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Step 8 -
More painting. Here I added indications of scaly dinosaur skin, and brightened the focal area a bit more. The image overall has a warm overtone to it, something that I don’t want so I will fix that later.
Step 9 - Here, I decided to brighten the dinosaurs head as well as provide some sort of ambient lighting to the rest of the ground plane that surrounds the focal area. An overlay layer with a light de-saturated color was applied over where I wanted the light source to be. It’s important not to overdo this, since it will look really cheesy and obvious if not done with care. I also glazed over the edges around the painting with a darker color set to multiply in order to frame it, bringing out the composition even more. Doing this allows the viewer to distinguish more clearly where I want their focus to be drawn on.
Step 10 - This is where I made a major change. Previously, I felt the key color to be a little too warm and reddish for my liking, and so I decided to apply color balance and curves adjustment layers over the entire painting. You’ll notice that after this was done, it resembled very close to the final image. These layer modes are great in a sense that it can allow you to sit back and choose what you do and do not want. Keep in mind that it takes several passes to get to the results that you want and it is by no means a quick fix. It still takes an understanding of lighting, and color to make it work. Photoshop may make an artist much faster, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into a better artist. Additionally, these solutions offer much more flexibility compared to the traditionally approach of painting over it, although that wouldn’t be too bad either. Maybe, someday I’ll choose to do an entire digital painting on one layer without using any of the options available. Right now that sounds scary but that will be fun and challenging. =)
Step 11 - More painting done here. I noticed the dinosaur’s leg didn’t feel integrated so I decided to cover it up with some long grass. Also, I felt the figures shirt was too bright so I went ahead and darkened that area too.
Finally -
I decided that the dinosaur needed something to make it more different so I went ahead and painted in some horns on its back and head region. I continued to add details here and there, without zooming in too much in order to have a complete view of the picture. Zooming in too frequently can make one lose attention to how the entire image is working out as a whole. The painting up close is actually quite chaotic and loose. I applied some backlighting to the figure as well, reflecting some of the local colors from the surroundings. From here on out, it just became a process of nitpicking, changing and adding details, micro-composing certain areas so that tangents don’t occur, and darkening and brightening specific areas to make it pop out more. That’s about it I guess. Hopefully this made some sense and it helped you picked up a thing or two. Feel free to shoot me an email if anything seems confusing. If you know another way of doing things, I’d love to learn. Thanks for reading!
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