I refer back to my thumbnail occasionally to see where I want the trees to go, and use that as I paint the rocks, since I need to know where the tree roots would attach. I want someplace for my trees to hold on. As with the clouds, paying attention to the shape of the rocks will help you light them properly. Flatter rocks tend to reflect more light upward. Rounded rocks tend to catch the light on their far-face.
Using saturation when highlighting
Convincing lighting is not only about brightness, but saturation as well. Note that the most saturated areas are not the highlight itself, but the transition area between light and shadow. In this painting it's a naice saturated looking orange color between the whiteish highlight and the purple shadow. Imagine what this would look like if it went from pale yellow to purple. It's look plastic. This is something you can observe in almost any strong lighting. Try looking at your hand under a strong light and observe where the color is the most saturated.
Starting the trees
Even though I usually work on one layer (the canvas), I’ll make a new layer for my trees. If I goof them it’ll be far easier to fix if I can work on them without marring the background I’ve spent so long on! First I draw in the basic shapes with a darker color, still working with the same palette. A word about choosing your colors- sometimes Painter can help you! When selecting a color for something- the tree trunks for example- it’s hard to know exactly what color to use. If you select a nice brown that you think should work, it usually looks out of place. Try using the color you picked to lightly draw a scribble onto your existing image. If you have a light touch, the scribble should be somewhere in between the color you chose and your background color. Use the Eyedropper tool to select this color and see how it looks. I used this method to help find the color I wanted for the tree trunks. Look what color I ended up with! Desaturated magenta..??! Weird! But, it looks right when I use it.
Detailing the twigs
At this point the trees are just silhouettes (the rocks nearly would have been too, but smooth rock is a bit more reflective than bark). Using smaller brushes I start to add the smaller branches. The lighter color will help the appearance of the twigs catching the light. I don't want to do it to all sides of ever twig though- that's overkill and it'll give the trees halos and make them look too cut out.
Lighting the trees
Time to add some highlights to these trees! The sun, at this angle, would only strike part of the trunks. Really, not much highlight would be visible. Remember that trees are (basically) cylindrical, so the light will strike just the top of the bark as you wrap around the tree. I also added a little bit of a shadow on each tree trunk. Really, this is sort of messy- I was in a huge time crunch to complete this tutorial. So, if you have time, do what I did not and refine your work a little better. Try not to rush.
Bringing it together
Getting the trees to blend with the rocky area can be tricky. I’ve drawn the roots in amongst the rocks, and darkened the areas of the rocks that would be in shadow from the trees. I also added a few twiggy things in there, growing in amongst the rocks. The trees also got tiny buds added. This is supposed to look like early spring after all. By the way, this shot looks cool all by itself, and goes to show that cropping the same image in different ways really make the piece look different!
Some final details
This is where I go over the piece, add any last details I can think of or want to add, and fix any obvious errors I see. Sometimes it helps to flip the image to look at it fresh. Here, I’ve added a few more signs of spring and a hawk in the tree for balance. Just fiddly stuff. Much more and it’ll start looking overworked! At this point I'd usually paint in the main subject- be it a dragon, gryphon, winged six legged green wolf, or a person... it doesn't matter. The background is refined enough to support something. (A side note, when I worked this tutorial I was asked not to put a dragon or critter in there.. sigh. It's like a disease.)
Tweaking the final image
Finally, I use the Tonal Control tools, mostly brightness/contrast, to tweak the image just a bit to pop. High contrast will always pull the eye, but if overdone the image will look too harsh and can be really displeasing. It takes a little fine tuning to get it to where you like. And now I can say this, since this won't be going into the Painter magazine- I usually save my work as a .psd file and then open it in Photoshop Elements (it came with my Wacom and is a stripped-down version of Photoshop) and tweak it there. I use Painter 9 and it's nice, but Photoshop wins for tweaking the colors and the brightness/contrast. I usually hit it with some subtle "Levels" adjustments (press Ctrl + L for the levels box) and once in a while a very subtle 'unsharp mask' (look under filters -> sharpen).
A word about Highlights- how to avoid a plastic, dull, or lifeless look
One of the easiest ways to botch lighting and or make your lighting look plastic and fake is to use color improperly. It’s easy to abuse black and white. Even though it may seem logical, when painting something in color, shading your painting with these two is where many artists run into trouble. If you are struggling with this, take a few photographs with different light sources and use the Eyedropper tool to ‘explore’ some of the colors. Though this can be insightful, nothing beats actual observation and practice. A good excursive might be to do a quick painting of an object, and use black and white to shade and highlight, then paint the same thing not using any black and white. You might be surprised with the dramatic difference! When painting with light, especially strong ‘colored’ light such as a sunset or sunrise, always consider the color of your light source as well as the ambient colors being reflected off of other objects.
Consider the version of the image on the right, above. This version of the clouds used white to highlight and black to shade. While not a bad piece of art, it’s fairly dull and lifeless. The trees especially look plastic and dull, and everything has a much colder feel.
Consider the same image again, on the left, as it was originally painted with no black or white. Which feels more like a sunrise, and has more life and feeling to it?
Scientifically, light is comprised of the full spectrum of visible/invisible wavelengths. At sunrise/sunset however, the sun is closer to the horizon and light travels through more atmosphere to reach our eye. This is what causes brilliant colors. I tend to pull colors from my mind, but for those with less sky-experience, your best reference is the real thing! Observe the colors you see in a real sunset, take a few art supplies and make some color studies or even a few photos. You’ll notice that nature creates strong complimentary colors- yellow/amber highlights with deep blue/purple shadows.
I hope this tutorial has been helpful to you in some way! This tutorial is free to use for individual enrichment. I enjoy helping others and do not put a price on my aid. Tutorials take a lot of time, effort, and bandwidth to make, and then format for you to see online, so if you enjoyed this tutorial or found it helpful, please consider donating a dollar or two. Donations are always appreciated but are never required nor expected.