11 Flame on!

In the book, the Night’s Watch use flaming arrows. Depicting fire can be tricky for those artists who are just starting out. A common approach is to paste in a photo of fire, or paint the flame using oranges and reds. Neither technique works well. Instead, experiment with Photoshop’s Blending options. Here, I paint simple white shapes with clean brush stroke. Then, in Blending options I select Drop Shadow and Outer Glow, both set on the Linear Light blending mode. I now try to create different shades of orange or reds, and the result is that the layer glows like a real fire.