Golden Snake and the Dark Wildwood Painting

Preview of Final Results

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Golden Snake and the Dark Wildwood Painting Photoshop Tutorial

Resources

Program: Photoshop CS2
Digital Painting-Photoshop Tutorials

Step 1 – Base sketch and image composition

I decide to paint a golden snake and a dark forest for my tutorial. And here are two sketches about my main environment. I started with some quick sketches about the main idea and here let me show you my main sketch work. I start with a sketch work as you see but maybe you can prefer working directly with color. Some artist prefer to begin painting process directly with colors. But if you ask me, I advice you to start always with a sketch work to any painting. Because to begin directly with colors are more proper for an experienced artist.

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Well as you see on these sketch works there are two character. The golden snake and a little alien character. Golden snake is the keeper of the Dark Wildwood. And he is looking doubtfully to the strange creature. And he doesn’t want stranger characters in his forest. Here is a very close screenshot for my alien character.

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Step 2 – Setting the Canvas

Photoshop File size of the initial sketch work of is 700×839. Resolution must be 72 for now. Later you need to make it bigger to add painting details. But not now. Here is the canvas settings:

Width: 700 pixels
Height: 839 pixels
Resolution: 72 dpi

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Step 4 – Choosing a brush

For my illustration I use only standard brushes with some different Pen Pressure settings. Here let me show my brush settings. In the Brushes palette (Window > Brushes), you’ll find many settings that you can adjust for your brush. In the Other Dynamics settings, I set the control to Pen Pressure. This is important if you are using a pen tablet for your painting. A pen tablet, such as the Wacom pen tablet, is essential for painting in Photoshop. It lets you paint using a pen instead of a mouse and adjust the strength and angle of your stroke. Set your brush settings to the one shown in the image below and try painting to see what it is like.

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Step 5 – Color Palette

The second step here you to choose the main colors for you scene .A very important stage in creating your artwork is to decide which color solution is best for that your painting. The first thing that comes to mind with a snake in golden colors. Background is cold and I decide to give it a real night color, which has an added surprise because dark blue is also a natural sign of a dark mysterious night.

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Step 6 – Creating the Layers

Now I’m going to show you some important knowledge about layers. I named my new layer name as “sketch” And now here as you see I have 3 layers. You must do the same on your own project. And now the first layer is for my signature. You can add a signature your image too.. On the next steps I’m going to create some more layers. The reason for painting on such new layers because of you need to make corrections later in the painting. It is much easier to fix errors if the main elements of your painting are separate entities. This step is really really very important.

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Step 7 – Working On The Background Color

At this point, we can start coloring the sketch work. Here is my color for the background. Select the Gradient Tool (G) and do as you see on the picture.

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