Space unicorn

I had a hankering to draw a space pic, so I did.

I haven’t uploaded it to my site yet (because I’m lazy and because I have so much stuff to upload to my site), so here it is on DA. So you can see the full picture.

Here’s part of it. I decided to go with constellations, because it’s fun and I don’t have to just make random cloud shapes or the (horrors!) galaxy shape, which is horribly hard to draw freehand.

I used some stock planets I found on deviantart. They have a wonderful stock category, full of all kinds of good stuff. I also got some planet textures there in case I want to make some planets.

Anyway, basically you generate a starfield in Photoshop with Filters > Add Noise, then you darken most of it out by reducing Contrast and increasing Brightness, then you copy the layer, then you erase both layers, and so on and so forth. Then you paint galaxies with the Clone Stamp tool. Tis fun.

The best tutorial I know of for this is still this one. I tried one on DA, but the stars came out in a grid pattern. Not lovely at all.