Digitally Paint a Fantasy Tree Scene
Jun 17th in Drawing by Maciej Kwas
Learn how to make a fantasy scene using only standard photoshop brushes. In this tutorial, I describe the basics of color and light theory. With this tutorial, you will paint eye-catching illustration in less than two hours.
The final image is a fairly realistic looking scene, where the tree is uprooted and floating in the sky. All You need for this tutorial is Photoshop and a precise mouse. This could be a difficult work for those, who are just starting with photoshop, but everybody can try it for themselves.
Hi, I am a graphic designer from Poland. Actually I live in small town called Ryki. I had started as a web designer. Now I'm interesting in everything on 2D graphic. I am drawing in my free time (on paper :] ).
Final Image Preview
Before we get started, let's take a look at the image we'll be creating. Click the screenshot below to view the full-size image. As always, the layered Photoshop file is available via our PSDTUTS Plus membership.
Step 1
Make a new document with the dimensions of 1024px by 768px. Fill the background with (#8CC2FF) color. Then add a gradient from the bottom to the middle with the color #CFECFE, and set the gradient 100% to transparent. This will be our sky, of course you can choose any other light blue color for the sky, or even plan a night scene, but then remember there would be different lighting and contrasting dark colors.
Step 2
In this step we'll make the clouds. It's a simple and fast technique with a pretty effect. The secret is to choose the right brush. Below you can see which brush you should pick. The red lines simulate my mouse. The color of the clouds is white. Remember to paint each cloud on a different layer.
Step 3
So far the clouds don't look amazing. Let's fix that. We can use the eraser tool with a round soft brush 35-45px and set the opacity to 10-20%. Softly erase the bottom-right part of each cloud.
Copy the "clouds" layers twice. Then place those copied below the originals. Then apply a Gaussian blur filter to them. Then move them a little down and toward the right. You can lower the opacity of the clouds to make them appear further away. Once your clouds are done, arrange the sky.
Step 4
The Clouds are done! Next, choose where your light source will come from. In this case, the light source is from the sun, even though we cannot see it.
Tip: don't place the light source behind the main object because it will be too dark. You can make it only a specific type of image.
Think about atmosphere and light sources in your art. My sun isn't placed very high because it's Autumn. Let's look at some Light Theory:
- Light and camera: The brightest area on an object isn't every time in the same place for all cameras.
- Light intensity: The second ball is too bright. It looks flat and loses the color on top.
- Shadows: Shadows on objects shouldn't be brighter than the object itself. Also, remember that other objects (even objects like grass) can reflect the light.
Step 5
Choose a hard black brush 2px and start to plan the main object. The sketch shouldn't be so precise, just play-around the edges. I know it's hard to do it with a mouse, but be patient. The sketch is very important.
Step 6
Set the opacity of the sketch layer to 10%. Grab a hard-edged brush or the marquee tool. Then fill the grass area with #719126 color.
Now choose the brush shown below. Set the color to #90B033, resize it to about 15-30px (The smaller the better the effect), and start to paint. I simulate my mouse moves on the second image with the red line shown below. Remember to paint from top to bottom. That eats a lot of time, true, but who said that digital painting is fast and easy? Try to do your best and you will achieve a better effect than by just brushing around.
Rotate this brush vertically, set the angle to about -134 degrees, and make edges on bottom. We should add lightning effects and shadows, but we will add that toward the end of the image.
Step 7
Fill the ground area with a color of #5C4E43. It's a middle tone between the lightest and the darkest color. The shadow will be very strong, as light will be very feeble. Remember that the ground is hidden by other parts of object so it has to be very dark. The first thing you should do is plan the lights and shadows.
Step 8
To paint on the layer we need to lock transparent pixels. Then choose a hard edged brush (size: 13px, opacity: 20%) with the settings and colors as shown below. Then paint with a dark color and then add a light one in places. In the end give three or four clicks in the lighter areas with a very shiny color. TIP: Don't hold the mouse button all the time, try to paint by clicking with fast moves.
Step 9
Let's look at some Color Theory for Warm and Cold colors.
The same gray color looks different on different backgrounds. Remember that orange and red colors add a warm effect to an image, and blues will add a cold effect to an image.
Step 10
Choose a hard brush with a size of about 19px. Use the settings shown below. Tip: Avoid soft brushes in digital painting. Blending colors with hard brushes looks more naturalistic and eye-catching.
The red arrows show the direction of my mouse. The red color simulates my brush movements.
With this technique fill the tree with a dark brown color. You can use my color palette (middle color), or make your own.
Tip: Of course it's better to use more than only two or three colors in blending, but I describe only the basics here. Tip 2: When you have an active brush tool, hold ALT and Click on the color from our "mini palette" layer to change color.
Step 11
At this point, we can hide the "sketch" layer. Now it's all about adding dimension to the tree. Remember about planning lights and shadows. The upper part of the tree will be hidden by leaves, so it should be very dark.
Now You can paint first with the darkest color, then add some shines. Brush same as in the previous step. Brush with a low opacity (about 10-15%). You can select Lock transparent pixels to not care about painting outside the trunk of the tree. Paint a few times in the same area to make it brighter or darker.
Remember what I told in Step 4 about reflections. TIP: Don't use the burn or dodge tools, as they won't give you the colors you need.
Step 12
Compare this image with the one above. They look different, but the differences are only a few details. I added some depth and shines to the hole in middle of tree. I added some shadows under branches. Also, I upgrade the hardest shines. Five minutes of work here makes the tree more realistic.
Step 13
Now we should improve the roots. They look plastic, and the grass looks flat. To make it looking more natural use the eraser tool and choose a grass brush - same as in Step 6. Then delicately erase the lower parts of the roots.
Step 14
Well, I decided to add more details to the ground. For this, set dark color and choose the same brush as in Step 10. Set the brush diameter very small at about 2-3px. Then paint on the bounds of the colors. Then set the color to something shiny and paint lines from the center to the outside around the root.
Step 15
Choose the grass brush (Step 6). Let's add shadows on the edges. Pick a darker color than the base grass color. Consider choosing a color that is much darker (my choice is #313819). The brush opacity shouldn't be so high (about 10-15%). The brush size also should be small (10-15px). Now lock transparent pixels and paint in the shadows. Paint a few times in the same area to make the shadow harder.
Step 16
With the same brush add shadows to the grass behind the tree in relation to the light source. The shadow under the tree should have hard edges and be darker. Remember about shadows behind the roots.
Step 17
Keep the same brush, but change the color to something very shiny (my choice is #AECA66). Now softly (yes, softly, because we will add another light brushing shortly) paint on the grass.
Step 18
Choose the same brush as below, and set the color to a very light yellow (could be even #FFFF00, my choice is #E9EB29). Start to paint the hard-lighted parts with an opacity 15-30% and flow 50%.
Step 19
A lot of work behind us! Now it's time to add the leaves. In fact it's the easiest part of painting. We are just brushing around the branches. The hardest thing here is to choose the right colors.
We'll cut the leaves into three parts: the darkest, the midtones and the lightest. I'm balancing in red tones because it's autumn in this digital painting. Notice that the dark color is under the branches. My colors are: Dark #982C1F, Midtone #BD4428, and Light #F44830.
Step 20
Now it's time for some small elements. First, we will add shadows to the leaves. Use the same brush as in previous step, but use the settings shown below.
For the grass use a color of #232323. After painting that you can apply a little gaussian blur. Then set the opacity of the layer to 75%. After that, make some falling leaves. Use the same brush as in the previous action, but set it to a small opacity of 20-40%. Set the colors the same as those on the tree. The last part of the small elements are the ground pieces. Still with the same brush, but resize it to 8-10px, choose a very dark color, and set the opacity to 10-20%.
Now we are about to add some shadows on the leaves. Hold CNTRL + Shift and Click on all "leaves" layers. Now create a new layer for the shadows that are on the top of all the "leaves" layers. The choose a big soft brush with 100px diameter, a dark color, and 20% opacity. Then start to make shadows on the leaves. After painting, change the blend mode to multiply. This will add some shadows also on the tree.
Step 21
We can add some small details like cables that come out of the tree. Choose one base color. Then paint a cable and give it a shadow and one or two light shines. Set the brush spacing to 1% and the brush size 3-4px. We can use the pen tool for this operation, or paint cables by hand with fast moves. For adding shadows we can use the burn tool, or by blending options (inner shadow).
Step 22
Add a little red color to the grass. It doesn't matter which brush, but I prefer the leaves brush. Set the brush to a small opacity, standard settings, and a color of pure red. It's autumn, so the grass should take on a burnt hue. A red color will give us that effect.
Step 23
I decided a to change the background little. In autumn, colors should be reddish, as we made the grass. Click on channel mixer and change the settings, as shown below. Make sure the layer blend set to lighten.
Final image
Here we are! We have done the whole image! Digital painting can take a lot of work, but I hope you will enjoy creating the final product. Let me know if you want to see more tutorials on digital painting like this one.
User Comments
( ADD YOURS )Kim Dolleris June 17th
Impressive work
good job
Bogus June 17th
I AM THE FIRST TO POST!!!!
Alvaro Guzmán June 17th
nice technique I’ll try it out! thanks
Salva June 17th
Amazing
Marcelo June 17th
Fantastic!!!!
Constantin Potorac June 17th
Finally a drawing tutorial. Really great work and very detailed.
Great to have you to write a tutorial for us.
David June 17th
that looks so beautiful!
MyMode Network June 17th
WOW!
This is way TOO KEWL!!
PSDtuts ROCKsss!!!
Thanx for what I love to call “The Tutorial”…
Zach LeBar June 17th
awesome to see this type of work in a tut here. keep ‘em coming.
Qbrushes June 17th
way out of my reach but inspiring
thanks
MotiveMedia June 17th
Very Nice!!! It’s great inspiration!
i1100a June 17th
Wow, I sure could use all those lighting, shadow and color tips, man, thanks a bunch!
adrienne June 17th
I love how you included the light chart. Really helpful
Dullface June 17th
I’m horrible at drawing, but the light and shadow bit was very interesting, nice read indeed.
Keith June 17th
Wow very impressive. Not only by the final product buy how the author made those light and shadow references, I’m always forgetting about those.
Mihai June 17th
This is by far one of the best tutorials here. The author has a nice way of explaining things. Good job.
Ralph June 17th
Very impressive!!! And that’s seems so easy thanks for sharing!!!
Nate June 17th
Pretty neat, I will definitely try this one out.
Nicolee :] June 17th
Hi there, when I open the final image, it won’t display because it “contains errors”.
PS. I LOVE PSDTUTS! <3 More than you know. And I can’t wait for VECTORTUTS to get filled with some awesome tutorials.
MONSTER June 17th
Nice Light and Camera diagram.
Joefrey Mahusay June 17th
Perfect tutorial.
Paul June 17th
Probably one of the best tutorials on this site in my mind. All the other tutorials are amazing, and dont deserve any lack of credit. But this tutorial covers so many areas I knew I was lacking. Ive been looking for something like this but couldnt find a tut out there that actually showed me that next step in my design. Theres just so much helpful information that really shoudnt be looked past. This is the reason why PSD is one of the best out there. Its really easy to read also, out of no where I go “wow, im on step 21″. Thanks for the great tutorial, with the amount of versatility its one of the best.
Nice June 17th
Very good tut. I actually have a real painting very similar to this but instead of the tree floating in mid air its being uprooted from the earth and floating up. I’m not too good at painting but now I can recreate that using photoshop
PannonDesigner June 17th
awesome
Pannon Designer June 17th
i like it, thanks
Aaron June 17th
wow, the points on shadows and light, warm and cool colors are fantastic. great tut!
faith June 17th
ALL of the contents about the color, light, and shadow theory are from http://itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm
Please site your sources.
Danny June 17th
Very nice end product!
mmhan June 17th
So extensive and beautiful. Great Tutorial!
Zim June 17th
Very nice tutorial, it covers nice topics!
Ben Jacob June 17th
Thanks for the great tutorial, But the sample tutorial looks more cartoon like, than the fantasy appearance.. I think some minor modifications can make it beautiful.
andre June 17th
so detailed. i love it . and thanks for all the diagrams
Me June 17th
Nicely done! Much better than inpersonal 2.0 gradients we commonly see too much of.
chandan June 17th
amazing
nkhat June 17th
good work , but sky color it’s not better than blue color
ZaFaR June 17th
Pretty neat, I will definitely try this one out.
BogDinamita June 17th
wow.. awesome, yet something I don’t ever see myself doin
Katherine June 17th
Truly inspirational~~~~~~ THANK YOU!!!
Jonas June 17th
Lame.
Sorry friends. but this does not look real.
crazyhunk June 17th
really very good explained tutorial…… thanx a lot…
Al June 17th
Amazing. Out of my little league, but very cool
filla June 17th
I love the effect of that clouds.. Nice job!!!
Daniel June 17th
very good one! very nice drawing technique. Very useful! thanks a lot !
demadrugada June 17th
Nice work
Kobi June 17th
good work
des-max June 17th
thank you man
its very nice
good work
Shane June 17th
First I saw the end result and thought - ‘wow - that’s pretty’, but then I was bowled over by the quality and depth of the tutorial.
Gonna try this later today!
Thanks very much for posting. I’m also keen to see more ‘drawing’ tutorials such as this.
ayoub June 17th
thanks for this great fantastic awesome tutorial .
drwizard June 17th
Wow!
Arnaud Alves June 17th
Amazing
Ben Griffiths June 17th
Thats a really great tutorial, thanks!
Ariful Alam Khan June 17th
nice drawing
D. Carreira June 17th
Great tutorial!
David Carreira
FBdesign June 17th
OMG i’ll try this now…
THX
Ruben June 17th
WOW how original. I never thought this could be achieved with Photoshop, lol.
RUGRLN June 17th
Wow, great work, will give it a shot later!
THE_REAPER June 17th
Greetings mortals,
did someone try it out? Show off your works. I would like to see more of it : )
Wouter June 17th
It’s so real!
Nice just wow
Thkx
Matt Radel June 18th
@ Bogus: You might wanna be a bit quicker when hitting “Submit Comment” .
Awesome tutorial - I love the illustrations on lighting. Very, very cool!
Andrew Pryde June 18th
Now thats good! Although I cant see myself sitting for that ammount of time to paint a tree digitally.
Andrew
CPG June 18th
Photoshop is not the best soft to do this sort of illustrations. Painter is better.
I agree it’s a way to… very detailed tut.
MD June 18th
Looks amazing! Good job!
Thnx!
Tim Soret June 18th
According to me, the final result is poor (not enough details) and the perspective is totally false.
But the techniques used are pretty interesting.
It’s also funny to see that I did something with a very close idea recently :
http://www.timsoret.com/concours/emob-mai-2008/big/final.jpg
eca June 18th
Thanks so much! I work in a university computer lab and I was nervous to work all summer with no students to help. PSDtuts is making this summer so much more fun. And, of course, I will be way ahead of the curve when school starts again this fall!
This tutorial has taught me things I didn’t know I didn’t know.
Thanks again!
tedd62 June 18th
very nice
looks amazing!!!
thanks
mausyo June 18th
I tried the tutorial and i managed to do somehting but is not so good as yours.
And i stayed 2 hours to make id ^.^. rofl
Roland June 18th
Awesome tutorial! Very high quality and amazing outcome.
Andrew D June 18th
WOW very helpful! I always wanted to do digital painting, thanks!
Mike Digitall June 18th
Nice final ambient in this illustration tut!-_-
HaydenG June 18th
Absolutely Amazing!
Tom June 18th
You are insane, but very good
kailoon June 18th
Can you write a tutorial about digital paint for Chinese Traditional Painting?
aGS June 18th
I like it a lot, colors are nice, but I have to agree that the perspective is a bit off… there are too much grass to see when the tree is straight pointing the sky… (Next time watch out your HL - smile -) maybe that’s why is “Fantasy” I will give it a try
I love how many details you put in the explanations… keep the good work!
hyper June 18th
Great Tut! I will have to work this one through! I’m happy to see that oldfashioned skills in arts are still needed. Makes me think that paying attention all those years was worth it
I’s be happy to get more instruction of how to work with this in photoshop (and not in chalk or oil…)
hyper
viz June 18th
more like this would be GREAT
thank you
Lamin Barrow June 18th
it looks very good. Kinda reminds me of a music video. Well done.
stock June 18th
wow!! i have no words to describe this tut!! awesome!!
Kyle Wegner June 18th
Absolutely stunning. At first I thought you were going to just repurpose existing images to look “digitally painted” but I was pleasantly surprised when everything was done from scratch (well, and some good brushes!). Kudos.
goldenthunder June 18th
This is amazing! Great detail! Thanks.
rahul hans June 18th
hi.. i am rahul..
I don’t have word how to i describe your work .. i have a learn lots of thing with tutorial which i have never know before.. please it’s my humble request to u please post this type of tutorial in future also.
regards
rahul
Rooney June 18th
Beauty !
Natalya June 18th
COOL! I want some more such tutorials! THANK YOU VERY VERY VERY MUCH!!!!
Kzida June 18th
I have a tablet with a pen…
so I really love this Tutorial…
Certainly gonna try it when i’m back home :D:D:D
ilovecolors June 18th
Not good, the perspective is really odd, and the leaves looks like cotton candy made of leaves. Although you talked about lighting you didn’t applied your own concepts, the leaves suffer from the lack of shadows and highlights.
Arson June 19th
Yay a drawing tutorial! I just got a tablet that I’ve been itching to use.
dariuszman June 19th
Finally something different than texture + overlay. It’ll be pleasure to spend saturday drawing.
Thanks a lot.
A-vy June 19th
THX for that TUT!!!!!
I realy learnd a lot new stuff!
Here is my Fantasy Tree:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthiaskadach/2587191602/
esty June 19th
thanks! this is great! yes please do more like this - the artsier side of photoshop
Jeffrey Herrero June 19th
thank you very much very good tutorial
Christina June 20th
This is a great tutorial; one of the best I’ve seen. As a photoshop beginner, I really appreciate the screenshots of the pallet selections, brush stroke arrows, and step by step instructions. I got hung up on finding the grass brush for quite some time. I appended all the brush selections and it still wasn’t there. I eventually gave up and opted to reset the brushes. Lo and behold, the grass brush was there. I still don’t know what happened, but after that I was able to make my way through the rest of the tutorial. I would love to see more tutorials like this. I’m learn a lot more by creating from scratch than modifying photos. Thank you very much!!
Christina June 20th
Here’s my tree! http://www.flickr.com/photos/27809259@N04/
markus June 20th
Really interesting all the explanation about colors and shadows. I give you 5 stars for the tutorial!!
Jiří Tvrdek June 20th
Hilarious!
b June 20th
This is a great tut! It’s good to see some PS Illustration. Please give us more.
erik June 21st
O M G !
erik June 21st
painting is hard for me.-_-#
http://clip2net.com/clip/m3651/1214023644-clip-112kb.jpg
Bilal Ghouri June 22nd
Nice tutorial, Thank you for posting it
Hai Nghiem June 24th
Great job.
Max June 25th
Wow this looks cool, and you make it so easy that (maybe :P) even I can do this. Thanks a bunch!
siubie June 25th
WoW
Marcio Munhoz June 26th
I’ts amazing ! great job !
federico June 27th
Very nice tutorial!
Pro July 3rd
<3 Thank you so much, I found out exactly what I wanted to learn, it was super useful. I will be referring back to this tutorial very often until I get a full understanding
Saldriana July 4th
This is a treasure. Excellent!!!
soja.bob July 4th
Awesome, thank you for this.
I love the way you explain the way you work. *thumb up*
Gali July 5th
Hi, awesome tutorial, one question, can somebody write a tutorial on how to paint a face in photoshop, thank you
tomoharu July 15th
that’s nice. good job.
Jan July 18th
Wicked
TuanAnh July 19th
Great tutorial again!
I’ve shared my friends this great site!!
Keep your work up!
zio steve July 29th
Wow, very cool tutorial!
Enes Kaya July 30th
The best tutorial I’ve ever seen, thank you so much for sharing that techniques
Do I have the permission to use my self made dream tree (with help of your tutorial of course) on my new blog?
RedLine RedApple August 8th
Excellent work!!!
thank you very much
TwoFace. August 21st
cool cool!
dor August 22nd
U GUYS R SO PROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
DAMIT!!
WHERE DID U LEARN DESIGN???
Nuxly Stardust August 24th