In this tutorial, artist Ollie Munden takes you through the process of creating his three-colour painting, Chasing The Dragon, through a mix of Photoshop and pencil techniques. First off you’ll mock up what you want to create using photography, then create a pencil drawing from that. Taking your drawing, you’ll retrace this by hand with a Brush Pen, then transform it into a slick-looking, three-colour digital artwork.
The tutorial also shows you how to colour your finished artwork using a mixture of digital and hand-drawn techniques.
These skills can be used to produce your own unique pieces of artwork with a fluid, yet bold graphic style.
Step 1 To begin this piece, I gathered a variety of photos for reference. The main photo of the cyclist really inspired me as I liked the angle from which it was taken. When doing your own new artworks, keep your eyes peeled for photos that have strong visual qualities, good angles, nice lighting and are of high resolution.
To begin, open CTD_PHOTOCOMP.psd (which can be found on the Download Zone). If you’d prefer to create your own skeletal cyclist, find your own photos and comp them together to make your own unique rider.
The Polygonal Lasso tool, plus the Warp and Distort transform tools come in very useful for this type of task.