NEIL BOTTRILL
PHOTOSHOP RENDERING

Neil continues his tutorial by showing us how to add simple details that really help make the drawing come alive.  He also demonstartes one of the benefits of using Photoshop for making modifications to your drawing after it is completed!

Make the light clusters on a New Layer below the bodywork. Mark out the shape of the Lights, fill with a base colour (deep red for the rear and mid grey for the front on this car) and on top of this some basic lines drawn with a small Paintbrush, Dodge/Burn and Inner Bevel (see inset). Fill in the far side wheels (just visible under the car) and any Air Vents black on a new layer just above the background layer. Again just above the background layer, create another new layer for the shadow. Using the Polygonal Lasso quickly mark out a strip, slightly shorter than the length of the car and tall enough to meet both the near and far wheels, fill with 75% black and apply a Gaussian Blur of about 25 pixels.

Back to the bodywork, it’s time to add the panel gaps. Using the Polygonal Lasso and referring to the duplicate layer of the sketch, outline a body panel. Copy, Cut and Paste the panel and return it to its original position, zoom in to make sure everything lines up. Outline the next panel, Copy, Cut and Paste and align. Repeat this process for all body panels. By doing this every body panel has a layer to itself. Apply Inner Bevel to each layer containing a body panel. Once all panels are bevelled, merge the layers so there is one layer for the bodywork. I’ve also selected the saved bodywork path and used it to add a vertical gradient at 5% opacity from dark brown to sky blue.

Details such as door handles and wing mirrors (and wheels and lights) can make or break a rendering. The door handle here is set in a recess; Lasso, Dodge and Burn. Originally, the door handle was going to be a pop-out item (on the sketch). This is done by using the Rounded Rectangle tool, apply body colour and Pillow Emboss. Start the wing mirror on a new layer. Lasso the outline of the mirror, apply the body colour, Dodge/Burn and apply Inner Bevel. On a new layer below the mirror, Lasso a rough shape that the mirror would project down the side of the car (remembering the orientation of the light source), fill with a 75% opacity dark body colour and apply Gaussian Blur. Merge the mirror and bodywork. On a new layer below the body and interior quickly mark out the far side mirror. This will only just be visible so just a quick Paintbrush will do. Here, the pink tint in the body is erased by reducing the saturation by 5% and slightly altering the hue.

Now the bodywork and glass area are complete, one final quick layer adding sky blue and brown Paintbrush at 5% opacity adds some continual depth over the car as a whole. Merge this layer with the bodywork. The layers with the glass area, wheel wells, lights, etc. should be merged. This should leave 4 layers; a background, wheels, bodywork and everything else. Backgrounds are down to the individual although here, because the top surfaces of the car are getting lost in the white, a dark background is put in. The top half is filled with a dark, low saturated red with a 20% Radial Gradient in sky blue hinting at the light source. The lower half is a lighter low saturation red with a Grain Filter on a duplicate layer that is then erased either side of the car. The render is now complete…

…or if you don’t know when to stop you can do something like this. I’ve applied the classic Lotus ‘Type 49’ livery (hence the gold wheels) by marking out portions of the bodywork and altering the Hue/Saturation/Lightness. I’ve also deleted the Grain Filter on the background floor and replaced it with a reflection of the car. For this, copy and paste the car, flip vertically and reduce the opacity of the layer to about 8%. That’s it, move on to the next sketch.