Painting Tutorial
Painting Tutorial B
MATERIALS USED: Photoshop & Wacom tablet
step by step
Step 1: Lineart
- I use the default hard round photoshop brush on 100% opacity and 90% flow.
- I create a massive canvas (3000px x 4000px with a 300pixels/inch resolution).
- To draw the actual face, I would advise looking at reference photos -- especially when you're first starting out. I pick a shade that's darker than the skin color. The sketch doesn't have to be that neat. This sketch becomes your lineart layer, but we'll be painting over it in places.
Step 2: Flat Colors
- Again using the same default brush, slap on some colors. I like to make the cheek/nose area slightly darker and warmer using the default airbrush.
- I color in a layer below the lineart layer (which I set to multiply if the skin or hair color is dark). As shown in the image below, I do a separate layer for skin and hair. I will eventually merge all my layers, but for now, I like to keep them separate so if I need to do any adjustments (e.g. color curves, hue/saturation, brightness, etc), I can do it more easily on one section rather than the whole image.
Step 3: Hair
- Again using the airbrush, gently apply a darker shade of your base hair color to the shadows. Feel free to use a slightly different hue (i.e. cooler/warmer) so your image isn't as flat. Here, I also added a bit of cool purple to add some interest.
- Add in large strokes of a lighter shade (again, in a hue warmer/cooler than the base) gently in areas of light
- Once the larger strokes are in, use a lighter shade (again, pick: warmer, cooler, more saturated, less saturated) to paint smaller hair strands; don't go overboard. My drawing isn't very neat, but it'll look okay once the image is resized.
- Make sure the borders of the hair aren't too defined everywhere, as it can look too "plasticy."
Step 4: Paint
- I merge all my layers and repeat the process used in step three to paint the rest. Patience is key -- this will take a while. Sometimes, it gets worse before it gets better; just keep working at it.
- I continue to add warmer pinks/reds/oranges in the nose/cheek area with the hard round brush. Press gently. Use large strokes at first before going in with details.
- If any proportions look wonky, you can use the Liquify filter on Photoshop to adjust your image.
- Feel free to add colors above with layers set to overlay. I usually set these overlay layers to around 15-60% opacity.
Step 5: Edits
- I use the layer adjustment tool on photoshop to adjust the color curves. Usually, this means making the midtowns darker and more saturated.
- I will also often increase the saturation of the image and the contrast/brightness using adjustment layers again.
- Finally, I create a new layer on top of my painting and set it to linear light. Then, I take a default chalk brush/harder pen tool and, in a saturated and light red or yellow, add random highlight marks.
- The final step is to resize the image. For forum signatures, I set height equal to 350 px.
