Digital Painting Beginners course at North Herts College

Introduction to the course


This course is an introduction to digital painting for beginners, using Photoshop CS or Elements. The course will introduce you to creating paintings digitally using Photoshop and Elements.


Please Email me to register your interest and I will notify you of the next course.





Paintings can be created from existing photos in different ways;


- Transform a photo into a painting by performing a number of steps and using filters and other techniques and tools.

- Hand paint an existing photo using brushes to mix and blend the colours already in the photo.

- Add elements into your composition from other photos and move elements around within the photo (the first two images below).

- Hand paint, completely from scratch, mixing your colours just as you would with real world paint.

The two images above, are both 100% hand-painted in Photoshop on a blank canvas, totally from scratch. You will use different brushes, change the brush behaviours and learn the basics of creating realistic paintings.


Over numerous Photoshop courses, many learners want to learn how to turn their photos into paintings, typically in a watercolour style. This course looks at different aspects related to creating painting effects from photos.



Course Requirements


To enrol on this course, you should;

Have basic computer skills.

Have basic Photoshop skills.


You should be familiar (not an expert), with Photoshop basics, such as Layers, cloning and making selections. To be able to create digital paintings from your images, it's necessary to have some basic Photoshop skills, so if you are brand new to Photoshop, you should begin with the Photoshop Beginners course, where you will be introduced to Photoshop and editing basics.


A pressure sensitive graphics tablet and pen are a huge advantage when painting digitally, but are not required for this course. During the course I will explain their features and advantages and give recommendations, as I regard them as essential for realistic and quality digital painting,. This will be explained on the course. The two paintings at the top of this page (and other images on this page) were created using a Wacom pressure sensitive tablet and pen. I would not have been able to create these images without the graphics tablet and pen.




All classes are supported by detailed handouts, which are emailed after the class.



related courses


For information about other courses, please see;


Photography Beginners

Photography Next Steps course

Photoshop Beginners course

Photoshop Next Steps Course



digital painting course subjects


Course subjects will depend on the skills of the learners and is subject to change


Compositing elements from different images

Recording and running Actions

Brush settings and behaviours

Painting with brushes

Adding and modifying brushes

Using various filters for artistic painting effects

Create a pencil sketch effect from a photo

Create a watercolour effect from a photo

Create a pastel effect from a photo

Adding reflections

Graphics tablet and pressure sensitive pen

Adding texture

examples of course subjects


All images copyright © Glen Smith