Written by Chenthooran N

Today's tutorial is on the creation of "egg" (or whatever else I've called this picture before)

First up is the list of brushes I like to use:

I use the pencil for most sketch work, tinting for blocking in or experimenting with colour then move onto the wet oily brush for painting. In this piece I also made use of a custom fern brush which looked like fish bones to me :P and a fingerprint brush for added texture.

The steps are pretty much the same as they were on the doubtful inquisitor (the previous tut) so I may only point out any differences or things worthy of note. Check the others in the series for a more comprehensive tut.

I was doodling some ideas on a page, the basis for this one stuck out so I redrew it a little bigger and added more focus as well.

Blocked in the colours on a multiply layer above. Turned off the pick up underlying colour option on the layers window so that I don't get the black line work mixing with the colours.

As usual I paint the background first. Wanted a dark forest and for the foetus to be the light source so there's no light coming in through the branches or in the distance. I'm a sucker for textures so I spent quite some time at this stage using custom brushes to get the grainy look.

Cut the coloured and pasted it onto the new background to see how everything fits.

Rendered the bones next since I'm painting back to front.

Rendered the bone a little better, added some mist as well. It seemed like a good idea at the time but in the end that mist gave the image a washed out look.

At this point I wanted to try painting a foetus in a womb more than the scene, I lack discipline. The fantasy scene with the giant floating baby is still cool but I prefer the weirdness of having a womb just growing out of a pile of bones. So the foetus got bigger and more centralized. I used some Da Vinci studies for the foetus pose (if you're painting something for the 1st time always use ref, actually use ref whenever you can). An alternative is to study the images beforehand, noting lengths, colours, bends etc. trying to memorize the image and see it in 3d in your head.

I've gone into the tonal controls and drained out a lot of the red, I've also made it darker. The cooler green gives a creepier atmosphere than the warm browns.

Overlay layers = win, I put that fun glow on the womb using an overlay layer with semi saturated yellow. I've also added strong highlights to make the image pop. You'll also notice some orange glow on the trees.

More highlights, deeper shadows, upped the contrast too. All this makes the image stand out and adds focus to the foetus. Image was done as far as I was concerned.

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