Phoenix n stuff
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Jazzy Stardust
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Just a quick tip for your backgrounds, which might save you a lot of time learning from trial and error.
I also just recently started practicing digital painting (did draw digitally before but only in anime style (lineart then color)).
Painting always seemed kinda unapproachable to me because my usual tools and mindset didn't apply at all. (brushes/lots of layers/fear of drawing outside bounds).
(1) Try to keep your entire background(if possible even the character) on one layer only. It makes everything feel more tangible and connected, like it's part of the scene instead of just in the scene
Composition is important here (order of painting) but it's nothing you have to limit yourself by, if the character is already drawn put it on a different layer, otherwise it'll be hard to paint a convincing background around it.
For the background itself it doesn't matter, if you forgot something don't be afraid to redo. For example you painted the sky, added in mountains and now you notice the sky is single color but you wanted a gradient, just paint the sky and re-do the edges on the mountains, it often helps discovering new shapes in things too.
(2) Use rough/blocky brushes it's easy to loose yourself in (at that point unecessary) fine detail if your brush is too small.
Something like a square marker brush works well, you can't really do round lines because the marker will break the line, that will help you block out shapes with more depth.
(3) Start with very large brushes (100-200px) and gradually size down as your shapes take form, you always take away and add to your shapes with nearby colors.
Keep the size a bit larger than feels comfortable during each step.
(4) Use Color blending and persistence in your brush, keep the opacity near solid, get your palette variation from drawing over edges.
If you have it, possibly even enable something like "Color Dynamics" in PS which will make you paint in a color range instead of a single tone, also helps with not getting lost in details too early (colors can be fixed by blending).
(5) Probably the most important step for me, don't select your shades as a palette, but instead pick them from anything suitable nearby. My thumb is pretty much never leaving the ALT(eyedropper) key, and for every new stroke I will pick a color just underneath or nearby my brush.
This helps with blending, and also simulates a bit of ambient occlusion/indirect lighting as colors are rarely "pure".
(6) There is no eraser, never erase anything. If you want something gone paint over it with the sky color or the color of another object nearby. A world will never have holes in it.
Doing this will, again keep everything bound together and "physically" present in your scene.
Example: Your mountain will be too square at the beginning, so you carve parts out with the sky. At some locations you might want to add a bit to it, you select the mountain color again, because it's blending with the sky it will be a bit brighter now, so you take a darker shade of your mountain and draw over the previous part again. Naturally edges will shape through each stroke, which will add depth to your painting.
Don't worry about "soiling" your sky with brown, as later you can simply draw over the brownish parts with a nearby more pure sky color, but even then it will be a slightly blended hue instead of a cartoonish single color tone. Each time you draw over an edge it will also blend it a bit more (and create 2 new edges to either side) repeating this a few times will naturally form a gradient.
Hope this wall of text helps you instead of killing you. =D
I also just recently started practicing digital painting (did draw digitally before but only in anime style (lineart then color)).
Painting always seemed kinda unapproachable to me because my usual tools and mindset didn't apply at all. (brushes/lots of layers/fear of drawing outside bounds).
(1) Try to keep your entire background(if possible even the character) on one layer only. It makes everything feel more tangible and connected, like it's part of the scene instead of just in the scene
Composition is important here (order of painting) but it's nothing you have to limit yourself by, if the character is already drawn put it on a different layer, otherwise it'll be hard to paint a convincing background around it.
For the background itself it doesn't matter, if you forgot something don't be afraid to redo. For example you painted the sky, added in mountains and now you notice the sky is single color but you wanted a gradient, just paint the sky and re-do the edges on the mountains, it often helps discovering new shapes in things too.
(2) Use rough/blocky brushes it's easy to loose yourself in (at that point unecessary) fine detail if your brush is too small.
Something like a square marker brush works well, you can't really do round lines because the marker will break the line, that will help you block out shapes with more depth.
(3) Start with very large brushes (100-200px) and gradually size down as your shapes take form, you always take away and add to your shapes with nearby colors.
Keep the size a bit larger than feels comfortable during each step.
(4) Use Color blending and persistence in your brush, keep the opacity near solid, get your palette variation from drawing over edges.
If you have it, possibly even enable something like "Color Dynamics" in PS which will make you paint in a color range instead of a single tone, also helps with not getting lost in details too early (colors can be fixed by blending).
(5) Probably the most important step for me, don't select your shades as a palette, but instead pick them from anything suitable nearby. My thumb is pretty much never leaving the ALT(eyedropper) key, and for every new stroke I will pick a color just underneath or nearby my brush.
This helps with blending, and also simulates a bit of ambient occlusion/indirect lighting as colors are rarely "pure".
(6) There is no eraser, never erase anything. If you want something gone paint over it with the sky color or the color of another object nearby. A world will never have holes in it.
Doing this will, again keep everything bound together and "physically" present in your scene.
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Example: Your mountain will be too square at the beginning, so you carve parts out with the sky. At some locations you might want to add a bit to it, you select the mountain color again, because it's blending with the sky it will be a bit brighter now, so you take a darker shade of your mountain and draw over the previous part again. Naturally edges will shape through each stroke, which will add depth to your painting.
Don't worry about "soiling" your sky with brown, as later you can simply draw over the brownish parts with a nearby more pure sky color, but even then it will be a slightly blended hue instead of a cartoonish single color tone. Each time you draw over an edge it will also blend it a bit more (and create 2 new edges to either side) repeating this a few times will naturally form a gradient.
Hope this wall of text helps you instead of killing you. =D
Appreciate everything except the first tip. Painting on just one layer is basically asking for 3 times more work for basically the same result. And don't worry, I used to write posts much longer than yours lol