How to Make a Realistic Digital Painting in Adobe Photoshop

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Want to become a reactive artist to create such wonderful and live digital paintings? But have no idea how to start and what can help it.

Perhaps we have seen so many paintings that look so realistic and live because of its look and makeover.

Here we are with amazing software called Adobe Photoshop software which is a great and versatile platform that allows us to explore, innovate and create so much with all those flexible and multipurpose tools. One such creation is digital painting.

I am sure, you must have imagined yourself as a leading artist in the 21st century but for this, you need to understand everything from the scratch.

Understand Digital Painting

Understanding the digital painting

Digital painting is a method that allows you to paint or create an artwork directly on a system. It is a way of portraying our ideas and thoughts on the screen by adapting traditional painting mediums like oil, ink, water color, etc.

Advantages of Digital Painting

Advantages of Digital Painting

This is easy to understand that digital painting is totally different from actual painting and it has amazing positive points like –

  1. Digital painting is easier than canvas painting and it is not the messy one.
  2. You do not need a big canvas, rather you can work on any size like a tablet but working on a monitor is the better option.
  3. Digital colors or paints do not need to get dry and thus the work process is faster.
  4. Digital painting gives us a lot more options to experiment with a variety of powerful tools.

Note: The most important thing is that you need to choose a good graphic system or tablet for the applications and better results.

Digital Painting in Adobe Photoshop

Digital Painting in Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop produces raster paintings. These paintings usually resembles a real painting made with real brushes and paint, thus they look more realistic than vector paintings or illustrations. This painting can be created in Adobe Photoshop by using brush tool in a spontaneous manner. You can also learn to create one at the leading Photoshop training institute in Delhi.

A digital painting maker tries to mimic the physical objects or people in their own virtual manner using virtual brushes and colors. There are a number of free to download artistic brushes available on the internet that you can install to get fantastic results.

Steps to Make a Digital Painting

Making a digital painting is not an easy task however there are various ways to make it and with practice we can even develop our own unique technique.

  • To start with we first need to imagine what exactly we want to make.
  • It’s always better to have a rough layout
  • Keeping the size of the page in mind is also very important.
  • Start by making a rough sketch of your art on the screen using brush tool.
  • Now using brush tool only color your artwork and then do the detailing work later on.

Remember some keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard Shortcuts of Adobe Photoshop

Keyboard shortcuts are used to fasten up the work and it makes you a smart user.

  • B – To select the brush tool
  • M – To select the marquee tool
  • Z – To select the zoom tool
  • E – To select the eraser tool
  • Ctrl+T – For the free transform tool

Certain Techniques to Make a Realistic Digital Painting in Adobe Photoshop

1. Photo textures can be used

Digital Painting Texture in Adobe Photoshop

Making use of photo textures can be a great way to enhance our artwork in Adobe Photoshop and make it look more realistic. Photo textures are actually a part of pictures, photos and photographs and we can use them to add texture to our artwork using blending modes.

2. Texture brushes can also be used

Digital Painting Brushes in Adobe Photoshop

Texture brushes can be used to add realistic details in our artwork. Also we can make our own brushes and can also find brushes online.

Brushes and eraser tools play a vital role in digital painting because this is majorly connected to add and remove colors. Adobe Photoshop gives a wide range of brushes and also the control options are available like – size of brush, tip size, stroke style, softness and pressure etc.

Likewise, the eraser can be controlled with details like – shape size and softness. The particular difference is – it removes the color.

3. Blending colors

Digital Painting Blending Colors in Adobe Photoshop

To create a smooth 3D effect, blending color is so important. Photoshop has tools like – smudge brush tool, soft edge brush tool and mixer brush tool to create a blend effect. It is advised to try and experiment every brush and blend option yourself to watch and experience different effects.

4. Making smart use of color palette

Digital Painting Color Palette in Adobe Photoshop

We can definitely give a realistic touch to our painting using various color shades. Even if we don’t know various techniques, we can actually give depth and detailing to our art by playing with colors.

We can notice how in this illustration various shades of red and even purple is used to give a realistic touch to it. Through this technique of colour palette, we can give a realistic look to our creation.
These techniques make a digital painting awesome.

We can also create such type of beautiful digital paintings in Adobe Photoshop with the use of right color schemes and techniques. To get more ideas of digital paintings have a look at our Digital Painting Projects.

Author Introduction:

This blog on Digital Painting in Adobe Photoshop is written by Nida who is pursuing Graphic Master Plus course from our training institute.

She has been learning with us and creating wonderful art and project work with every completed software. We believe every student needs a platform to shape up their skills and find their field of interest. We at ADMEC Multimedia Institute are helping students through our broad counseling sessions and discussions.

You can also pursue graphic design training from the top graphic design institutes in Delhi and learn digital painting using Adobe Photoshop.

If you have anything to discuss and suggest then you are free to convey in below given comment section.

To keep reading and learning from more such content, stay tuned with us!!

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