#perspective tutorial

step 1: look up your art program of choice's support for perspective ruler tools. if your program doesn't support these tools (cough, cough, photoshop), I would recommend downloading krita and giving their perspective tools a try. this will make life much easier

programs that have perspective rulers should also have a "snap to ruler" option somewhere that will make all of your brush strokes move in straight lines across a 3D grid. I turn this on, but for details and curves, you may want to turn it off

step 2: once I have an idea for how I want things to look, I start laying down lines to figure out 3D form and composition. the more iterations you do at this step to make your lines clean and precise, the less of a headache you'll have in later steps

step 3: fill in base colors using the polygonal lasso tool. make sure to separate every shape onto its own layer. in the first piece, I made a separate layer for every wall, the bed frame, the mattress, etc. go ahead and hide the lines, but look out for jank where edges meet

step 4: using clipping masks on the layers from step 3, build up texture and ambient occlusion (the space where two planes meet should be darker than the rest of the planes) while considering your light source, start to paint in hard and soft shadows

for brevity I won't delve into what kinds of shadows are appropriate in what contexts, but at least in digital art I find softening hard shadows to be easier than hardening soft shadows, so I would try those first if you're ever not sure

step 5: at this point, you can go where your heart takes you and start painting in details. personally, I like to apply some strange and interesting textures at this point to unify the image. this helps me get out of the "every plane is a separate object" mindset

step 6: start painting! I usually like to continue pushing the lighting at this stage using a soft brush and blend modes. paint in details and objects that have irregular shapes

for wall decorations like posters and windows, I recommend looking into photoshop's "smart objects" feature (or whatever the equivalent is in your program.) these allow you to place a flat painting in 3D space while still allowing you to edit the flat painting

and that's all! I hope this tutorial might have inspired someone to try out painting an indoor space, I know I put them off for a while because I didn't know where to start