Creating a Satyr Using Layer Styles in Photoshop

Learn how to use Photoshop's digital painting toolset and layer styles to create fine art and concept drawings of fantasy creatures.

Photoshop is a great tool for creature creators. You can use it to create composites, or use its digital painting toolset, as shown here, to create fine art and concept drawings. In this course, artist Rayce Bird takes a hand-drawn sketch and brings it to life in Photoshop, showing how to use one particular feature, layer styles, to make interesting and realistic textures for a well-known fantasy creature: a satyr.

Introduction

• Welcome
• Using the exercise files
• Before watching this course

1. Import and Prepare the Sketch

• Adjustments and masking
• Add gray shades and smudging

2. Digital Painting

• Primary highlights and shadows
• Refinement and additional lighting
• Add color overlays

3. Layer Styles

• Secondary forms and larger wrinkles
• Refined wrinkles and horn textures
• Add high-frequency details
• Add scars and tribal designs

4. The Finishing Touches

• Supplementary highlights and shadows
• Foreground and background
• Main focal points
• Color correction and final overlays

Conclusion

• Next steps