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Dark Priestess Tutorial

Written by Stephen Hinds

This is a basic painting tutorial in Photoshop CS3 on how I approach painting with a couple of easy steps.

1. Composition

Before I started this painting, I had to figure out where I was going to place my figure.

Since she is the focus of the painting, I did some basic shapes that flow into and towards her, with the aim of drawing the viewer's eyes towards her - they should see her at first glance.

Before I started to refine her, I painted her as a silhouette, so I could figure out my negative space to make her posing strong. I usually use black for silhouetting purposes, but you can use any color. And of course you can paint over your blacks to define your piece. I paint with big shapes first then tighten later.

Also as you might have noticed, in the upper left hand corner, I always try to make a general color palette on a separate layer, so that all the colors in the piece can work well with each other. You don't need all the colors in the rainbow to make a painting, usually 3-4 colors should work nicely to make a well balanced painting. Whether it be all warm colors, or all cool colors, or a mixture of warm and cool colors. Also, it is sometimes handy to make notes for yourself as you paint, so I made a layer for notes for things I may want to tackle later in the painting, that I may forget.

 

2. Background

Next I moved onto the background. I would usually start with the background first, because it's often better to create the background and work your way up to the foreground, but in this case I was trying to figure out how I should compose the background to match the foreground subject. So since she is a dark priestess, I just made a stained glass setting to correlate with her story. I painted the shapes of the windows, and painted the colors for the stained glass. To get that honeycomb texture on the glass, I added a photoshop filter called " Stained Glass" which can be located by clicking "Filter>Texture>Stained Glass", which you can adjust the wire or size of the window panes. Going back to the composition step, remember my color palette? I used those colors on the windows on a red background, to give it an ominous atmosphere.

 

3. Silhouette

I added candles and candle stands then the next part was the panther. So again, going back to composition, I needed to figure out how to place the panther in the right place. So in this case I used a light blue, again, you can use any color you prefer to silhouette. So I positioned it behind the priestess. Another thing to be careful of when painting or drawing is tangents. Tangents are when lines are touching each other at the edges. So if you look closely at the tail of the panther, I painted it going off screen rather than forcing it inside the composition where it would have been touching the edge of the screen. Also, keep in mind the negative space, you don't want to lose those shapes by covering them up.

 

4. Glow Effect

After refining to a certain degree, I decided to add some crystal shards to my painting to add some more depth and focus.

The step is a technique I use for making things glow. I personally do not use the glow filter in photoshop because it does not give me the desired effect. So in order to make things glow, I use 3 layers.

1. The object that you want to add a glow to, right-click on that layer, and duplicate it once. You should have 2 identical layers. On the bottom layer of those duplicates, we are going to add a "Gaussian Blur" effect. Go to the top, and click on "Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur" This will blur your image on that layer by adjusting it to how much aura you want your glow to have. Once done, click OK. Your blur might look like the example above in image one.

 

 

In image 2 looking at the layers on the right of the picture, that was your original layer. So your original layer is on top of the layer that you just blurred giving you a glowing type of effect.

 

Then for the last step, I added another copy of the original layer, and duplicated it one more time, and I made the crystals closest to the window a little bit orange to make it seem like it was taking colors from the light from the window, to give it some sort of atmospheric depth.

 

Finishing Touches

Last but not least, I added some overlaying textures, and added a color balance layer to make it a little bit more cool with a hint of blue, and voila! And at this stage, you can look over everything, check for things you may have missed and refine them some more. And that concludes this tutorial!

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them on the forums and I will gladly try to help you as best as I can with any inquiries you may have.