A
tutorial I whipped up on how to paint clouds/smoke/steam
or whatever. Its all basically the same
technique anyway right? ;] The full-sized
images are actually the size I've painted
them at. I believe that the technique shown
here works best when you are working HUGE
and resize your painting down. Its just
not as easy to form the details correctly
when working this small, so I encourage
everyone who follows this tut to start with
a larger canvas. :)
Oh
yeah.... and don't tell anyone but this
is only my second time to paint clouds.
So we are both going through a learning
experience here. *grin*
Step
1 - We're starting on a neutral
toned, washy, textured background. Just
used a series of rough brushes here.
Step
2
- Using a rather large brush, lay
out the path of your smoke (or clouds).
Determine the light source and paint
in general "puff" shapes
using your highlight color. This smoke
is going straight up, but that's not
very realistic... usually the wind
will catch it and pull it off to the
side, especially once its high in
the air. Feel free to paint them going
whichever way you want. :)
Step
3 - Just a continuation of step
2, except we're working more with
shadow at this point.
Step
4
- With a soft brush I've gone in to
define some areas. Smoke billows up
into large fluffy masses, but starts
out much more condensed. The closer
to the source, the more little ridges
and bumps you will see. I went back
with some smudging to smooth things
out.
Step
5
- Adding in details with two different
brushes. A medium sized textured brush
and a smaller round, hard edged brush.
Smoke tends to kind of layer up on
top of itself. So imagine a bunch
of irregular shaped discs when working,
all overlapping on top of eachother.
Think of fish scales. Each pieces
has a small bit of shadow at the bottom
and then fades up into a brilliant
highlight where it "fluffs"
out. Sometimes, depending on the way
the light is coming in this effect
can be done backwards (see the final
image)
Step
6 - Continuing upwards. Smoothing
rough edges as needed, but still trying
to keep texture intact. I also scribbled
in a tiny volcano. Ain't it cute?
You'd never think it would smoke so
much would you? Yeah well, don't question
the volcano!
Step
7 - Final step! I rushed this
last step like you wouldn't believe.
Just finishing up some of the fluffy
areas, although I think there should
be at least twice as many. I got lazy,
what can I say? But you can't get
lazy. No sireee... you must continue
to paint puffs and puffs and puffs
into you have one giant beautiful
mass of smokey goodness.
