Sunset at the End of Time

This piece took me the longest so far. I started with a background layer that I painted in thick stripes of colors, like a custom gradient. I blended those layers and added colors in that I thought would mix well into the sunset. At the bottom, I put in the green stripe for the horizon and ground. My second step was to create a layer on which I would draw the hill and the grass. I made a large brown lump and then to make the cliff face, I outlined the rough shape with a thin black line. To make the cliff appear 3-d I continually made it be overtaken by the grass as the cliff got closer to the bottom of the screen (essentially thinning the region of brown so that it was shaped like a lumpy triangle). To make the grass, I used the Pencil sketch brush and then just smudged it with the original brown using the calligraphy brushes until it looked wave-like. I then smudged the edges of the hill to make it look "softer." My next step was to create a layer between the background layer and the hill layer and, using tree brushes I downloaded from the internet, paint in various trees. The big thing was starting at the horizon with small trees and growing continually larger as I went. This created depth and realism to the trees. At this point, I thought of adding stars to the sky, so I used a very very small brush and made some stars in the blue portion and a few in the purple-and-yellow. My next step was to make a fourth layer, on which I put the large tree and added the swing. Back on the Hill layer, I made the shadow by using the Dodge/burn tool and the fuzzy circle brush to create a sort of half-shadow at the edges. After this I used the blur tool lightly on the big tree and the swing, and then more heavily on the Forest Layer. I added a center of light behind the hill on the background layer using filters--->light and shadow---->lighting effects and then placing the source of light behind the hill and changing the color of the light to a slight yellow. My final details were done with the dodge/burn tool, as I shadowed the hill from bottom to top. Also, if you look closely at the edge of the cliff face, you will see a "glow" near the edge which was also done with the dodge burn tool. I zoomed up very close and made a bright line that followed the cliff edge to create the effect of light shining from behind.

--Martin