Making Of 'To The Waterfall'

Software Used :

Photoshop CS2

I didn't have a plan when I made this picture so this isn't going to be a particularly detailed Making Of, and some of the steps are not great, but I hope you will still get some inspirations from the process.

Inspiration :

I always draw inspiration from everything that I am interested in at a particular moment, such as movies, fine art, eating noodles etc. For To The Waterfall, the concept idea came from a doodle (Fig.01) that I had done in my spare time (at that time, I didn't plan anything and just drew freely). I then combined this doodle with the idea of childhood dreams and then the story and the fantasy world started to come together.

Fig. 01_rough_painting

Fig. 01_rough_painting

Sketching & Refrences :

I did lots of different sketches to find the best composition and a perspective that matched with my original idea. I wanted to be able to tell the story that I had in my mind through the image (Fig.02). I then moved into Photoshop and after choosing the best sketch, I started looking for some references for the objects in the scene that weren't clear and that I needed a guideline for. These included the landscape, the turtle, the waterfall etc. (Fig.03).

Fig. 02_sketches

Fig. 02_sketches

Fig. 03_waterfall_refrence

Fig. 03_waterfall_refrence

Painting Process :

To make the main character I started with a separate layer. I opened up a new page and then started from a mid-tone to manage the color of it. I kept painting, building up the colors and introducing the light and shadowed areas (Fig.04). In this process I only used the Round brush, with Opacity set to 100% and Flow to 20-50%. For texturing the head of the turtle, I used a picture of an old wall and then deleted parts of it with the Eraser tool to make the texture blend better with the character. I then set the texture layer to Overlay and the Fill parameter to 59% (Fig.05).

Fig. 04_block_painting_detailed

Fig. 04_block_painting_detailed

Fig. 05_textureing

Fig. 05_textureing

After finishing the character I put him onto my sketch and started painting the background. The color of the background came from my imagination and so I didn't need any reference material for this part. I opened a new layer for every object and every distance. Then, as I did with the turtle, I started painting the color of the background from the mid-tone, adding in lighting and shadow details until the image was finished (Fig.06).

Fig. 06_step_by_step

Fig. 06_step_by_step

And here is the final image (Fig.07)!

Fig. 07_waterfall_final

Fig. 07_waterfall_final

Conclusion :

I was really happy with this image because I felt it really captured my initial idea about childhood dreams. I hope you found this Making Of useful in some small way and I'd like to leave you with one quick piece of advice: don't worry about the concept or idea behind an image that you're painting. If you love to paint then just sit down and do it and you'll find that as your image develops it will tell the story itself.

To see more by Wanchana Intrasombat, check out Digital Art Masters: Volume 9
and Prime - The Definitive Digital Art Collection

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