Sometimes when I sit down to do a painting I'll have been thinking about it for some time in my head about what I want the subject of the painting to be, what type of setting and lighting etc. However for this particular painting all I knew was I wanted to do a picture of a Mermaid. I start in my sketchbook working out a few pose ideas, VERY loose. At this point I don't even know what type of setting I'm doing, I'm just concentrating on the figure. I wasn't liking where this was going, so I took it even more basic and did some quick compositional thumbnails, from which I was able to select a general "mood" for the subject.

Here I'm going to try to explain my Photoshop painting process, from first doodle through to a finished painting. As I go along, I'll detail both what's happening on the canvas and what's going around my head. I'll be working on a 2480 x 3508 pixel canvas ( A4 at 300dpi ). This is a high enough resolution should I ever want to print or publish the image in the future, but also fits nicely on my monitor at 25% magnification, which allows me to see the whole image as I work. Except where stated in the text, the painting is being worked on at that magnification throughout. A note on brushes : I use my own custom brushes for all my painting, though I'm not going to go into any detail on brush creation during this walkthrough. There are two reasons for this - firstly, there are plenty of excellent brush tutorials out there already and I don't feel that I have much to add to the information already available, and secondly, Photoshop's brush engine is very easy to use and I hope anyone with an interest in custom brushes will take the time to experiment with the settings on offer to find their own custom brush settings; it really is a lot of fun, and certainly the best way to learn.The brushes I use fall into three basic categories - soft edge, hard edge and texture. I'll mention which I'm using as I go along and it really doesn't matter exactly what brush is being used as long as they fit into those basic categories. The standard airbrush, Dense Stipple 56 ( Natural Brushes set ) and Rolled Rag - Terry 120 ( Faux Finish set ) Photoshop defaults will do just as good a job as any fancy custom creation if used correctly.Whatever brush I'm using, I have my graphic tablet set up the same; stylus pressure controls opacity and nothing else. I use the square bracket keyboard shortcuts to control the size of my brush while I work, and I vary this regularly to break up the marks I'm making.One final brush setting to be aware of is texture. I use this a lot to help break up my brush marks, and it's worth spending some time experimenting with this area of the brushes palette to see what kind of effects can be had. Again, the Photoshop defaults are perfecty acceptable in most situations, particularly the Texture Fill and Rock Pattern sets.

This is the part that I consider as most important in the process of creating an image.These are the first sketches and different variations of the same idea. I indepentantly developed each character design, and take the same dedication for each individual characters personality design (age: 25 ; name: Tina; enviroment where she lives: little industrial city; etc) and so for the story.

Hello everyone! This is my first tutorial, so please be gentle. Here I’m going to explain my basic process of painting in Photoshop. This piece was done for the CHOW #13 “Character of the Week” challenges on ConceptArt.org and this was the brief: Historical Fiction : “Lord George Henry Fredrickson. Mid to late 1800’s. Lord Fredrickson is a Lich hunter & Master of the Occult of some quiet acclaim in certain discerning circles. By nature he is a reserved man, brutally intelligent, quick in thought and often in action, but never reckless. Cursed more than a century ago by an Egyptian Lich, Lord Fredrickson walks the twilight between the true light of life and the enternal darkness of death. He can not die, though he can not really live either. “With each Lich Lord Fredrickson dispatches, he desperately searches for a counter curse to his affliction, but none have been found, much to his continued frustration. Over the past few decades, his searches have turned more desperate, as madness is slowly claiming him. In his more lucid moments, he fears for those he cares for, but holds little hope of changing his fortunes. Isabelle, his wife, has been instructed in the art of horcrux destruction, and how to kill a Lich, but as Lord Fredrickson has no known horcrux, it is feared that all efforts will be futile.”

This image was made for ‘The Lost World’ challenge. I think a hidden city is a lost world, and so I created one on an island – a city hidden by big rocks. I also wanted to feature a ship discovering the place.

When it comes to creating out-of-this-world images, the only limit is your imagination. Justin Maller shows you how to get flawless results. If you ever had a poster of Salvador Dal?’s melting clocks or spindle-legged camels on your student bedroom wall, you’ll recognise this picture’s influences immediately. The blank, open landscape, the juxtaposition of semi-random elements, and even the colour palette can be traced to surrealism. Another thing that the image has inherited from Dal? is close attention to detail and a high level of polish: while the images are random, the craftsmanship is meticulous. In this tutorial, Justin Maller guides you step-by-step through the often painstaking process of compositing a convincing surreal landscape. While some of the images, such as the girl and the abstract ribbons, are provided on the disc, there are also tips for sourcing good background and texture images yourself.

Marta Dahlig’s gorgeous ‘Umbrella Sky’ image was unanimously chosen for the cover of Ballistic Publishing’s EXOTIQUE 3, and after submitting, Marta continued to improve on perfection. Here, she takes us through her process of building on a dream.

It should come as no surprise that when I started on this piece, I was not having a great time at my job. None of my managers looked or acted like the boss depicted here. Nonetheless, the CGTalk Master and Servant Challenge proved to be a great place to channel my workplace frustration, and the collaborative environment of the Challenge was a refreshing change from the day job.

Cristian Landero created a time-lapse painting video in Photoshop and uploaded it for everyone to know how it is done.

Hong Mei Li is a seductive lady with deadly skills. She can mask innocence at the same time secrecy. Clean-up after a kill is painting done with Photoshop CS2. Tutorial by By Rodny Mella.

This summer when Transformers hit the big screen, it soon raised up the heat in theaters all over the world. I even went to see the film again particularly for this artwork, in order to get a more vivid feel of the scene, as well as searching for ideas. It is very crucial for a creator to foresee the image in his own mind, and knowing if it would make a good artwork or not. I want to create a scene filled with tension and drama, just like a still photographs from the film.

In this tutorial Hussein Al-Attar will guide you step by step the techniques he has developed for creating digital renderings in Adobe Photoshop. The version he has used in this tutorial is CS2 although any recent version of Photoshop will suffice. You do not need a graphics tablet to achieve these results here as Hussein only works with a mouse. The most important technique he will show is how and why to select areas that must have sharp edges. To do this he will show how to use either the Pen tool or the Polygonal Lasso tool. Hussein says "If you choose to use the Lasso tool you may have some problems when it comes to selecting curved areas. A good idea would be to reduce the distance between clicks when selecting your curve. Although not a perfect solution, it allows you to work reasonably accurately and fast."

Hey everyone! Welcome back to the GoMediaZine. There has been such a wonderful response on my vector art tutorial “Beautiful Vector Illustration” that I thought I better write another one. If you recall in that tutorial I discussed how to create vector illustrations using photographs as your starting point. A technique of vector illustrating that takes a little bit more skill that I did not cover is starting with a hand drawn sketches. I will focus on that technique of vector illustrating for this tutorial. For those of you without good sketching ability – please don’t jump ship just yet! I will also discuss a number of tips and techniques to using your pen tool that applies to ALL vector artists – so keep reading. You’ll still learn a thing or two. And who knows – maybe you try to sketch something anyway. I am going to meander a bit between different sketches, but here is one example of a vector illustration that was based off of a sketch.

In this tutorial we are going to color a dragon portrait. Like I always said, it's impossible to make a good painting without a good sketch, that's why if your drawing is not as strong as you'd like, you should go ahead and buy a sketchbook before taking up photoshop or tablet or any other stuff like that.

Create characters that glow from within, using these handy tips for painting realistic skin colouring in Photoshop.

Learn how to fake unbelievable fantasy images, like this giant warrior lizard, using some clever Photoshop trickery. No matter how many tricks and shortcuts you know, Photoshop has plenty more, making complex and fiddly tasks far more straightforward. In this tutorial, Jeric? Santander shows how you can make use of a few of these tricks to create a stunning surrealist-style image, giving a chameleon a Mad Max makeover and making him stalk through a mountain range. Santander says that the tutorial is far easier using a graphics tablet, and although the tutorial will teach you plenty about lighting, volume and painting, it’ll be far easier if you already have some basic knowledge of the principles.

In this tutorial Nik Ainley walks us through the process of making a spectacular image. This tutorial focuses on the big picture steps taken to create this image. You'll learn some incredible techniques in this tutorial, and get a view into how Nik creates beautiful photo-manipulation based images. Let's check it out.

Whether it’s the speeded-up glow of car headlights in a night-time city scene, an alien spacecraft or a deep-sea jellyfish you’re recreating, this far-out neon look is a highly useful trick to master. It conveys a sense of movement and energy, and the colours can be tweaked to give a surprising range of effects. In this tutorial, Tony Ariawan provides a step-by-step guide to creating this look, using simple resources and Photoshop tools. He shows that you don’t need particularly advanced tools to create a high-tech look: sometimes the simpler tools, applied with care and skill, can have far more impact.

One day, on my way to work I decided to make a small detour on my way to the subway and took a walk through one of Lisbon’s most charismatic parks. It was a cold February morning, no one was in sight and the sound of morning traffic was subdued by the trees. I was immersed into a natural environment and it almost seemed magical. Suddenly, I passed by some trees that really caught my attention ( image 1 ). They somehow resembled groping hands and with their scale, they looked threatening. I believe it is my love for fantasy that made me see the tree like that and not as mere tree. Several days later I went back and took some photos of these trees and so started the painting “Fresh Meat”.

Hi everyone, my name is Graven Tung. This particular piece is a simple study that will hopefully explain some of the thoughts and techniques during my painting process. I’m usually not in the habit of questioning myself why I do things a certain way. In fact this is the first time I’m asked to paint for a tutorial, so bear with me here. I started off by Googling for some ideas. I try to avoid jumping into a painting without at least having a general direction. This is to prevent myself from falling into the “safe zone’ and repeating similar subjects over and over. So I dug up few interesting shots after some random image search. There’s something cool about those waves crashing on the pier. I haven’t done anything like that before, and it looks like fun.