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A Walk in the Woods

Author: Roger Elliot, Associate Editor

In these lessons we will attempt to cover more and more little pieces of technique so that we can use them in other paintings. This is sort of how we artists accumulate our knowledge. We just keep adding things to our "suitcase of knowledge" so that we can apply them to any painting to which they seem appropriate. In this session, we will examine ways to lighten our backgrounds so that we can better show distance and atmospheric perspective. I do hope that this will be of value to you. So...let us begin. I assume that you know how to open your Photoshop 4.0 LE and how to load a blank canvas. If you are new to our series you may wish to review lessons 1, 2, or 3 in order to get started with the program. Now open the program and make a blank canvas that is 500 pixels high by 375 pixels wide. We are ready to begin. As always, Have Fun!!

I begin by applying a VERY LIGHT yellow at the center of the canvas. This should be almost white with just a little yellow. Then, as you can see I surround that with a yellow that is a bit darker in value. Then another band that is darker yet. Lastly, one more band of a slightly darker value. Study the example here. This covers about the top one-third of the canvas.

Now we use the smudge tool to "feather" out the areas. The object here is to get our area very light in the middle and to allow it to get progressively darker as we work toward the outside corners. I have found that this works best if I begin to work these areas using the largest brush size, then shifting to a smaller size going back over the area to remove any streaks.

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