Harness the Elements: Paint Air in All Its Forms

Welcome to the last part of the Harness the Elements series! This one is going to be quite interesting, because air can't be normally seen. However, there are elements connected to air that we can paint to give a special atmosphere to our scenes.

In this tutorial we'll take a close look at creating cloud brushes, fog, and special effects like atmospheric perspective and depth of field.

1. Create a Cloud Brush, Version 1

There are many, many kinds of clouds, so let's create a universal brush that will let you paint them all.

Step 1

Select a round, hard brush with Transfer checked. Press F5 to see this panel.

Step 2

Check Scattering and play with the options to get an effect as below. If needed, go to Brush Tip Shape and change theSpacing of your brush.

Step 3

Check Shape Dynamics. This will make its size variable.

Step 4

Check Dual Brush and select Chalk brush for it. Adjust the options to give this ragged texture to all the strokes.

Test the brush! If you're satisfied, save it. If not, adjust the options one more time.

Step 5

Create a New File. Apply a dark blue-cyan gradient to create a sky. Then create a New Layer and paint the clouds with a low saturated, dark cyan (like #B5C6CC).

Step 6

Decrease the size of the brush and paint ragged edges wherever the round parts appear.

Step 7

Brighten the colors and paint the clouds once again, this time more in the middle of every shape.

Step 8

Brighten the color strongly, almost to white. Decrease the size and shade the clouds, just as if they were normal 3D objects.

Step 9

Where light is, there's shadow, too! Paint it on the opposite side, using a low saturated, dark cyan.

Step 10

Depending on the style you're going for, you can blur the clouds slightly using your favorite blurring tool. I've used the Mixer Brush Tool with its default settings.

Step 11

You can use this brush for all the clouds you want. Just remember to keep your finger next to the decrease/increase size button, so that you can change the size all the time, making the clouds more chaotic and natural.

2. Create a Cloud Brush, Version 2

If you'd rather give up some of your control to be faster instead, you can try this other brush.

Step 1

Create a New File. Fill the background with black, and paint some undefined shape with the Chalk brush on a New Layer.

Step 2

Duplicate (Control-J) the shape. Use the Free Transform Tool (Control-T) to resize the original. Hold Shift and Alt when doing it to keep the proportions and position. Then lower theOpacity of the original.

Step 3

Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur to make the edges of the original even less defined.

Step 4

Flatten the image, andInvert (Control-I) the colors. Go to Edit > Define Brush Preset.

Step 5

Go to Brush Settings(F5) and adjust the options to achieve a fluffy brush. Test it while adjusting, and pay attention to Spacing.

You can use this brush just like the one before, except this one gives you a faster and less controllable effect.

3. Achieve Atmospheric Perspective

Atmospheric (or aerial) perspective is a great method of achieving depth. Though air itself is invisible, water and dust particles suspended in it aren't. When light hits them, the image seen by us is changed. The more "impure" the air (not necessarily meaning pollution), the heavier the "mist" that can be observed. This mist grows with distance, and it has the color of sky.

Let's see how to add this effect to this scene:

Step 1

Prepare a blue-white gradient. Make the white part transparent.

Step 2

Put this gradient on the ground, but under the objects. Don't ever put this effect on a whole scene, or you'll flatten it! To affect only the ground with this, clip (Control-Alt-G) the gradient layer to the ground layer.

Step 3

Set the Blend Mode to Screen. It will make the ground brighter and bluish rather than simply blue.

Step 4

Let's do the same with the objects. Create a New Layer over them, and Create a Clipping Mask once again. This time don't put the gradient vertically, but instead follow the perspective lines.

Step 5

Change the Blend Mode as before.

This effect is visible no matter how many objects you have on the scene. Thanks to aerial perspective you can easily convince your viewers that it's not just a smaller ball, and that it indeed lies at some distance.

As I said before, the more impure the air, the heavier the mist. It means that in quite a pure air fewer objects will be affected by the gradient. You shouldn't just lower theOpacity of a big gradient, but make it "shorter" instead.

4. Achieve Depth of Field

Depth of field is another great trick to create a sense of space. However, if done incorrectly, it can flatten even a well-shaded picture. Let's see how to avoid this!

Step 1

First, we need to separate the "levels" of the scene. In my case, it's the ground, the sky, and the objects—all separate, too. By working on them individually we'll achieve the effect of depth.

First, let's work on the ground. Select the layer, and go to Filter > Blur > Tilt-Shift. Place the center where the observer is looking, and squeeze the area into a small band.

This shows us which objects must be blurred, and which one will stay sharp.

Step 2

The sky can be easily blurred with Filter > Gaussian Blur.

Step 3

Apply the same blur to all the objects outside of the "sharp band". If you don't have them separated, you can experiment with Filter > Blur > Field Blur, but be very careful here—use more points at once to avoid flattening.

This effect, though cool, can be used only when the observer is looking at something very close to them. You can use this freely to emphasize the small scale of the scene ("ant's point of view"), but don't overuse it at a large scale.

This is also very useful when you want to show where the observer is. All you need to do is to place something (very big in this scale) right in the foreground, and then blur it. For example, here the observer is behind the bars.

He or she can look through them...

... or at them, depending on what you want to stress.

When you want to do something like this, keep the "extreme foreground" as big as possible without covering the whole picture. You can observe this effect by keeping your hand close to your face while looking at the screen. Keep one eye closed for clarity.

5. Paint Fog

Step 1

Fog is nothing more than a very heavy atmospheric perspective. Let's start by applying this effect to the scene. No need to be subtle this time!

Step 2

Create a New Layer and fill it with black. Go to Filter > Render > Clouds. Copy the image.

Step 3

Open Window > Channels and Create New Channel.

Step 4

Paste the clouds, and then deselect (Control-D). Click Load Channel As Selection.

Step 5

Come back to theRGB channel, and then hide the layer with the clouds without messing with the selection.

Step 6

Create a New Layer and Fill the selection with white.

Step 7

Use the Free Transform Tool (Control-T) to adjust the perspective. Hold Control while dragging the corners to achieve this effect.

Step 8

Use the Layer Mask or the Eraser Tool to reveal the objects that are over the layer of fog. Pay attention to perspective!

Step 9

You can use Filter > Liquify to modify the shape of the fog.

Step 10

If it's too transparent, simply duplicate (Control-J) the layer.

We Did It!

This tutorial was the last part of the Harness the Elements series. If you enjoyed it, make sure to check the previous parts:

• Water 1 (ice)
• Water 2
• Fire
• Earth