Architecture 222 & 410/510/610

Note: For a one-point perspective like this example, since the single vanishing point lies conveniently within the picture frame, the oversize canvas is not really necessary. But for a two point (or three point) perspective, where the vanishing points may be widely separated along the horizon line, the large canvas is a great convenience.

3) Fill in the layout with solid colors.

Example layout, partially filled in with solid colors, and with the beginnings of shading adjustments.

Even though shading adjustments you make to solid colors might be wiped out if you replace the solid color with a texture at a later step, they are helpful for establishing the overall composition and color balance of the painting. And, depending on the scene you're painting, many areas may remain in solid color.

4) Critique and refine the perspective, size, and proportion of major elements.

It is important that the perspective, size, and proportion of major elements are correct before you start texturing and detailing the image.

5) Crop the canvas to size, using the Crop tool.

You can delay the cropping step as long as you want. If you delay cropping, you'll be working with a bigger file, but with 32MB RAM and a new, mostly empty hard disk, that shouldn't be a problem.

I personally like to keep the canvas large, to use the borders as a scratch space for trying things out. But if you wait too long before cropping, it can throw off your sense of the overall feeling of the actual painting.

6) Add major foreground elements.

You may want to develop these elements in a helper canvas, and then copy and paste them into your main image.

7) Optional -- Save Selections for tricky shapes you may need to rework repeatedly.

Note that it is easy to select shapes when they are filled with one solid color, but it can be very hard to select them later, when they're textured with more complex color mixtures. If you think ahead and save a selection when the shape is still a solid color, you'll be able to reselect later a lot more easily.

8) Add gradients and textures.

• Develop textures in a helper canvas, using painting, filters, and effects.

• Then with the Magic Wand tool select the area of the painting to texture, and "Paste Into".

Example layout, partially filled in with solid colors, with the beginnings of shading adjustments, and with some initial texturing. The texture on the right-hand side of the image was adjusted so the bricks would be in proper perspective using the Image:Effets:Distort command. Because of the extereme perspective, it had to be adjusted repeatedly in a helper canvas before using Paste Into to put into into the main painting.

9) Add remaining details.

Working with finer and finer tools, you can paint in smaller and and smaller details, until eventually you may want to go through the painting by zooming in and using the Pencil tool to perfect individual pixels.

10) Enhance shade and shadow with Burn and Dodge.

Use the Magic Wand selection tool for selecting soft-edged areas, and use the Option-Lasso selection method to help select any hard-edged polygonal areas, like crisp shadow regions that call for darkening.

11) Step back, critique and refine.

Take a break for a little while, then come back to your painting and look at it from different distances and/or zoom factors. Look softly but critically to see what parts of the painting don't look quite right, or don't blend smoothly with the rest of the image. Then focus on improving those little areas, one at a time.

12) Step back, critique and refine.

Repeat the process of stepping back to critique, and then going forward to refine, as many times as necessary. This way you can make the whole painting better a little at a time, and probably come up with a better result than you could have imagined doing, all in one step.

Send e-mail: matthews@artifice.com

http://www.dil.uoregon.edu/courses/96.4/a222.f96/a222.f96.pspainting.html - Posted 95.10.05 KMM, rev. 96.09.30