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Description
artwork and fursona (c) foxstory 2013

So... after completing my updated 2013-14 fursona reference sheet, I figured it was time to do a full picture featuring my fursona. It's a pleasant day in mid autumn when leaves have turned color and begun to fall to earth. There's not much of a breeze, but the days are getting cooler. My fursona has decided to explore some rocky semi paved trails into the forest. The signpost's three arrows are, from top to bottom, "Lake Trail 2.7 mi," "Shaded Trail 4.1 mi," and "Fox Field, 5.8 mi," which is where this fox is headed. It's somewhat late in the afternoon, and the sun's position in the sky sends its rays over the pond and through the beginning of the trail to Fox Field, from the upper right to the bottom left of this composition. This isn't a setting from any particular canon that I've developed, but I set it up ad hoc to support this picture as it developed.

First off, I'd like to credit *MinnaSundberg 's excellent fur tutorial ( minnasundberg.deviantart.com/a… ), which I most recently applied here ( foxstory.deviantart.com/art/Si… ) almost a year ago. This is only my second attempt depicting fur with the guidance of that particular tutorial, specifically the "Thick Fur" subsection. I got really into the process, which led me to become confident enough to make my first serious lineless painting of my fursona. I had a meager effort at lineless art when I made a composition from overlapping uses of the Paths tool, back in January 2012; it was called "At Water's Edge." This is a much more developed work of lineless fursona art, since I used a great many individual brush strokes instead.

I made a cylinder in the 3D workspace of Adobe Photoshop CS4 and then proceeded to rotate it into the position you see in the final composition. I originally thought I would attach the three trail arrows to the cylinder as a single 3D object composition before rotating and moving it into position. This was beyond my current capabilities, however. Instead, I drew the trail arrows on afterward. The text for Lake Trail and Fox Field was converted into a 3D postcard and then rotated so as to fit the apparent 3D orientation of those trail arrows. A much more manageable task for my 3D art skills was to make the bench. First, I made a default cube object from the template provided in the CS4 3D workspace. Then, I adjusted its relative dimensions in x,y,z to make an elongated rectangular prism. I made three copies, and moved them in 3D relative to each other. I then rotated one of these boxes to the upright angle I wanted for the bench. I made copies again and moved them in 3D to create the back of the bench. You'll notice that the two metal supports behind the back of the bench, as well as the metal platform and its four legs, have not been created in 3D, but rather drawn from scratch with brushes.

I took two wood textures, one gravel/rocky texture, and one galvanized metal texture from the free texture site cgtextures. The gravel has been manipulated from a 3D perspective view to provide the appearance of smaller rocks receding into the distance. I used Photoshop's pattern overlay for the rocky path as well as all the trees. If you look to the upper right, you can see that the Lake Trail is more worn through and less developed with fresh (gray) gravel; it instead tends more toward brown. I used a grass brush native to Photoshop CS4, as well as the default leaf brush provided by the software. I applied three gradients from upper right to bottom left. A multiply gradient goes from white to black, a second gradient goes from yellow to orange/red to blue, and a third gradient adds in cool, dark blue shading in the bottom left. I slightly decreased saturation and increased contrast, as I recall. I also made some minimal changes to vibrance.

edit: Somehow, the front left paw having brushed back part of the pile of leaves reminds me of the Daniel Powter song "Bad Day" with the lyric "kick up the leaves and the magic is lost," but in this case no magic is lost and my fursona is fine. It was a somewhat popular song a few years back, just thought I'd mention that (since that's precisely what my fursona is doing).

Also... if you want to read my fursona's collar tag, sample the colors, or learn miscellaneous things about my fursona, you can find the freshly updated reference sheet here: foxstory.deviantart.com/art/Fu…

Thanks for reading! Favorites are fine, but comments are really the best. Have a nice day.

Time Taken: 16-18 hours over four days
Program: Adobe Photoshop CS4
Tablet: Wacom Intuos 4 Large
External Monitor: ViewSonic full HD (1920x1080)
Laptop: Dell XPS 17" L702X, 8GB RAM

Description
artwork and fursona (c) foxstory 2013

So... after completing my updated 2013-14 fursona reference sheet, I figured it was time to do a full picture featuring my fursona. It's a pleasant day in mid autumn when leaves have turned color and begun to fall to earth. There's not much of a breeze, but the days are getting cooler. My fursona has decided to explore some rocky semi paved trails into the forest. The signpost's three arrows are, from top to bottom, "Lake Trail 2.7 mi," "Shaded Trail 4.1 mi," and "Fox Field, 5.8 mi," which is where this fox is headed. It's somewhat late in the afternoon, and the sun's position in the sky sends its rays over the pond and through the beginning of the trail to Fox Field, from the upper right to the bottom left of this composition. This isn't a setting from any particular canon that I've developed, but I set it up ad hoc to support this picture as it developed.

First off, I'd like to credit *MinnaSundberg 's excellent fur tutorial ( minnasundberg.deviantart.com/a… ), which I most recently applied here ( foxstory.deviantart.com/art/Si… ) almost a year ago. This is only my second attempt depicting fur with the guidance of that particular tutorial, specifically the "Thick Fur" subsection. I got really into the process, which led me to become confident enough to make my first serious lineless painting of my fursona. I had a meager effort at lineless art when I made a composition from overlapping uses of the Paths tool, back in January 2012; it was called "At Water's Edge." This is a much more developed work of lineless fursona art, since I used a great many individual brush strokes instead.

I made a cylinder in the 3D workspace of Adobe Photoshop CS4 and then proceeded to rotate it into the position you see in the final composition. I originally thought I would attach the three trail arrows to the cylinder as a single 3D object composition before rotating and moving it into position. This was beyond my current capabilities, however. Instead, I drew the trail arrows on afterward. The text for Lake Trail and Fox Field was converted into a 3D postcard and then rotated so as to fit the apparent 3D orientation of those trail arrows. A much more manageable task for my 3D art skills was to make the bench. First, I made a default cube object from the template provided in the CS4 3D workspace. Then, I adjusted its relative dimensions in x,y,z to make an elongated rectangular prism. I made three copies, and moved them in 3D relative to each other. I then rotated one of these boxes to the upright angle I wanted for the bench. I made copies again and moved them in 3D to create the back of the bench. You'll notice that the two metal supports behind the back of the bench, as well as the metal platform and its four legs, have not been created in 3D, but rather drawn from scratch with brushes.

I took two wood textures, one gravel/rocky texture, and one galvanized metal texture from the free texture site cgtextures. The gravel has been manipulated from a 3D perspective view to provide the appearance of smaller rocks receding into the distance. I used Photoshop's pattern overlay for the rocky path as well as all the trees. If you look to the upper right, you can see that the Lake Trail is more worn through and less developed with fresh (gray) gravel; it instead tends more toward brown. I used a grass brush native to Photoshop CS4, as well as the default leaf brush provided by the software. I applied three gradients from upper right to bottom left. A multiply gradient goes from white to black, a second gradient goes from yellow to orange/red to blue, and a third gradient adds in cool, dark blue shading in the bottom left. I slightly decreased saturation and increased contrast, as I recall. I also made some minimal changes to vibrance.

edit: Somehow, the front left paw having brushed back part of the pile of leaves reminds me of the Daniel Powter song "Bad Day" with the lyric "kick up the leaves and the magic is lost," but in this case no magic is lost and my fursona is fine. It was a somewhat popular song a few years back, just thought I'd mention that (since that's precisely what my fursona is doing).

Also... if you want to read my fursona's collar tag, sample the colors, or learn miscellaneous things about my fursona, you can find the freshly updated reference sheet here: foxstory.deviantart.com/art/Fu…

Thanks for reading! Favorites are fine, but comments are really the best. Have a nice day.

Time Taken: 16-18 hours over four days
Program: Adobe Photoshop CS4
Tablet: Wacom Intuos 4 Large
External Monitor: ViewSonic full HD (1920x1080)
Laptop: Dell XPS 17" L702X, 8GB RAM