Introduction
Hello everyone! I hope you are doing well!
Today I am going to share with you the way I use to draw different types of sky and atmospheres!
Whether it is from a sunny and clear day, to the fiercest storm of all!
In the end, you will see that all the atmospheres you want to draw follow the same formula, just a different presentation.
And this time, I bring you the tutorial in two different presentations, either on this blog or in a video on my YouTube channel.
Without anything else to add, I am Gaia and welcome to this blog.
Some things to understand before
Something that I think is important to be clear about is a very important characteristic linked to the sky that we see every day and it is the atmosphere, which is, well, the atmosphere is attached to the earth and the earth, in turn, is spherical.
For example, here we have Larry.
Larry, like you and me, is glued to the ground and wants to look toward the horizon, but the further toward the horizon Larry looks, the more atmosphere there is between him and what he is looking at.
The opposite happens the higher up Larry wants to look, the less atmosphere there is between his eyes and the sunlight.
Sooner or later, Larry will learn that it is not a good idea to look directly at the Sun.
Once we have understood this, then we can now get straight into the tutorial!!
Drawing the daytime sky
Now, for all the skies we want to make, they will look amazing if we make a gradient! (Or a blur), this will give it a lot of personality, as well as helping us understand what time of day it is.
In the case of a daytime sky, these are the colors I will use.
For the daytime sky, we'll use a base color (the one in the middle), a slightly lighter one (on the left), and a darker color.
Note that the difference between the lighter color and the base color isn't much, but they are still different.
Feel free to use these same colors.
Now, we will fill our canvas with these colors BUT! in different layers
So we will end up with something like this, the base color will always go to the bottom.
Gradient tool
Once we have our layers in order, it's time to make the gradient. There are many ways and tools to do this, but this is my personal favorite.
The tool is called “Gradient Erase” and we can find it in this section
As I said, there are many tools and other options to make the gradient, such as the “Daytime Sky” one. Feel free to use those as well, but for now we will use this tool to keep things simpler, as it is a very straightforward function that doesn’t need much customization.
This tool will create a gradient on the layer we have selected, so that the original content of the layer will gradually fade away until it becomes transparent.
That's why we put the colors on different layers
Now, something important to note about this tool (as with the rest of the gradient tools) is that when we select it, the first input will be to make a line in the direction we want our gradient to go. The longer the line, the smoother the gradient will be; if we make a short line, the gradient will be very hard.
Play with this tool until you get the desired result, you can also play with the position and saturation of the layers.
My sky ended up like this
Colors of the landscape
In this particular blog, we won't focus much on the detail of the beach landscape (since this is a sky blog). However, I think it's important to cover how the atmosphere will affect the colors we're going to use.
In this case, the color palette is a vibrant one, since the sun is overhead here.
Depth
Remember what we saw about the atmosphere? Well, that is also important when lighting our landscape, because the further away an object is, the more atmosphere there will be between it and the camera, therefore, it will blend more with the sky. To achieve that effect, we first have to divide our depths.
In this case, the palm tree that is closest to the camera (or foreground) is depth 1.
The bushes in front, the sea and the beach are depth 2.
And the rest of the elements go from depth 3 to 6.
I recommend that you make your depth 1 a dark color, since it is an element that the camera cannot focus on well.
As for depth 2, don't move anything! With the colors you have chosen it will look incredible.
Things change from depth 3 onwards, that is what we are going to modify. First, I recommend that you select the elements at that depth level.
I did it with the magic wand tool and only selected what was inside the outline that I had previously made.
Now, select your elements in the depth and then, with the base (or light) color you have chosen for the sky, you will fill your element.
Then, on the layer where you have put the color, lower the opacity and this is how you will achieve this effect.
In my case, I kept the opacity at 25.
Now, select the elements of the next depth and do the same! Just don't lower the opacity of that layer too much. Then depth 4, then 5 and so on until you finish them all!
And you'll get an effect like this.
See how things get mixed up the further away they are?
With this you would have finished your clear sky, but of course, that looks very flat…
Let's add some clouds!!
Clouds
To do this, I recommend using a soft mixer brush.
I also recommend doing the clouds on a separate layer. Above your sky but below your scenery, so you can do interesting things without affecting your other layers.
Now, with the brush you have chosen, we will start making random shapes. Remember that clouds (usually) have a flat base and on top they have all the fluffiness. For the color of the clouds, I advise you to take a white color or a very light blue.
Then, with the base color of your sky and using the same brush, give some shading to your clouds (remember that the light comes from above)
Don't be afraid to play with shapes and forms, and don't be afraid to play with shadows either. Put shadows here and there, that will give a lot of volume to your sky.
Finally, with the dark color you've chosen for your sky, put another layer of shadows and texture on your clouds. I assure you that it will look great.
With this, you will have finished the daytime sky of your stage.
I think it is important to mention that for practical reasons of this tutorial, we will not do any kind of rendering to any of the elements other than the sky, since that is the objective of today and not the rest of the stage.
Drawing the night sky
Now, to draw a night sky, we're going to apply the same formula.
One base color, one dark color, and one light color. Only this time, choose dark blues and purples! That'll give it an interesting touch.
For the base colors of your scene, many people use the color they would use during the day, but more muted and towards blacks, that's one way to do it.
I advise you to use (just like in the sky) a range of purples and dark blues, don't worry, according to the context of your scene, people will understand what it is =)
Now, with the droplet brush (one of my favorites) and the ellipse tool, we will make the stars and the moon.
As an interesting note here. For the stars and the moon I didn't use white, but rather a very light sky blue. Also, for the stars, I also put some in a saturated red color and an equally saturated sky blue, since there are different colors of stars. I think that gives it a nice touch.
Afterwards, we can erase a semi circle on the moon or with the circular selection tool, and as a phenomenal detail. We can also add a gradient with the base color of the sky. That will give it a touch.
Clouds
To draw the clouds, we will use the same formula that we used in the daytime scenario, with random shapes. Only now, instead of white, we will use the light color we have chosen for the sky as the base color; for the shadows of the clouds we will use the dark color of the sky, and the highlights or sparkles will be made with the color we used for the stars or the moon.
Depth of night
To give the illusion of depth here, we will use the dark color of the sky and we will also use the technique that we saw in the day section.
That's how easy it is to have your night sky!
Intermediate
If you noticed, the formula for making the atmosphere of your scene is very simple and repetitive.
1) Choose the colors of your sky and blend them.
2) Choose the colors of the scene according to the sky.
3) With the colors of the sky, you color, shade and lighten the clouds.
4) With the base (or dark) color of the sky, you add depth to your scene.
That's right!
With those 4 simple steps you can make almost any sky you can imagine. However, there are some situations that can still be complex or a bit out of the established standard.
Cloudy sky
Next, I'll show you how I make a cloudy sky. As always, we start by choosing our colors, only this time there won't be 3, but 2, since a cloudy scene tends to feel flatter. These are my colors.
And this time, for colors, I advise you to stay very close to grays, that gives that dull effect that characterizes cloudy days.
This is how my stage looked like
This time, for the depth I recommend that you use the dark color that you have chosen for the sky.
And for the clouds, we'll do what we've been doing so far! Only all over the sky (Because it's a cloudy day :P)
This time, for the clouds, I used an extra color than the one I used for the sky, so I added a little more depth and texture.
Normally, we would be done here, but we can add even more things taking advantage of this scenario.
With a hard, thin brush and a very light blue, we can make thin, shaky lines to create lightning bolts!
We do this effect in 3 simple steps:
1) First we make the body of the lightning bolt, remembering to vary the density of the line, don't be afraid to make some parts thicker than others.
2) From the main body, we make even thinner branches, these can be connected to other lightning bolts.
3) We erase some parts of the main body, this gives it an interrupted appearance, so it creates an illusion that there are clouds in front of our lightning bolt, this gives more depth to the sky =D
Also, we can give it an extra touch if we use the same brush with which we made the clouds, and with the same color of the lightning bolt, we can give it a characteristic shine
Remember that the thicker it is, the more shine it will emit, you can not add shine to the thin parts of the lightning if you wish.
Rain
To finish off the cloudy day, we can now also add rain, in my case I will make a torrential rain >:)
For this, with a thin brush and a light blue colour, we will make a variety of lines pointing in the same direction, trying to make both the thickness and the length of each line different.
But that doesn't look very torrential… So we'll duplicate the layer and move it around, a few times.
BE CAREFUL TO KEEP DIFFERENT RAIN LAYERS, we'll need that for later.
Then, we will copy and paste again, until we have a large rain density (or to taste)
Remember I told you to keep different layers of rain? Well now is where that is important…
We will use one of the Clip Studio pain filter options, it is called “Gaussian Blur”, you can find it in this part =)
Now, once you have selected the filter, you should see a bar like this.
With that, you can indicate how much of an effect you want to add to your layer. Now, for each of the rain layers you chose, give it a different amount of blur. That will give it:
1) A sense of speed
2) A sense of depth.
In the end, this is how the sky turned out
How heavy or calm the rain is will depend on a few factors:
A) How dense the rain is, that is, the number of lines you are going to put on your canvas.
B) The length and thickness of the lines you make, the thinner and shorter they are, the calmer the rain will be.
The way the rain interacts with the environment we can leave for another blog.
Sunset
Okay, now, we're going to do one of the most magical moments of the day in my opinion! The sunset. Which, like the others, has some challenges.
To start, this time we won't choose 2 colors, or 3, but we'll choose 4 colors, which I advise you to dance between orange and purple. These are my colors =)
Now, on this occasion, the gradient that we will give to the sky will be a little harder, because of the amount of colors that there are, and in my opinion, that gives it a special touch.
For the sunset sky, the dark purple will go to the top and the dark orange will go to the bottom, so that the light colors stay in the center of our horizon.
For the colors of the stage, I like to keep it very magical, so I will also use purple and orange colors that match the sky. I invite you to try it too!
Now, for depth, try experimenting with the orange or yellow colors you've chosen.
Now, for the clouds, use the light color you have chosen as a base, for the shadows, use the purples of the sky.
That looks great!
Now, the most important thing about the sunset is the sun. Using the ellipse shape tool, we're going to enable the option to fill the inside of the circle with our main color.
Now, holding shift to make a perfect circle, and with a very very light yellow color, we will put the sun behind the clouds.
We can still add one more detail.
Using the same tool, on a different layer, we can add an even bigger circle! We're going to lower the opacity of this layer a lot.
Now, with the same gradient tool, give it a gradient from the top edge of the circle to the center of the sun, that will give it a very nice touch!
With this, you finished your sky at sunset =)
Amancer
Finally, we'll do the sunrise, and this time we'll use many of the same techniques we've seen so far!
To start, this time we'll also have 4 colors, 2 light blues and two purples.
Again, the dark purple will go to the top but this time the light blue goes to the bottom!
For the colors of your scene, I recommend pastel shades.
Now, with the sun, we will use the same technique that we used for the sunset, only this time we will make it an almost white light blue color, and on the upper part, where the purple is, throw some stars as we saw in the night section.
For the clouds, as a base color I recommend that you use one of the purples that you chose, and for the lighting, the lightest blue that you have put in the sky.
For the gradients of your stage, use any of the blues you have chosen in the sky, and we will use the same technique that we already know =)
With this, dawn would be ready!
Comment