Digital painting involves a combination of artistic techniques and technical skill, but digital paintings almost always start as a rough concept and are gradually refined. The more effort that is put into detailing and polishing the painting, the more impressive the final outcome, but success depends on your initial concept and foundation.
In this digital painting tutorial by Aaron Wilkerson, you’ll learn how to sketch a concept, build a solid foundation for a piece, and then refine it into a great concept artwork.
If you are looking for even more digital painting tutorials, these tutorials will interest you:
- Create an Incredible Avatar Inspired Matte Painting of Pandora
- Using Lighting, Atmospherics and Digital Illustration Techniques in Matte Painting
- Create Spectacular Sci-Fi Concept Art
Hope you find the tutorial helpful!
I started with the idea of a back-lit scene. You will notice that planes increase in value as they recede. I use a standard chalk brush for most of the rocks here adding texture and light as I go.
Before starting this painting I created some custom brushes from photographs of satellite dishes and antennae. It’s good to have a library ready to go, as it will save time and allow you flexibility as you experiment. The building on far right was made using the polygon lasso tool to outline the planes which I then fill with tone.
I knew I wanted to create an action scene, so I started experimenting with different aircraft and figures. Compositionally and conceptually the helicopter fit, as a special ops team repels to the rock below. Due to lack of experience, I use a photograph to create a silhouette that I can fill in with details later.
You may find it easier to start a night scene in grey scale, as most colors are lost or overpowered at low light. I use a layer of blue in hard light mode to add colour to the picture and tweak the saturation using ctrl-u (Photoshop). Lights are added to the tower at right and the base is detailed with subtle highlights on the left edge and a bridge providing a path to the foreground rocks which frame the bottom of the canvas.
I know the success of this piece will depend largely on the bright lights that attract the eye and tell a narrative. I try adding some flares along a path but it is not sufficiently engaging and the composition suffers from the lack of focus.
I decide to crop the picture and increase the size of the helicopter to make it the center of attention. You will notice the mountains in the distance lead to the chopper and base and points of interest are located about 1/3 of the distance horizontally and vertically. Some things are removed and I add a spotlight under the chopper with a soft brush in linear dodge mode. I add a little pink light to the sky rather than a bright sunset as it would distract from other elements. I also blur the spinning blades.
You can create fire easily by selecting a saturated red and painting in color dodge mode. The brightest parts will approach white. I add more details to the chopper and rocks below carefully adjusting values.
Burning embers are made by scattering small dots from the center of the fire and faint red glow is added to the underside of the chopper and figures. If you have compositing software like Adobe After Effects, you can create realistic lens flares. Photoshop’s filter is not the greatest, so I paint one by hand using a soft brush, stretching it horizontally, and setting it to linear dodge. One thing I did not mention was extensive use of adjustments throughout the piece. The curves, levels, and hue/saturation tools were invaluable for fixing the rocks, explosions, textures, and lights.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.
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