Discover how to create a stunning mountain range image using tracing techniques with the pen tool. This guide offers step-by-step instructions on creating a multi-layered image, emphasizing on the importance of creating light and shadow for a realistic effect.
Key Insights
- The mountain range image creation begins with an image import followed by careful resizing and positioning to maintain proportions. The creation of a second layer titled 'mountains trace' enables further work.
- Tracing the mountain scene involves creating both shadows and lighter parts within the image. The author suggests working with the shadows first and creating the lighter part as a layer beneath the shadows afterwards.
- Creating the shadows for the mountain range involves using the pen tool and an orange color fill of personal preference. The shadows should not be overly consistent to align with the flat design of any associated elements such as a rocket.
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In this video we're going to create mountains using our mountain image and tracing it ourselves utilizing the Pen tool. So let's import our mountain image. Again, we'll go to File > Place, and select our mountain range PNG, clicking Place and dragging it from one end to the other.
We'll resize it holding Shift to maintain proportions, and let's drag it a bit below, then Shift, and I think this is a good place for our mountain range. Next, we're going to want to create our mountain scene right on top of this utilizing the Pen tool. So to do this, let's create a second layer and we'll title this layer "Mountains Trace" and hit ENTER.
From here, let's lock our Mountains layer, as we'll be working within our Mountains Trace layer. There are a couple of different ways that we can go about tracing this mountain scene with both the shadows as well as the light mountains. The first way would be to add multiple layers, tracing the first mountain in front and then creating the mountains in the back, as well as the shadows.
In my personal preference, I tend to work with the shadows first and create the lighter part as a layer that goes beneath the shadows afterward. So let's do this. We'll utilize the Pen tool for this, and we're simply going to create the shadows first for our mountain range.
For our fill, we'll select the orange color, and feel free to select whatever orange color you'd prefer for the shadows. I'll choose this color and click OK. Next, let's zoom in and begin tracing our shadows. For our shadows and mountain range, we don't want it to be too consistent, as it will feel a little out of place with the flat design of our rocket.
Therefore, to create these shadows, we're simply going to loosely base our shadows on the shadows that are already there. Once you've completed your first shadow, we'll move on to create our second shadow. In the case of other images that you're tracing, you may want to click and drag, rounding out images. However, for these, we can keep a little more jagged design.
We'll simply click and draw our shadows, and I'm going to leave this shadow on the left-hand side out of our image. We're simply going to loosely draw our shadows here. We'll again make this part of the lighter part of the mountain rather than the shadow, and we'll click up. As we can see here, we are no longer able to see because our image has a fill. In order to change this, we can hold ALT on the keyboard and toggle the visibility, making the layer that we're working on only show the line and the outline of our image.
From here, we can continue dragging our shadow, and we'll simply work to create our shadow, not making it too overly complicated. Again, if we hold ALT and toggle the visibility, we'll see that the image still has a fill; however, we're choosing to only see the outline. Next, let's complete our next shadows, and I'm going to skip over this one, as again we don't want it to be too overly complicated here for our background. Here we have a rather large shadow that spans this whole distance, so we're going to create this and do our best to roughly follow the shadows provided for these mountains.
If you prefer to, feel free to follow the shadows closely and have a little bit more defined shadow range. Finally, we'll complete our last shadow on the right-hand side, and if we toggle the visibility holding ALT, we'll see that our shadows loosely line up with our mountain range. Here I'm forgetting one, so we'll click and create a shadow here, and we've now completed our shadows.
Let's hit CTRL+S on the keyboard to save our work thus far, and in the next video, we'll be completing the mountains behind it. See you there!