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Creative illustration | Digital concept art

Concept art on your mind? Adobe Fresco is the right app! Learn how to digitally paint concept art in Fresco using compositing, masking, and painting over images.

From poster design to graphic novel, Adobe Fresco empowers you to create photorealistic concept art. Simply create your artwork in Fresco, and then add effects in Photoshop and callouts in Illustrator.

Concept Art

Before you start

Download Adobe Fresco if you don't have it already:

Download Fresco

Ensure that you have:

  • Sample images that match with your theme.
  • Adobe Photoshop to apply effects on the artwork.
  • Adobe Illustrator to add callouts.

Create concept art in Fresco

Fresco's amazing Live brushes will help you draw the concept and add effects, and image masks will help you create the overall composition.

Sketch out your theme

Use Pixel brushes to draw a sketch based on the theme of your artwork.

Draw a sketch on the canvas.
Draw a sketch on the canvas.

Import images and mask areas

Import sample images into your Fresco artboard. The imported images will be added on top of the sketch.

Download Sample Images

Import images
Import images on to the canvas.

Select the areas you need from the images and use Image Mask to remove unwanted portions of the images. This will help create a composition for the concept art.

Masking images
Mask out the portions you don't need

Add effects to the artwork

You can add multiple effects to your artwork. Let's see to add a shadow effect.

  • Tap on the image layer and create a duplicate layer. 
  • Select the Transform tool and invert the contents of the new layer. 
  • Adjust color margins and opacity as per your requirement. 
Create a shadow of the horse
Create a shadow effect

Add more effects to artwork using Live brushes and blend layers. 

  • Use Live Brushes > Oil Paint to mix colors in the images. 
  • Set Color Opacity to 0 and Variate Color Mix according to your requirement. 
  • Use Oil Brush and pick colors from the image to add accents for color and light.
Use oil paint live brush to create an effect
Use Oil Paint Live brushes to give the painting effect

Add details to the artwork

  • Use Watercolor Live brush on the background image to soften and reduce image details.
  • Use Pixel brushes to add lighting effects and Foliage FX brush to add foliage.
Add pixel brush details
Use Foliage FX Pixel Brush to add foliage

Your design is now ready in Fresco!

final artwork

To open this design in other CC apps for further use, export it to Creative Cloud. 

Add effects in Photoshop

To add depth to the artwork, use the Lens Blur effect in Photoshop. Open the concept art design in Photoshop and choose Filter > Blur > Lens blur.

depth map effect in Photoshop
Apply Lens Blur effect in Photoshop to add depth

Add callouts in Illustrator

If you want to create a graphic novel, you can create callouts in Illustrator and then add them onto your artwork.

Click here to learn how to create and clip various shapes in Illustrator to design callouts.

More resources

Click here to view a detailed step-by-step tutorial on creating the concept art on Behance. 

Have a question or an idea?

Ask the community

If you have a question to ask or an idea to share, come and participate in Adobe Fresco Community. We would love to hear from you and see your creations.

Don't forget to showcase your work on Behance and seek inspiration from others work as well.

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