A Few Tips for Painting Cave Exteriors!

Painting cave exteriors can be fun granted you know about transitioning from areas of lighter value to areas of darker values. For the most part, you are learning how to control a gradual shift into a focused, darkened area.

To start off, caves are usually surrounded by an organic environment that has different colors than the 'gray' rocks we are used to seeing. For example, the cave can be surrounded by grass, flowers, trees, water, magma, etc. All these elements have different color values associated with them.

Ready to get started?

1. The values

We begin painting cave exteriors from creating a general feel of the environment that we want our cave to be in. For this example, I've chosen a cave that is surrounded by grass and below ground level.

This serves two purposes: highlighting the grass and organic compounds as well as highlighting the non organic compounds such as the surrounding rock surfaces.

As you can see I've outlined what I think are the important values to what I need to construct my cave with. The darkened areas of brown is where I am putting my cave opening.

The other lightened areas are where I believe the light will hit. I have places my light source on the top left corner of the composition.

2. The cave opening

Perhaps one of the mistakes that most people make when painting cave exteriors is filling out the opening with a pure black color. That is not always the correct method, unfortunately. Remember what I said about creating a gradual transition to the darkened values?

This holds true as we do not want a black hole in our nice composition. We want the cave to be at the focus, yet at the same time, we don't want it to empower the entire composition.

What I have done is to take a large chalk brush and selected a deep brown color. Now, depending on what you feel comfortable doing in your digital art program, you can either choose to create the cave opening on a separate layer or have it down on the same layer with the surrounding values.

Of course, the advantages is that you can play around with the opacity setting until you find a value that you like. Again, this is based on your comfort level.

3. Refining the outside environment

I recommend shifting from larger brush sizes to smaller brush sizes as you work on the details. Initially, the larger brushes will define the shapes whereas the smaller brush sizes will define the textures.

Always keep in mind where your light source is and where your light will hit. As well, the stronger your brush strokes are, the better sense of depth you can accomplish.

I also recommend to split each of the refining details on separate layers. For example, your grass layers, your rock layers, and your sky layers should be used to overlap each other to create depth.

Your values that you did in step one are the colors that will help fill in the gaps as you being working on the fine details of your composition.

4. Finishing touches

At this point in time, you should be familiar with painting cave exteriors as you slowly work through all the fine details. Beyond this point, it is safe bet to play around with the different color management tools available in your digital art program.

Case in point, you can use different types of gradients to refine your light source. You can use your sharpen or blur tools to refine depth. Do not be afraid to step out of your comfort zone as you work with new tools. With digital art, you can always go back to the previous histories should you feel not satisfied with your composition.

Keep at it until you think you have the right picture that you want to convey. Most of all, keep on practicing those color transitions. Think about ambiance as you set a mood for your environment.

But most of all, keep practicing and building on your artistic foundation with every picture you paint. Do not settle with being comfortable. Try something different in each picture and the rest will come with time!

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