Doing a Project from Start to Finish, at 'FARP'

By Danny Staten

Painting the Planet

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References Earth photo

Earth photo

For the planet I started on a layer using the captured bristle brush. I set its bristle to a very low setting to get a smooth application of color. Once I got the basic set of color figured out I then started building the details. I used an airbrush with a fine spray (still applies paint in a gritty way) and a coarse spray to do the texture for the land masses mountains etcetera. I spent as much time looking at the references as I did painting to try and make sure things looked natural. The fine and coarse air brush detect the angle of your stylus and will spray as if you were angled on your canvas like that. This can be cool for making mountain ridges. You have to hold the stylus at two angles though to get it to spray both sides of the mountain with the spine being where both spray directions start. Also notice that I didn't bother doing much where I was confident the planet's shadow would be covering it, but I did do full detail even where clouds were likely to be. This was to allow for clouds to be any opacity I wanted in those areas.

The next layer up was for the clouds. Before I did the clouds though, I put some highlight on the water on its own layer. I used some bristle brush and lots of air brush for the clouds. I spent a lot of time trying to mimic weather patterns in the photos so my clouds would be believable.

After that I put the shadow on the planet and pretty much had a finished planet. Again paying attention to references was useful. Most of the time spheres have a large mid-tone area before they have the core shadow. All the photos I could recall of earth are not this way though because the lack of reflected light in space etc.

From a design point of view, I wanted the shape of the deity to repeat in the image. That is why I had the constellation in the stars, and a variation of a winged person as the primary continent. This little principle is called repetition with variation. Using it well can really do a lot to tie a piece together and strengthen composition. The variation is important. Try and work with big medium and small variations of similar objects to give your piece variety.

Painting the Worshipers

I actually did each worshiper on their own set of layers. I however did not have any saved versions of the file with those layers separate still. A general technique I use is to do an under-painting with a bristle brush. This layer is where I establish basic separation of light and dark. From there I do another layer on top and paint refinements again with the bristle brush. The last polishing layer is usually the detail air brush with a very small nozel.

Each worshiper was meant to represent an element possibly being a lesser deity of that element. Some were obvious decisions like the reaper and eagle. Others were harder to figure out. Chaos was a tough choice but I opted for the spider. Chaos is defined as unpredictability in ordered systems. It is not true randomness nor is it predictability. Our world is almost entirely composed of chaotic systems. I thought a spider web represented unpredictability in ordered systems well, so I decided to use a spider. Life was another difficult one to represent. I eventually went off a suggestion from a friend who is a history major who suggested an obscure mythical creature that is a winged man and represents life in a culture I can't remember any more. I then took a bit of artistic license to try and incorporate the color white. Order was tricky but I was told a scale and stars could represent order. So I chose to do a starry being holding a scale.

I wanted each worshiper to be reverencing the greater deity so I made them all bowing their heads. Notice however that they look like they are kind of floating somewhere near the planet until I added their cast shadows on the planet. Those small details are crucial to make things really tie together well. You can do the cast shadows on a layer behind the worshipers with visible shadows but in front of the planet. Also, the worshipers that are behind the planet are logically on layers behind the planet.

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