Concept Masters Vol 3: Photobashing For Concept Art

SHIPSHAPE Concept designer Chris Madden shows how some crafty techniques help you be creative and practical at the same time

Chris Madden’s contribution to Concept Masters’ series of workshops explores the potential of photo bashing: bringing reference photos into your art that you then paint over. His video gaming background means his chosen scene of a giant ship over a landscape has an epic, cinematic feel – and throughout the video, you’ll see how Chris uses photo bashing to convey the required mood.

His use of photos in creating the landscape backdrop is straightforward: import a sky photo here and a ground photo there, then get to work with Blending modes and Transform tools to shape these elements into a coherent whole.