Painting a Feather

By Katherine Dinger. Recovered Pocketmole tutorial.


Name of tutorial: Painting a Feather
Basic painting lesson that takes the user step-by-step through creating a feather in Photoshop.



THE STEPS
Step 1
Painting a Feather — feather1
Step 1 - Draw the "spine" of the feather to determine which way it will lie:

Step 2
Painting a Feather — feather2
Step 2 - With a general base color, block in the shape of your feather. Depending on the feather, pieces will clump together and separate in different areas:

Step 3
Painting a Feather — feather3
Step 3 - With a fairly large, soft-edged brush go in a develope basic shadows and highlights:

Step 4
Painting a Feather — feather4
Step 4 - With a finer brush, start to develop some of the individual "hairs" on the feather:

Step 5
Painting a Feather — feather5
Step 5 - Continue to bring out the texture of the feather. Again, depending on the feather, this could look really different. For some feathers the "hairs" are very visible and for others (like this one) they appear much more like one piece:

Step 6
Painting a Feather — feather6
Step 6 - With a large brush over the top, bring out the shadows and highlights a little bit more:

Step 7
Painting a Feather — feather7
Step 7 - Obviously not necessary but I added a shadow :D

Finished Product
Painting a Feather — 1Painting a Feather — 2
Painting a Feather — 3Painting a Feather — 4
Painting a Feather — 5Painting a Feather — 6
Painting a Feather — 7Painting a Feather — 8