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February 12: Atmospheric Painting

Drawing Warmup

Get to work on your Atmospheric Painting.

WORK THROUGH THIS PAINTING STEP BY STEP.

Expectations:

C: Voice Level 0 (no talking)

H: Raise your hand

A: Work on the assignment

M: Stay in your assigned seat

P: Work till assignment is completed

WHAT ARE WE LEARNING: This week we will develop an atmospheric painting following a step-by-step process.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT: Landscapes are a critical part of how comic artists tell stories. Landscapes do more than give a story a setting, they create mood and help us deepen our understanding of all the characters in a story.

HOW WILL MY TEACHER KNOW WHAT I LEARNED: You will create your own landscape atmospheric perspective.

ATMOSPHERIC PAINTING - DUE TODAY

Criteria

Line art drawn as outlines to give painting structure.

Colors painted more saturated in the foreground.

Colors tint and shift toward sky color in the background and in the shadows.

Dark Values painted to add shadows from a consistent light source.

Accent colors painted for specific features.

Bright Values painted to add hightlights from a consistent light source.

Effective use of class time

Used one of the four photo options given on the class website

Draw Line Art

You need to start this project by drawing line art for your landscape.

Focus on drawing the outlines of objects and features of your landscape.

Don't worry too much about the shading (dark values) during this step.

SHOW ME YOUR SCREEN WHEN YOU COMPLETE THIS STEP

PAINT THE FOREGROUND

Create a new layer beneath your line art layer.

Name it "Foreground".

Choose a color for the foreground.

This color should be highly saturated.

Paint this color into the foreground of your artwork.

PAINT THE MIDDLE-GROUND

Create a new layer beneath your foreground layer.

Name it "Middle Ground".

Choose a color for the middle-ground.

This color should be less saturated than your foreground color.

Paint this color into the middle-ground of your artwork.

PAINT THE BACKGROUND

Create a new layer beneath your middle ground layer.

Name it "Background".

Choose a color for the background.

This color should be less saturated than your middle ground color.

Paint this color into the background of your artwork.

PAINT THE SKY

Create a new layer beneath your background layer.

Name it "Sky".

Choose a color for the sky.

This color can be anything you want!

You can try to match the colors of your photo reference or get creative. Just remember that the color of the sky will also bleed into other parts of your painting - especially background colors and shadows.

Paint this color into the sky above your landscape.

SHADE IN DARK VALUES

At the top of the layers panel, hit the square button with the checkerboard panel. This will lock your foreground layer so you can't accidentally paint outside of it.

Make sure you have your foreground layer selected

Choose a color that is darker and slightly more saturated than your base foreground color. Stay in the same HUE range.

Paint in the shadows on your foreground layer.

Try to match your brush strokes to the textures you see in your reference photo.

Follow the same process for your middle ground layer.

Select the layer and lock its pixels.

Choose a color that's darker and less saturated than your base color for the shadows.

Repeat this process with your background layer.

My background is not very big, so there's not much for me to paint!

Paint Accent Colors

Once you've painted a base layer for your foreground, middle, and background, and you've added a first pass of darker values, you can start to paint in some other colors that you see in your reference photo.

In this image, I've added some GREEN accent color to the shrubs in the foreground and some ORANGE accent color to the rock towers in the middle ground.

Paint your accent colors into the layer where they belong. If you're painting and object in the foreground, make sure you have the foreground layer selected.

Be careful about the saturation of your colors. For example, the green I chose might look strong, but it's actually a dark yellow/grey.

Remember your colors need to get lighter as they fade into the background.

Paint Highlights

HIGHLIGHT COLOR

This is the highlight color I chose for my rock towers. This is the color that shows where the towers are hit with bright, direct light.

BASE COLOR

My highlight color is not much brighter in value, but it's yellow hue is brighter than the orange/grey base.

Paint Atmosphere

The first thing I want to do is to make my sky fade in a gradient toward a pinkish white at the visible horizon.

I selected my sky layer.

I locked my pixels.

I set my brush opacity very low. This will allow me to build up my new color and fade into the blue that I had already put down.

Now I'm ready to give my painting an atmospheric quality with a very simple addition of color.

I selected my background layer and I locked my pixels.

I selected the color of the sky using the Eyedropper tool.

I turned my brush opacity down to 23%.

I painted my background layer with this color so that it blended into the color of the sky.

I repeated this process with my middle ground, but was careful to paint fewer layers of my sky color over the colors here.

WHAT IS ATMOSPHERIC PERSPECTIVE?

Atmospheric Perspective - Distant objects seem less detailed, colors fade to grey/blue because of haze.

COLOR THEORY - HUE, SATURATION, AND VALUE

Hue - Purest form of a color

Saturation - Intensity of a color or how mixed it is with black/white/grey

Value - How light or dark a color is

VIDEO GUIDES TO ATMOSPHERIC PERSPECTIVE

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