Painting a teapot! - Photoshop Tutorials | Photoshop Contests

**ndg** · 01-30-2008, 10:54 PM

Painting a teapot.

Note:When painting still lifes in a more traditional medium like oil, you would most likely have the items your painting arranged in a setup in front of you. This is hard to do digitally, so what I did was found an image of a teapot. Since I have a dual monitor setup, I put the picture on one monitor, and painted on another. The ref I used is here.
Using the following technique, you can successfully paint anything you would like.
On to the tutorial-
Step 1. Outline.
When starting a painting, you should draw out an outline of the object your painting. You can see in this image, I quickly drew out an outline with a hard edge, low opacity brush.

Step 2. Dark areas.
I always paint the dark areas first. Keep it simple. I used a hard edged, medium opacity brush and quickly painted in the dark areas.

Step 3. Midtones.
Here I quickly paint in any midtone areas. Again, I keep it simple, and use a hard edged, medium opacity brush

Step 4. Highlighted areas
I paint in the highlighted areas. I used the same brush and techinque as in steps 2 and 3.

Step 5. Define edges
Here I define the areas between light and dark more clearly. I use a smaller, higher opacity brush. I also paint in the background a little to give the picture a sense of depth.

Step 6. Adding detail
I start to add detail. Remember to paint with the contours of the object you are painting, and to keep the surface texture in mind. I am painting a highly reflective teapot, so I want to try to create that texture. Painting withthe contours of the pot will help to create that.

Step 7. More detail
here I begin to add a little detail to the ground. Again, remember to paint with the direction and contours of the ground. I also flippe dthe painting. This gives you a new view of what your painting, and helps you see any mistakes you may of missed. Many digital painters flip images like this for that very reason.

Step 8. Adding more detail and depth
here I add more detail to the teapot, ground, and background. I am trying to add depth using shadows and light. Also remember that shadows are very rarely black, and shadows contain light. Remembering and using that tip will add a sense of realism to your paintings.

Step 9. Detail and refine
I flip the image again and continue to detail and refine.

Here is what I have after putting a few hours into the painting. Although I feel this painting is finished enough for this tutorial, I will put several more hours into the painting itself later on. It is no where near finished, but I believe it shows enough to successfully explain the techniques involved. happy painting!