Fantasy art scenes are usually handled with a liberal sprinkling of Photoshop plug-in fairy dust – but you don’t have to slavishly follow that route. By creating your own brushes in Adobe Illustrator, and using scanned elements with Photoshop, it’s a simple process to create otherworldly scenes that are alive with glow effects and shafts of virtual light.

This masterclass takes a standard stock model – a super high-resolution version is included on the cover CD, or you can use your own – and applies layers of light and vector shapes to generate the main image shown left.

During this masterclass, you’ll learn to wrap your source image into a multitude of layers that add a fantastical theme to your art. The key here is to tread softly. When recreating fantasy light effects, soft brushes and fine application is the order of the day. Anything that’s too heavy can ruin the look.