A remastered version of my other planet this matte painting is a lot better. Still I will provide a recap on how I achieved my final painting. I began with a document size around 1200 width 1600 height both in pixels with a transparent background. To the transparent background I filled it with white and low opacity. Then with a soft brush I scattered some black around. Next was to make some clouds. You can do this with render clouds under filter tab. I used difference clouds and is also located under the filter tab. I repeated this process at least three times and put them in their own layers. With my first set of clouds I added a gradient overlay to put my colors in. Next I began with the star layer. To do this in a good way you can also find a useful tool under the filter tab called noise. Make a new layer filled with black and under the filter tab find noise. You want to make sure Gaussian and monochromatic are checked. After you get your noise you want to use levels to bring out some brighter “stars”. You can do this process twice if you like. Still working on my atmosphere I wanted to add some extra color. I simply picked a color I wanted filled it in a new layer and with a soft brush I erased the color away. Lastly I took away from the edges painting a black edged outline because its outer space and black is necessary. To bring everything together that I had so far I added a color balance adjustment layer. Now working the planet, moon, and asteroid was my next goal. First I did these two light explosion circles by using a large hard brush and added an outer glow to it. Then to add to this explosion I added light rays. To get light rays you start by using a brush with dissolve checked. After you get a stroke you like add a radial blur from the filter tab. Also make sure you have zoom and best checked when using blur from the filter tab to get light rays. Now to the earth many different shades were added to it by using the brush tool. Some black, white, and blue shades where added to spots where needed. Lastly to finish up earth another color back was applied. The moon was transformed by using hue/saturation and color balance to get a fitting piece. Finally with the rock I thought a different way to use it. I used a clone stamp tool on it and started to paint the earth where it was colliding with the moon. I wanted to use the rock because it had a good texture that seem like magma and rock from the earth core. I also used the clone stamp from the rock to make the debris floating from earth. To make the colors fit hue/saturation and color was used once more. Lastly just to incorporate the rock I added it to the bottom flying past earth as it smashed into by the moon. I used a lasso tool to get the stream behind the rock. I then used the gradient tool to get colors I wanted, but I couldn’t get the colors to fit so I applied luminosity from the blending options. The rock is supposed to be a shooting star but that’s irony as earth is being destroyed.  

Blending Colors with Brushes

For our assignment we had to properly blend colors by using only the brush tool. To start a quick tip is to use the magic wand on an empty shape to color in. This is useful because when the marquee appears around that shape and you start paint it will allow for you to stay within that marquee line. I first approached the rectangle and begin working with a hard surface brush. A quick way to obtain a color is to us the eyedropper tool. So I jump around and still with the hard brush I paint the top, bottom, and couple of strokes in between those to get a rough of what colors I’m going to blending into. After that I switch over to a soft brush and start painting in between those strokes. The blending still wasn’t done and I went back a third time, still with a soft surfaced brush but this with the opacity and flow turned down to around 85%. This took care of any eye catching color transitions that didn’t look right. That would finish my blending for this rectangle shape. Next and for me the more difficult shape was the circle. I approached this the same way as the rectangle but I soon realized this was not going to work. To solve one my problems I applied the rulers’ tool so that I can bring the guides out. The guides allowed me to divide the circle into sections and help me blend and gather colors. Again I started with the hard brush to color inside the inner circle. That’s the end of hard brush because it didn’t appropriately for the rest of the blending. Now the soft brush was my main tool and I went back and forth, painting this circle trying to get all the colors and to blend properly. Even with the opacity and flow lowered I did not like the blending that was done. Although very minor the change I did to help get the blending I wanted was to make the brush size bigger. This helped and in the end I achieved an accurately close blend of colors.