Imaginative Environment Creation

In this step-by-step tutorial, I will walk you through my process of creating an environment from scratch. The tools I used for this painting are a Wacom Cintiq 22HD, and the latest version of Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud. With the Cintiq, I am able to both draw and paint similar to the way I work in a traditional setting.

In my creative process, I try to stay loose and spontaneous from the very beginning. It’s important to keep in mind my compositional gut checks, and focus on my staging and big reads. In this tutorial, you will see my block-out process, and ending up with continued refinement and tightening up the composition into a finish narrative lighting key.

This introductory demonstration is geared towards to the beginner to intermediate artist for creating evocative compositional choices for their image making. I will go into detail with making definitive hierarchical designs by blocking in the general elements of the composition, and working gradually into more specific aspects of the painting. From this tutorial, you will learn more about how to use weights, rhythms, and visual checks, to cross check your proportions, relationships of objects, and the placement of elements I will be designing. This is also a great tutorial for someone beginning with painting in colour. Strap on your seatbelts, let’s begin!