Winter Painting

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This tutorial is written using PSP 10.01 but can be done in other version with a little
modification of tool locations.

Some screenshots are reduced in size and some have been zoomed in on to show detail.

First, we will be making 3 winter trees for our painting. We will make these
separate, then tube them. I'm doing this so that you will have them for future use. By
adding leaves or buds they can later be turned into spring, summer or fall trees.

1. Open a 500X600 transparent canvas. Set your foreground to #a1823f.

2. Make your Paintbrush your active tool. Set to these settings...
Note.. Brush used is Default.

3. Go to Layers, New Raster Layer.
We will be freehand drawing our tree. The next screenshots will show you how to
do this.

4. Start at the bottom center of your canvas by making up and down lines to
create the bottom trunk of your tree. Something like this...

5. Keep drawing lines up and down on your tree. Remember, trees aren't straight,
they have knots and curves throughout the base of the tree.

6. Decide where you want your limbs to start, draw them slightly smaller than
what you've made the base of your tree....

7. Running out of canvas? Make it larger by going to Image, Canvas Size. I
enlarged mine to 700x650. When freehand drawing, making your tree larger
than what you need then resizing it, helps eliminate some of the jaggies.

8. Continue to make smaller branches off the larger branches you made until
you are down to just the one line stroke of the brush size...

9. Lower the brush size to 4 and make smaller branches but be careful,
they can become additive to make. *L*

10. Now how easy and fun was that?? We will leave this tree in the brown
color and tube it. We'll be adding some shades of other colors to it in our
painting but you may not want those colors in your tree when used for other
projects.

11. Since we did our entire tree on one layer it's easy to copy and paste it
as a New Image to tube. Do that now by going to Edit, Copy, Edit, Paste as
New Image.

12. Go to File, Export, Picture Tube. Name your Tree and click okay.

11. Close the tree canvas you just tubed. You can also close your original canvas.

12. In this same manner but using a darker brown I made a second tree, a
little bit fatter and different shaped, then tubed it....

We're ready now to paint our winter scene.

13. Open a new 700x500 transparent canvas. This is large but some like
to print their paintings out and hang them. If you don't, then you're welcome
to work with a smaller canvas or a larger canvas, it's your choice.

14. Add a New Raster Layer. Because we're doing a winter scene, flood fill
this layer with white.

15. Layers, New Raster Layer. Set your foreground to #daedfa

16. Make the Paintbrush your active tool, set to these settings...

17. In a cross the canvas motion, apply some paint to your canvas starting about
mid way your canvas and working your way up to the top. Leave some white area
showing and make some areas heavier....

18. Change the foreground color to #98ccee. With the same Paintbrush settings
make a few darker areas in your sky....

19. Make active your Smudge Tool set to these settings...

20. With a circular motion and side ways motion start blending the sky until
you have something that looks like this....

 

 21. Set your foreground color to #a7a7a7. Change the size on your Paintbrush
to 19 and set the Opacity down to 30. Spray in a few areas of this gray, lower
the size of the Paintbrush more here and there to get shadows of undertone colors
in your clouds.

22. Switch back to your Smudge tool to blend in the gray....

23. Add a New Raster Layer. In your tubes find the tree we made earlier, size
it to the size you think you need, place it on the new layer. If you made a second
tree, add it on a separate layer or you can duplicate and mirror the one tree and
use Brightness and Contrast to shade the tree darker......

Not looking too bad eh??

24. Let's add a little detail to our trees. Make the darker tree layer your
active layer. Go to Selections, Select All, Selections, Float. Add a New Raster
Layer.

25. Set your foreground color to White and your Paintbrush to these settings...

26. Paint small areas on your tree to look as if the snow has stuck in the branches.
Raise the Opacity on your Paintbrush to 100 and lightly go over those areas to give
specks of pure white to the snow.

27. Use the Smudge Tool to lightly smudge the areas. Not too much now,
they need to look a little pixely. When you're finished, Deselect the tree.

28. Select the second tree. On it we need to add a little more trunk detail.
For my tree, I liked the look a Cutout gave. Try it on yours and see if you
like it. Go to Effects, 3D Effects, Cutout and try these settings...

29. Add a New Raster Layer, use the settings for the Paintbrush to add
some snow. This is what my second tree looks like...

30. Deselect your tree.

31. Make Raster 2 your active layer. Set your foreground color to #e0e3e4
Click on your Pen Tool and set to these settings...

32. I want you to find where your sky meets your snowy ground and draw a line.
Click once on the left side and then again on the right side. Click and hold on the right
node, move it so that your line is completely straight. Note, when all the lines on your
line meet together, then it's straight. Note... after clicking the first time to start the
line, you can hold down the CTRL and ALT keys on your keyboard and make the second
click and it will draw a straight line.

33. Make Active your colored sky layer (should be Raster Layer 3).
Click on the Eraser Tool, set to these settings...

34. Erase any of the sky area that is below your line.

35. Make active your line layer. Use to Smudge Tool with the same settings as
we've been using to smudge your line into a horizon.

36. Make active your blue sky layer (should be Raster 3). Add a New Raster Layer.
Set your foreground color to #c0c0c0
Paintbrush to these settings...

37. On this layer, we want to lay out the rough area of our pond.
You want something like this...

38. Using the eye dropper, pick one of the blue colors from your sky and use the
Paintbrush settings (increase the brush size to 84) from above to lay some color
in the center of your pond. Not too much though, we want to leave some of the
snow area showing.
You can pick a couple more shades from the sky to build on your pond color.
You want something like this...

39. Set your foreground color to #a89666. Set your Paintbrush to these settings...

40. Use the color to lay in a little dead grassy areas around your pond, use the
Smudge Tool to blend the areas....

41. I'm going to leave you here to build on your painting anyway you want.
Maybe you want a fence, more trees, maybe even some evergreen bushes or trees.
It's up to you, make your painting however you want.

Until next time... God Bless!
Connie