Previous Resources

 

If you just came from parts 1 and 2, feel free to skip this section. I'm just sharing links for anyone that missed things or came here out of order.

 

 

You can find part 1: Concepts and Line Art and part 2: Greyscale at the links below.

And before we get too far in, here is a link to my brush set that I use a lot in this series.

You can download them if you like, but they are not necessary for following this tutorial.

Intro

Hi guys, welcome to part two of the Creating a Fantasy Landscape series!

It's been a long journey getting here and I can't thank you enough for sticking through the series and working with me. I hope the last two parts have been educational and useful to you.

Here is our value painting from part two.

 

There is still so much work left to do to finish our painting. We have decisions to make and a new technique to learn.

Let's get started!

Drafting different lighting scenarios

Now that we have our greyscale painting ready, it's time to decide on our lighting and colors. By this I don't just mean where the light source is coming from but also the time of day and the type of mood we want our environment to have.

 

Colors tell you so much about a scene. They let the viewer know what is going on and how to feel, if they should be afraid, happy, adventurous, etc! It's a very powerful way of communicating things in art so we are going to explore some different lighting scenarios.

 

Before we do this we have to prep some thumbnails. We won't want to spend too long on each one since they won't all be finished, but it's ok to give this step a little more love if you are feeling it.

Merge everything to a new layer by right clicking a visible layer (if you have a character you don't want to see here, go ahead and hide their layer now) and clicking "merge visible to new layer" in the layer window.

Next duplicate this layer as many times as you want thumbnails.

You can do this by copying and pasting the layer over and over again, or right clicking in the layer window and selecting "duplicate layer".

I chose to do four thumbs.

Next we need to scale them all down. To make this simple, click the bottom thumb layer, then hold shift and click the top thumb layer to select all of them at once.

Click the transform tool at the top of clip studio, then grab a corner and scale the thumbs down. You'll only see one, but that's just because they are all stacked on top of each other.

To scale them down at the same ratio, hold shift while dragging, or by selecting "Keep ratio of original image" in the tool property window.

 

Next lay them out using the move tool (this is the icon that looks like an arrow with crosshairs in the tool bar).

Merge these all together in one layer. You can do the shift click to select all and merge them down at once here.

Next create a new layer and set the layer mode to "overlay".

We need to mask this layer to the thumbs below.

 

I selected everything in the layer (all of the thumbs) by holding ctrl and clicking on the layer thumbnail. This will select all of the pixels in that layer.

 

You can create a mask by making a selection and clicking the mask icon in the layer window (this looks like a rectangle with a circle in the center).

 

 

Another way to achieve the masking result I used here is to use the "clip to layer below" option in the layer window. This looks like two ellipses laid over each other.

 

You can see my layer mask in the layer window above as well as how I have, somewhat, organized my layers. I like to use folders because I'm bad at naming things as I work and it's good for keeping your digital workspace tidy!

On the overlay layer begin painting in your different lighting scenarios. I filled my entire canvas with a sea green, then started loosely painting in local colors for a mid day "normal" setting.

Part of the idea behind this piece was that our character is finding something lost or secret so there are no rules about how it should look.

Once I painted what you might expect the scene to look like, I wanted to try some more adventurous bold themes.

 

The top left is kind of peaceful, but still otherworldly, the bottom left is somewhat eerie with the reds in the water and the darker tones, and the bottom right has content adventurous feeling like exploring a familiar area in the fall. The top right is friendly, but pretty predictable.

Of course these are just what the thumbs emote in me. You might feel something completely different from each!

 

Of these I was, again, very conflicted. I liked them all, but after much consultation with friends and family, I chose the top left.

 

Now you need to lay this overlay thumbnail on top of your original greyscale painting.

Select the color thumb of your choice on the overlay layer, then copy it by pressing ctrl-c or select "copy" under the "edit" tab.

Paste it as a new layer by pressing ctrl-v, or by selecting "paste" in the edit tab.

 

This will also paste the existing mask in. We no longer need it so it's time to delete it.

 

In the layer window, right click directly on the mask thumbnail and select "delete mask".

It's still tiny, so we need to scale it up. This takes a bit of trial and error because we want to line up the colors with the shadows as closely as we can. This will save us a little time repainting our original color concept.

Once you have it transformed into place, hit enter, or click "ok".

We're ready to refine our colors!

Techniques for Rendering the Colors

Now that you have your overlay layer scaled to fit your greyscale painting, you can go back in and finish refining it.

I usually use a hard brush for this, like the digital sketch brush. I try to paint somewhat within the original lines.

Overlay affects the values, depending on the color you are painting with, so now is a good time to adjust your values, brightening an area or darkening it slightly as you go. You won't have a lot of control over the exact outcome though so don't try to make it perfect.

 

Just like we did before, we hide our character, then merge visible to a new layer. I actually remembered to name this layer because it will be used for painting on, and over, until our work is finished. I called mine "flattened base".

Since we do want to have a good amount of control over our colors we won't be finishing the image on just an overlay layer.

 

Once merged, I unhide my character. Even though I'm not coloring him yet, I need to see where he is and take into account the shadows he casts, and the light put off by his torch.

Paint cleaning using the lasso tool

To paint an entire area or object without needing to create new layers or masks each time, you can use the lasso tool. This looks like a dotted rope in the selection tools window.

I like to set it to "add selection" so that I don't have to hold shift as I work. It's easier to select small "sweeps" of the area you want to encapsulate at a time, versus trying to get the whole thing right on the first pass.

 

This same technique also allows you to paint a small section with a larger brush, or to only blend one part of your painting without worrying about muddying up the rest.

 

The lasso method results in nice crisp edges, even with a textured brush, or one that uses heavy color mixing.

To remove part of a selection, hold the alt key. You can also choose "remove selection" in the lasso settings.

You can see above how I selected the sky to fill it with a green gradient. I was able to concentrate on this one area without affecting the surrounding parts. This was painted directly to the "flattened base" layer.

If the "marching ants" of the selection bother you while you work, you can easily hide or show the selection by clicking the above icon at the top of Clip Studio Paint. This looks like a white square with a dotted line inside of it.

You can click it again to show your selection.

Each time you edit your selection, the marching ants will be visible so you can see your changes.

 

You can continue painting on normal layers until you are satisfied with your edges and textures.

Remove or lighten your lines with layer modes

Now I want to soften the lines. Using a new layer set to "lighten" I paint out the lines, or make them much lighter. This allows you to see the forms more, and then you don't have to worry about painting over each of the lines on the "flattened base".

In the "lighten" layer mode, the color you apply will only show up if it is lighter than where you have applied it. You can see above how I color picked some similar colors to help soften my shapes.

 

If you really want to keep your lines, however, I suggest skipping this step altogether and keeping your line art layer separate and above your colors. This way you won't paint over it.

 

For this painting, I wanted to eliminate my lines as soon as I no longer needed them.

 

Add depth and form with multiply and screen layers

This is one of my most used techniques during the color stage. It's much faster than painting everything on one layer, and you can erase and change colors for your shadows or highlights as you like.

 

To start with, I create two new layers above my flattened base layer. one Multiply layer set to 100%, and one Screen layer set to 100%.

This pillar has already had quite a bit of work done on it, but by painting highlights on a screen layer using a dark color, and shadows on a multiply layer using a lighter/mid tone color, we can really take it much farther.

There were a few things done here.

1: I cleaned up the edges of the object on the flattened layer using my selection. This is done by painting the object to the "edge" of inside selection and then inverting the selection to paint "out" any of the object that spilled over the selection. We are basically defining very clearly where our subject ends and begins.

 

2: I inverted the selection seen in the second image and applied a light fog on the screen layer. (outside of the pillar) This helped separate the far background from the pillar and gives a good sense of depth. I actually did this with MOST of the objects in the scene.

 

You don't always have to do this of course, but my setting had mist from the stream, and fog from the mountains and hills so I really played this technique up. It also looks cool.

 

3: I painted over the entire pillar, lightly, with a less saturated sky color, on the multiply layer. Just like the screen fog, this pass of light shadows helps push the pillar closer to the viewer. The reason I used the sky color is because the sky is the pillar's main source of light and its actual color will be affected by that green tone.

 

4: I defined the deepest shadows, like in between the bricks and on the edges. This is done with a harder brush and a darker color than the original pass of shadow.

 

5: Like step 4 I added the "brights" or the specular lights on the object using a lighter color and a harder brush.

 

6: After merging these highlights and shadows down to the flattened base, I blur hard edges using the "blur" blend brush and I clean up any other flaws by color picking and painting over things.

 

All of these steps are done while the selection is active so that the edges stay crisp.

 

 

TIP:

A good rule is that closer objects are darker, while farther objects are lighter. Contrast also drops with depth because you can't see as much detail farther away. Less light also bounces back to your eyes (it does not travel as far). Yay physics.

 

TIP 2:

Always merge down to a layer that is set to normal and is fully "filled" like our flattened base. If you don't you may end up with unexpected results because the top layer will assume the layer mode of the bottom layer. If you are merging down to a transparent layer set to normal, you'll find your screen or other layer modes have become "flat".

I applied the selection painting technique, combined with the multiply and screen techniques, to every surface in my painting.

Some areas like the mist from the stream didn't require a hard edge and this was just lightly brushed in with my "soft" airbrush.

I repeated these techniques a few times for areas I wanted to have a lot of polish. Some areas, like the distant mountains, stayed fairly rough.

Color any figures in your environment

Once I finished bringing out all of my forms and I was satisfied with my lighting, I colored my character.

On his grey fill, I locked the transparency and separated his skin, clothes, hair, etc... using the G pen. Then I shaded him using a multiply and screen layer as well. These shadows and highlights were painted in using the same G pen and then some were softened with the blur brush.

His torch light was done with an "add glow" layer and circular marquees.

 

I wanted the character to stand out a bit like a cell animation against a painted background.

 

This is all of the detail I'll be going into for the character since the focus of this tutorial is really the environment. Still I hope it was helpful in some way!

 

Harmonize the colors

Now that we have everything painted and polished, it's time to bring it together.

I created a new overlay layer over everything other than my character and lightly airbrushed in yellows, greens, and blues. This helps with the ambiance and makes everything feel like it's all in the same space. It's not bad for "faking" bounced light either.

 

I merge visible to a new layer (this time including the character) and do a "color balance" adjustment on everything. I increased the red shadows, and the yellow highlights while keeping "keep luminosity" checked.

You can find "color balance" by going to the "edit" tab then mousing down to "tonal correction".

 

This is the last step of painting the landscape!

 

Now that the colors are complete, I select my painted area with a rectangular marquee and crop the image getting rid of my grey border.

Check out the final result!

Final Thoughts

We're finally done!

 

This was my first tutorial so I am quite nervous about how I did. I hope you liked it!

 

I know that this series was quite long, with each episode being lengthy by themselves. I really even wanted to cover so much more than I did and I cut a lot out lol! I hope it wasn't too much and that it was useful and benefited you in some way.

 

 

About the Author

My name is FalyneVarger. I have been drawing for most of my life. I started working commercially about 10 years ago and have created artwork for books, games, comics, and more non-commercial commissions than I can remember.

You can find me online in most art communities under the same name (falynevarger) but here are some links for you!