Stardust || the Digital Painting Process

What is “Stardust”

To me, this piece is an accumulation of all my skills at the time painting. It is a reminder that I hold universes and galaxies in me and that I am capable of creating beautiful works of art. If you watched my video you would know that I painted “Stardust” in a time where I was struggling as an artist- struggling to accept my skills and talents. Essentially I didn’t feel like I was good enough. Now, I think that while I am not where I want to be, I am where I need to be and I see myself growing more than I ever had before.

  

To create “Stardust” I had to pull on a variety of resources, i.e. skills that I had acquired from previous art exploration studies. I started out first with a really rough sketch- I mean it was really rough. I don’t put too much emphasis on how I draw my sketches, as long as I get the general idea as to where things will be positioned in the piece. Also since I am partly blind (okay that was an exaggeration), but I have trouble seeing so I draw with pretty dark lines at first. If the sketch is too messy I may do another sketch that more refined, however, that doesn’t always happen.

Side note: the programme I use is  Medibang Paint for IOS devices

After this, I did a kind of “wash”, which is basically me using light colours to establish the values for each area of the piece. It is extremely loose. I just need to know where it is dark and where it is light. This I do under the sketch layer since I only use the sketch as a reference and it will not be seen in the final piece. Doing lost of value sketches really helped me to understand the use of values in a composition. I had to figure out how to adapt this to colour (value sketches are basically black and white). In the end, these studies helped me to understand how to paint environments. 

 I began painting the rocky mountains on a new layer, After establishing my values. I generally the watercolour brush on 100 percent opacity to paint. To blend the colours, I would constantly adjust the opacity, where I see fit. But when laying down any flat colours I try to use my brush at full opacity. I used a lot of dark browns and greens because these mountains are casting a dark shadow on the foreground, so they had to be considerably dark in value. 

I tend to hide my sketch layer when I’m painting, it can be a bit distracting sometimes. So for the river and the rocks I used the generic watercolour brush that Medibang provides. But for the grass, I use a textured brush I created. If you want to know how I create my brushes, just leave a comment, or contact me via any of my social media accounts.

I normally start with the darker colours, then gradually blend in lighter colours where the light hits the objects (in this case the rocks). I didn’t really use a reference for this, I just went this the flow. Things in nature are organic and the patterns that exist aren’t easily seen. So I didn’t try to be predictable when deciding the placement of grooves in the rocks. I just did what felt right in the moment. Because the light source was somewhere beyond the mountain in the background, I knew that the light would be more reflective on the rocks closer to the background. As we move further into the foreground, the presence of light would decrease.

I had the most fun painting the trees and the foliage in the foreground. I used a combination of brushes to achieve this kind of vegetation. The regular watercolour brush, my specialized textured grass brush and another specialized brush for foliage. Like everything else, I started with the darker greens and blues to establish the shape of the trees and foliage. Then I gradually added lighter greens and yellows for highlights. However, I had bare in mind that the foreground would be considerably dark so the highlights wouldn’t be so pronounced.

On another note,  before I established the shape of the trees, I drew the branches. This will be covered up by the leaves, but that’s okay. Some branches may show through and that good enough. Remember nature’s pattern isn’t easily predicted, so just go will the flow of the heart when painting. It makes the process more fun too.

Now the mid-ground and the background were extremely fun to paint. Surprisingly, I painted the mid-ground last. I started first by painting the sky and the clouds. I wanted a bright blue sky with bright, white fluffy clouds.

Just in case you didn’t know,  the sky isn’t one flat colour, it has a kind of gradient. It is lightest at the horizon and it gradually darker in value as it moves further away from the horizon. So I use light and dark blues to paint this, and …… you guess it,   the generic watercolour brush. I easily blend with the brush, so I tend to use it a lot.

I painted the clouds on another layer then merged it to the sky layer later on. I used the same brush, but I used it a bit differently.

I have always struggled to paint clouds but I things I found a way I can do it. I basically use the watercolour brush on about 10 per cent opacity, to first establish the shape of the clouds and to give me an idea where the dark areas will be. It really is based on chance now,  but I think eventually I can figure it out and start to master painting clouds.  I can do a tutorial for this too if you would like, just be sure to comment.

The mid-ground consisted of two parts for me; the “mini” mountains and the green plains. Everything that is far away from the foreground must be lighter in value, because of a hold bunch of atmospheric science stuff that I can’t explain at the moment. So for the mountains, I used a mixture of light blues, greens and white to paint it. I was picturing a snowy mountain in my mind while painting this.  For the green plains, I use bright greens, yellows, and brown, in order to give the idea that these plain aren’t levelled. It also made it a little bit more interesting in my opinion. After this, I added some mist to break up the mid-ground and to show some amount of separation in the piece. I used this fluffy watercolour brush for this (if you can’t tell already I really love the watercolour brushes). I lowered the opacity for the mist layer, so it wouldn’t be too overwhelming. 

  

Now here comes the best part - the stardust and butterflies. This gave me the most joy to paint. I love the magical element it brings to piece. For this, I painted the butterflies on an Add layer ( I think the equivalent to this on photoshop is colour dodge). This made them look even more surreal. I did a lot of copying and pasting to get so many butterflies in the piece,  it was worth it. In a clipping layer above it, I add a bit of glow to the butterflies. I made that clipping layer an add layer to make the effect really pop. All I did was lower the opacity of my watercolour brush and the layer itself, and paint around the butterflies.

For the stardust, I used a stippling brush,  on an add layer. I tried to not go too crazy with this because I love making things pretty and it sometimes can be a little bit too much in the end. So I took my time and added the stardust around the butterflies and in the beam of light. I wanted it to be visible but not overpowering.

Afterwards, I added my signature to finish the piece. If you made it this far, thank you for sticking around until the end. I hope this helped you in some way.  If you have any questions feel free to ask, and I’ll be sure to answer you as soon as I can. Also if you want you can subscribe to my YouTube channel, if you want tutorials and advice on drawing.

Thank you again for reading, talk to you soon.

Note: You can watch the process for this painting on my YouTube channel below: