, leaving a hole for the rat. I’m using deep brown and green for the log again, although in slightly different shades than those I used to underpaint the water. I have sketched in some very general suggestions of outcropping branches, just to add interest and draw the eye towards the rat.

Step 8:

Now, I am doing the same thing to the log that I just did to the water: making it look fun and textured. I put a sharp, hard yellow line along the edges of the branches and the end of the log in the direction from which the light is coming. I am also working on a nice, messy bark texture, using yellows, pinks, and reds.

And there’s my bark texture. I haven’t drawn in every bump and nuance of the bark–there’s no point in doing that, unless you’re going for that every-hair, every-leaf, every-pore hyperrealistic look. Most of my ‘bark texture’, in fact, is just quick, sharp lines drawn with both hard and soft brushes. I have made the hardest, sharpest strokes the deepest shadows and the lightest highlights, so make those areas stand out, and cement my texture.

Step 9:

In this step, I am painting my rat. I have decided to make it pink, red, and green (see palette above for basic colours). I build up the rat in much the same way as I did the log–first a general midtone, in reddish brown and pink, then some shadows, followed immediately by some highlights, and some experimentation with colour. I sampled the yellow from the sky to do the brightest highlights on the rat. Note that I’m not bothering to make the rat’s skin ‘perfect’. Again, my brushstrokes are quick and loose, building from largest to smallest.

Step 10:

Don’t forget the little finicky problems! I painted the rat on the log, but there was just a sharp line where log met water. Obviously, water doesn’t behave that way! I used transparent pale greens to suggest the surface of the water rushing over the log (and the rat’s toes, too!), and opaque yellows for the sparkles and bubbles on the surface. I also added a shadow underneath the rat, so it no longer looked as though it were floating above the log.

Step 11:

Just more details. Essentially, I’m finished with the hard part, and just having fun. Here, I’m adding a pair of fluffy black wings to the rat’s back. (The wings are actually deep blue, not black, but the viewer will think ‘black’. The deep blue looks better than black would, however–pure black tends to resemble nothing more than a hole in the picture. I used small, soft strokes with the Paintbrush tool to suggest the tassels of the feathers.

Step 12:

Well, would you look at that! All done! I added a few flying feathers, and a snappy (well, I think it’s snappy!) catch-phrase, shrank the image down to a more web-manageable size, and hit save. I’m quite happy with this one. It has a rather surreal feel to it, which I had hoped to get. Well, well. Onto the next one!