[1] Expressing a sense of space and depth

I will roughly express a sense of distance in the background. I’m using the general aerial perspective method to do this.

This step is not that important but the processing time may be pretty long depending on your PC.

 

I prepared a brush based on the [Soft] [Airbrush] tool. I adjusted the brush size to max.

I chose 2000px, the maximum brush size on Clip Studio Paint.

 

I’m hoping that one day they’ll make a 10000px brush! Hint hint, nudge nudge.

Anyway, for this step I could use the [Gradient] tool but decided to use a brush instead so I can better achieve the look I want.

 

I create a new layer and paint along the horizon with white.

The reason why I chose this color is because the color of the lights reflected in the air by the sun is white. Unless it’s a sunset, the sunlight is perceived as white because it is very strong.

 

I added red arrows to show you the direction of the strokes because I painted outside the canvas.

The rendering process for these strokes take a long time so please be patient. Maybe you can read a book or have a cup of tea while waiting.

When it’s done, I lower the layer opacity to 15%.

 

Next, I duplicate this layer.

Then I select the whole screen (the layer) using the [Selection] tool (Shortcut: [Ctrl] + [A]) and display the [Selection Launcher]. From there I select [Scale up/Scale down/Rotate] from the Selection Launcher.

 

Then I scale up the layer as below.

 

It’s become about 20000px wide but I’m not worried about that and keep on zooming out.

This may take a while but again, please be patient.

 

The opacity of the layer before it was copied was 15% but to see it better I changed it to 100%. After making other changes, I then lower the opacity to 7%.

 

I would like to add a similar effect to the areas where the light is not directly hitting.

Using the 1200px blurred brush, I paint shadows with medium-dark and dark colors.

 

In the aerial perspective method, objects get blurry but, it is not realistic to blur out all of the colors. You can copy and paste the area and apply the Blur Filter. However, you can not express a sense of distance this way because the whole canvas gets blurred the same degree.

For this reason, I use a brush to blur.

 

Compared to the previous step, the processing time is much shorter.

When it’s done, I lower the layer opacity to 15%.

I may adjust the opacity of these layers in later steps.

 

[2] Checking the overall finish

I display all the layers of the buildings and lower the opacity of linework layers to 20%.

Note: The aerial perspective layers are not displayed.

 

Even without the linework layers, details of the lights and shadows complete this Sci-fi city.