Fantasy Art for beginners – the mysterious moonlit night was written by Lorelei and moved over from www.loreleiweb.com for technical reasons.

Believe it or not, but from a few ordinary photos and some primitive brushes, we will make this image (see below). OK, despite the rather impressive outcome, this is a very simple tutorial, you won’t need more than a few brushes and a few pictures. Most of it is a matter of technique.

Fantasy Art for newbies – Mysterious moonlit landscape - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Start by creating a new canvas, 500*500 pixels, and fill it with dark blue colour, we used #060062.

Fantasy Art for newbies – Mysterious moonlit landscape - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Next, you need a beautiful and preferably mysterious photo of a woman, this is what we started off with:

Fantasy Art for newbies – Mysterious moonlit landscape - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Copy the girl to your clipboard (Ctrl + C) and paste it (Ctrl + V) unto the blue canvas

Fantasy Art for newbies – Mysterious moonlit landscape - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Select the “Single Column Marquee tool,” place the selection line on the edges of the picture, Press Ctrl + T to draw a line, and repeat the action from the other side. This is what this action will give you…

Fantasy Art for newbies – Mysterious moonlit landscape - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Duplicate the woman’s picture, and set BOTH layers to the “Luminosity” blending option. This will turn both layers blue as we have a blue background.
When the upper (duplicated) layer is selected, apply a Gaussian blur to it.

Fantasy Art for newbies – Mysterious moonlit landscape - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Select the eraser tool with a soft edge, and go over the girl’s silhouette, erasing the blurred layer from over the woman’s body. This is how it will look, but work your way with the eraser over her skirt as well.

Fantasy Art for newbies – Mysterious moonlit landscape - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

After having finished erasing the blur over her body, this is what it will look like:
Fantasy Art for newbies – Mysterious moonlit landscape - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Select the blurred layer, and go to Filter >> Render >> Lightening Effects.
Apply this “omni” light spot over the blurred layer.

Fantasy Art for newbies – Mysterious moonlit landscape - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Now you’ve got a nice, wrapped-in-fog moon that creates a very mysterious halo around the girl’s body. That’s because we used (before) the eraser tool with the soft edge, while removing the blurred layer, we were not very accurate and deleted a bit of the area around the body as well. Even if it’s just a few pixels, it is still great.

Fantasy Art for newbies – Mysterious moonlit landscape - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Now we need to add some landscape… Easier of all would be to use some nice clouds photo and not to create clouds from scrap. So take this picture, pulled from MorgueFile.com

Fantasy Art for newbies – Mysterious moonlit landscape - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Copy it (Ctrl + C) and paste it into your fantasy canvas.
Apply the “Luminosity” blending style.
Using the eraser tool, remove the remains of the clouds from the woman (if any) and the moon.

Fantasy Art for newbies – Mysterious moonlit landscape - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Create a new Layer.
Make sure your primal color is white and your secondary color (in colors palette) is the same blue as the background.
Select the “Dune Grass” blush (comes default in Photoshop CS2) and apply a lot of stamps (or just hold the mouse pressed and go over the bottom of the canvas)
Ideally, it will look like this…

Fantasy Art for newbies – Mysterious moonlit landscape - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Now you would need starry brushes. We used some free star brushes downloaded from Deviantart.com
You can choose between..
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/15213768
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/31601676 or any other…

Once you have installed the star brushes and loaded them into your Photoshop, make a new layer and apply a generous amount of stars over the upper part of your canvas.
Remember to use pure white color for the brushes. If the result is dull, go to Layer >> Layer Styles >> Blending options and add the default yellowish glow.

Fantasy Art for newbies – Mysterious moonlit landscape - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Go to the layers menu and select the layer with the clouds (remember it has to be in luminosity mode)
Select the Dune Grass brush again and add a bit grass from both sides of the woman, but make sure you don’t apply it over her. The idea is to create the illusion of her sitting IN the grass and not behind it. Since here the blending mode is different (luminosity), the grass will look more moonlit in front of her.

Fantasy Art for newbies – Mysterious moonlit landscape - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Go again to the layers menu and select the first layer of the woman, which has stayed intact so far…

Fantasy Art for newbies – Mysterious moonlit landscape - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Go to Filter >> Renders >> Lightening effects and apply a light spot, similar to what we did with the blurred layer, only bigger

Fantasy Art for newbies – Mysterious moonlit landscape - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

And this is how it looks now, now the girl is slightly lit from one side more than from another:

Fantasy Art for newbies – Mysterious moonlit landscape - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

If you are happy with all the layers and see that no correction is needed – good! Now you can flatten the layer by going to Layer >> Flatten Image.
Now that the canvas is fully merged into one picture, go to Image >> Adjustments >> Hue Saturation.
Check the “colorize” box, and set these settings for a flat blue color. If you wish to give your canvas a different hue, it’s up to you to just play with the settings here.

Fantasy Art for newbies – Mysterious moonlit landscape - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

That’s it! We have a beautiful bewitching girl sitting in the sea while the full moon is wrapped in fog and slightly lightening the grass, the sea’s horizon line, and the lady’s side…

Fantasy Art for newbies – Mysterious moonlit landscape - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design