I’m going to take a bit of time for a project of my very own. A project involving rum-swilling sea-scourge. You know. Pirates.

I’ll break down this project into a series of tutorials (sky, water, boat, characters, and animation) for anyone who might find such things helpful.

Beginning with the background painting.

I’m skipping the preliminary sketch on this one. I know where I’m going with this and I don’t think I’ll have to slow down until I get to the boat. I’m working with Adobe Photoshop. No fancy brushes, just the basic round and oval ones.

The first step is to lay down some gradients for the sky and the water. My scene is for a cartoon so the colors are pretty saturated.

The next step is to lay down some wispy clouds in the distance. It may be hard to see but the wisps aren’t completely opaque. Clouds are made of water vapor, so they tend to be somewhat transparent.

Next I use a darkish color and begin blocking in the bodies of the closer clouds. you might have noticed that I’m still keeping the clouds transparent so the colors behind come through.

With the cloud shapes in place I block in the light areas of the clouds. I’m not using white, I’m using a slightly transparent pinkish-purple.

And finally I scribble in a few white hilites.

I think I’ve gotten the clouds far enough along that I can move to the water. I couldn’t have begun the water without the sky and clouds. Why? Because water reflects what’s above it.

Did you find this tutorial helpful? Comments, questions, and suggestions are appreciated.