Oasthouse Painting Walkthrough

To do any kind of digital painting you really do need a graphics pad of some sort, preferably with a pressure sensitive pen. I use a Wacom Intuos3 A4 tablet but the size doesn’t matter too much – the bigger the pad, the more it lets you use arm movement as opposed to everything being done with the wrist. Another thing I find useful (but not that important) is a second monitor. When I open Photoshop all the palettes, tools, history etc. opens on the right-hand monitor, leaving the left monitor completely free of clutter and enabling you to open your document out to the full size of the screen without some of it being obscured by the layers palette etc.
Some of the shortcuts I use most often are:
Pressing the Alt key when using the brush tool turns it into the colour picker, really handy when blending colours and tones.
The square bracket keys let you change the size of the brush you are using.
The number pad on your keyboard lets you change the opacity of your brush, 1 = 10%, 2 = 20% etc. and 0 = 100%.
Pressing the spacebar turns your brush etc. into a hand and lets you move your work around, handy when you're zoomed right in and want to move to an area that’s off the screen.
Right clicking on your work area opens the brush picker, you can click on the brush you want a carry straight on. If you’re using a Wacom tablet you can assign the switch on the pen for Right Click.
Another thing you should take into account when doing digital painting is the size of the document, its no use trying paint on a document that’s say 500px wide, because when you zoom in to do the detailed bits all you’re going to see are pixilated squares. I would recommend using as large a document as your computer will handle. When I do a digital painting I usually start with a document that’s 2500 – 3500px wide, and 300dpi resolution.
Right, let’s get on with the painting.
The first thing you need to do is to get a rough sketch down, and I mean rough sketch. The idea is just to jot down the basic shapes, similar to the way an oil painter does a brush sketch on his canvas before he starts blocking in. It’s only there as a guide and your time will be better spent working on the painting, plus its going to be lost when you have blocked in your colours/tones. Check this out –

As I said, a rough sketch is all that’s needed. You can do it right on the screen as I did with this or you can import it from a scan, the choice is yours. Change the blend mode of this layer to Multiply, that way the white won’t be seen when you bring in other layers.
Also, any new layers you add should be underneath this one – keep it at the top of the stack as it were.
The next thing I usually do is add a layer with a background colour or gradient.
This time I’m using a gradient -

Because the sketch layer is set to multiply you only see the lines of the sketch.
Next I start blocking in the main colours and tones. Because I’m using a gradient for the sky area these colours will be reflected on the buildings etc. Using the colour picker I’ll start blocking in the lighter tones using a colour selected from the light part of the sky. The darker tones of the shadow areas will be darker versions of the sky colours –

The only brush I’ll use for this is just a standard Photoshop Chalk with a bit of added texture. What you’re aiming for here is just the basic colours and tones. Don’t try to be too neat, just slap it on. The opacity of your brush needs to be around 30 – 40% and the flow set at 50%. As you can see, the trees are just suggestions of branches etc. don’t waste time trying to draw in all the little twigs, they’ll just be lost later on.
Once the basic colours/tones are down I’ll start to refine them, adding more tones as it were –

When I get to this stage I normally turn the sketch layer off and just refer to it every now and then, to keep me on the right track. I’ve just added some shadow to the rooftops here.
I can now start tidying up the basic blocked in colours and adding some detail –

Apart from the obvious, I’ve added some white rimlight to the tree trunks and the oast house towers – as well as blending in the tones. I’ve also modeled the distant hills a bit and added some texture to the walls of the buildings. From here it’s really just a case of adding detail. Don’t get caught in the ‘adding too much detail’ trap, you need to find a happy medium for the style of painting you are doing – the more realistic, the more detail you need. If you’re going after an impressionist style then not so much detail is needed.
Most of the colours used for the detail can be picked from the colours that are already on the canvas –

All I’ve done here is to add some leaves on the trees, a hedgerow by the buildings, a bit of a hedgerow in the distance, some cloud and a light source. At this stage I’ll normally merge all visible layers, make a copy, set the blend mode to multiply and adjust the opacity to around 75%. This gives the colours depth and richness. I’ll then take a large soft edged eraser set to a low opacity and softly erase the lighter areas on the multiplied layer before I merge them together. It’s then just a case of finishing off adding a bit more detail and adjusting levels and colour –

This is the final image and you can see I’ve beefed up the distant hedgerow, added some texture to the foreground snow, stuck some fence posts in the hedgerow by the buildings and added some foliage in the foreground.
I hope this short walkthrough has helped you understand the process that I use and that you will give it a go.