Discover how to create the lighter part of mountains in a rocket image using a pen tool in a digital art program. The article guides through each step of the process, ensuring realistic shadowing and depth.
Key Insights
- The article begins by explaining how to select the pen tool and choosing the appropriate color for the mountains in the digital art program. The color selection is crucial to ensure the mountains blend well with the overall image.
- It then introduces the technique of intersecting at the anchor point of shadows to avoid overlap. This method gives the mountains a more realistic look by properly integrating the lighting and shadow aspects.
- The article also emphasizes the importance of layering in digital art. Moving the lighter colored mountains to the back of the layer order creates a depth effect, enhancing the overall aesthetics of the image.
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In this video, we'll be creating the lighter part of our mountains within our rocket image. So let's begin by selecting the Pen Tool and making sure that we're in our “Mountains Trace” layer.
From here, we're going to want to select the color we want our mountains to be. So I'll double-click the Fill and choose an orange color that's a bit lighter, then click OK. From here, we're simply going to begin drawing our mountains.
If we click and drag, we'll want to intersect at the anchor point of our previous shadow. We'll zoom in and intersect right here at our shadow. Rather than coming across and following the shadow, if we dip inside, we won't overlap with the shadow when the shadows are moved to the top.
We'll simply dip inside and come back out right at the anchor point at the edge of the shadow. In this case, we're again seeing the color of our image, so let's hold ALT and toggle the visibility again so that we see only the points. Next, we'll click the anchor point of our shadow, dip inside the shadow, and exit at the anchor point of the shadow.
We'll then create our mountain, intersect at the shadow, dip inside, and come back out at the edge of the shadow. Click over to the edge of the shadow, dip in, and exit the shadow; edge of the shadow, dip in, and exit the shadow. From here, we're simply going to go across the top, making sure to intersect at each of the shadows, dip in before exiting out at this top anchor point. Dip in, hit the edge of the path to come out, back on the path, and here we'll rise slightly above before coming back down into the shadow and dip under the shadow to come to the edge.
Finally, let's zoom out, and we're going to connect these mountains all the way to the bottom of our Artboard, and all the way to the other side, come into the other edge, and back up to complete our shape. From here, let's see our work. If we hold ALT and toggle the visibility, we can see that we have our mountains; however, we can only see some of the shadows.
Instead, we'll want to move these lighter orange mountains to the back. So within our Layers Panel, we'll open up “Mountains Trace, ” and we're simply going to drag this large path that's selected all the way to the bottom, so it's behind the shadows. We'll then hit V on the keyboard, click outside to see our work. Finally, let's toggle the visibility of our Mountains layer with the sketch in the background, and we'll also toggle the visibility of our Exhaust to see a preview.
If we zoom out, we'll see that we're starting to finish up our image here, and I like the look of these mountains and the shadows in the background. Let's hit CTRL+S on our keyboard to save our work, and in the next video, we'll be finalizing our entire piece.
See you there!