Imaginary landscape thumbnails

Today I've been exploring a technique that is used by many digital artists and it is a great shortcut for creating detailed values on characters, landscapes and vehicles. This technique is an advanced masking technique called the clipping mask.

Here is the result of my new exercise, I have created 3 imaginary landscapes from just a photo reference. To begin with I made a grouped layer with vector masking to create 3 individual canvases. This locks these canvases in way, so I can paint within these 3 canvases without spilling over the edge. Then I began by painting in the sky and horizon choosing colours directly from the photo reference. This is the main reason why I did this from real photograph, not for the general form of the cliffs but to extract real colours from it, because after all my landscapes are imaginary. I then created a new layer, this layer is specific for the base value of the terrain that I am thinking of, so i began with a darkish brown. When I was happy with the general look of each individual canvas I then applied this clipping mask technique. To do this I simply locked the transparent values of the base layer, then created a new layer and under the layer drop down menu I created clipping mask. Now by choosing a lighter brown I was able to paint in highlights over the terrain in the first layer, without disturbing or ruining areas of the sea or sky. I gradually built it up details such as foliage, using the same technique. This technique is definitely useful considering, most people still use the various lasso or other selection tools to mask out individual components, which is frankly very irritating and time consuming. So this technique has definitely been a big hit for me and has boosted my ability to speed paint, and although these imaginary landscapes may not look perfect in they're current state, they can be used as a stepping stone or a basis for a bigger final large scale landscapes.