Photoshop sunset Painting tips

This is the final image.

This is a newer wip...



Below is a simple compilation of steps basically for reminding myself (getting old) the steps I did. I always just fudge along until sometime works and den totally forget it the next day. And its getting tedious. Anyone seeing this, if u got some tips, pls comment.

- Breakdown into background, midGround and foreground.

- Use different flat colors and layers to differenciate them for a start.

- Using different colors and gradient tool, adjust saturation and opacity to give the image some subtle color changes.

- Use Soft brush with Shape Dynamics. Use broad Strokes to lighten section of sky. Again just to introduce some difference in density in the sky.

- Add far clouds on new layer.

- USe custom brush that is soft and cloud-like..... Pay attention to where the light source is. Also paint contrastingly to light the clouds from background. E.g light on dark, orange on blue. Use Low opacity(like 20% and below) on brush and build up gradually.

-Remember to maintain the illusion of volume of the clouds.

- Use color dodge to get the strong rays of light hitting the clouds

- If you fail to paint manually or is a lazy git, photo manipulation with cut and paste saves you a lot of time. But the rules above the apply in terms of colors and how light works

- Reference, reference and more reference.

- IMPORTANT! Be careful of the range of colors used. As intense as a sunset is, the colors are fairly consistent. Eg. The strong highlights should all be the same hue. But as the sunlight travels further into more atmostphere. The color gets redder and less intense.

Below is an earlier attempt that was quite simply fugly. For your amusement on how not to paint a sunset.

Painting Clouds Tutorial.

http://www.geocities.com/~jlhagan/lessons/arialpersp4.htm
Great tutorial about how to paint the shapes of clouds.


http://painting.about.com/cs/paintingknowhow/ht/Howto_Clouds.htm
this one is about the different types of clouds


http://www.steeldolphin-forums.com/htmltuts/cloud_tut.html


http://www.androidblues.com/cloudtut.html


http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=260976

and these are just different techniques

Sunset painting theory science.

1st some simple science lessons that I really should have research before I started out.

- The atmosphere of Earth is made up of particles that filters white light.

- When the sun is overhead, the sky appears blue because the light is filtered, allowing the short wavelengths in the color specturm to be visible.

- When the sun is setting or raising, the light have to travel a further distance. Therefore it is the thickest amount of atmosphere the light have to pass through than at any other time during the day.

- This causes the short wavelengths to become scattered and deflected as the rays pass across the curved surface of earth.

- The sky is then slowly illuminated with longer light waves; yellow, orange and red. Sunrise are usually less intense because the air particles settle during the night.

- Under certain conditions, like after heavy rain, the sunsets can be bluer whereas in polluted cities or low lying cloud, they often become redder. It all depends on the density of air particles and distance the light have to travel.

- The thicker the atmosphere the deeper the red. Thinner atmostphere will produce orange, then even thinner, golds and finally yellows.

- The red light sometimes strikes the underside of the clouds directly overhead and turns them red, yellow and orange depending on the wave lengths of light that have managed to penetrate the earth's atmosphere.

-Before the sun completely sets, the light travels up the atmosphere, there is less particles there. Which is why, you can still see some blues.

Above is just simple color gradient demostrating the different type of atmostphere.

U can read more about the theory below.

http://www.geocities.com/~jlhagan/lessons/arialpersp2.htm

The finished painting

So after farting around for many hours.... this is wat I got....

I had great difficulties with painting the feel of volume of the clouds. So I cheated with images of real clouds layered on top. Hiaz....will keep experimenting.

Things I realised (painfully)

- Take note the direction of the light

- There is keylight and also Fill/bounce light!

- Organise and Paint in Layers. e.g background clouds, midground, foreground.

- Colors of the clouds have to be consistent. I had too much contrast and color variation.

- Paint Loose.... I was too tight in my strokes..

- Know what you want! I could not decide the feel of the painting. I could not decide whether to paint realistic or painterly and the detail as well was a problem...

7.) Its all about lighting and shadows....

Until next time.