Digital Painting Fundamentals in Photoshop

Explore the Photoshop interface, adjust preferences, memory, history, and scratch disks, customize shortcuts, and navigate panels like navigator and swatches, along with brushes and layers for painting.

Set up your canvas and tablet by configuring preferences, mapping, and express keys for efficient painting, then choose canvas size, resolution, color mode, and presets for print or web outputs.

Scan images in Photoshop with document feeder or flatbed at 300–600 dpi in color or grayscale. Save as jpeg or png, crop, adjust levels, and switch to rgb for painting.

Adjust brush size, spacing, hardness, and roundness; apply shape dynamics with pen pressure and tilt; and explore texture and transfer settings in Photoshop to control opacity and flow.

Learn how light travels in rays from the sun, reflects off objects to form shadows, and color emerges through reflection, absorption, and rods and cones in the eye.

Explore how a defined light source creates shadows and bounce light on objects, with practical demos using spheres and surfaces to visualize highlights, reflections, and diffuse shadows.

Master color theory for digital painting by mastering hue, saturation, brightness, and local value, and applying warm vs cool colors, color wheels, and complementary and triad harmonies.

Explore digital painting composition through the rule of thirds, identify focal points, and learn how to balance a painting to guide the viewer's eye.

Distinguish foreground, middle ground, and background to build depth in digital paintings. Use overlap, viewpoint, and composition, including the rule of thirds, to guide the viewer.

Learn to lead the eye in digital painting by using high contrast, warm colors, hard edges, and patterns, and guide attention with arrows, implied lines, and dominant elements.

Explore how perspective creates the illusion of depth in a 2D image by using foreshortening, vanishing points, overlaps, and depth cues like color shading and scene composition.

Master horizon lines, eye level, and one-point perspective to create depth in digital painting. Build scenes with boxes toward a single vanishing point, placing five to six objects.

Explore two-point perspective in digital painting, using horizon lines and vanishing points to construct boxes and buildings, and learn how lens effects and depth of field influence composition.

Master one-, two-, and three-point perspective by constructing grids, locating vanishing points on a horizon line, and measuring centers to create accurate, distortion-aware space drawings.

Craft compelling storytelling and mood in digital painting by building thumbnails, shaping a dwarf whaler's first flight, and using lighting, value, and perspective to convey excitement.

Explores how environment, characters, and weather tell stories and set mood in digital painting, and demonstrates blocking, lighting, and layering to convey narrative across desert and cave scenes.

Learn how to use color in digital painting to influence mood and storytelling, exploring warm and cool palettes, color overlays, and how hue shifts alter atmosphere in Photoshop.