Larissa Vitale : "Holla" Digital art process tutorial

It's been awhile since I've posted anything here but I thought I'd do a step by step process of my latest digital piece. I hope this helpful for anyone who is starting out and is curious about the overall process. I will do my best to explain everything as thorough as possible. Now lets get started!

Tools/programs used: Photoshop Cs5 along with a Intuos 5 drawing tablet

Step 1: Sketch

I always start off with a sketch and it always is extremely rough when I first start drawing. Once I have everything in place I'll clean it up a little and make sure everything makes sense. It's really important to double check that everything looks correct because if you don't you will run into problems that will cost you lots of time to fix. I speak from experience. If time permits take a break once your finished drawing, then come back and if anything is amiss you will notice it immediately. Another trick to see if anything looks off is continuously flip the image horizontally and guarantee you'll notice anything weird right off the bat (trust me this makes a difference).

Step 2: Basic Coloring

Lower the opacity on your sketch just enough so you can see the lines. On separate layers start coloring your sketch with a hard brush. Don't worry too much about the color here it's fairly simple to change the color in the next step.

Step 3: Color blotting

This is the step were we roughly figure out where all the shading is going to be. So for every layer that you made in the previous step create a new layer above it and create a clipping mask. You can ctrl>shift>n (Mac: command>shift>n) to make a new layer and select "Create clipping mask" OR after you create a new layer right click the layer and "create clipping mask". What this does is keep your coloring within the area you colored on the previous layer. You can create multiple clipping masks as you will see me do later on. Knowing this is very important.

Step 4: Blending your colors

Now we get to make all those ugly blotches into pretty shades. Take a soft brush and grab your eyedropper because these are the two things you will be using for awhile. By pressing alt (Mac: option) you'll notice that your eyedropper tool will come up for as long as you hold the button. Select your shade and slowly start blending (lower the brushes' opacity if it helps). Because this process is a bit difficult to explain in words I'm going to link a video that helped me very much in the beginning.

After you finish blending it should look something like this. Also as you noticed I also went ahead and colored her eyes, added lashes and lip color. I personally like to color the face first before going ahead and coloring everything else, it helps me get a feel for the picture as a whole.

After coloring the face I went on to color the rest of her body.

Step 4: Hair

Hair is another thing I love to draw and it isn't that hard to draw either. I take a hair brush and just like with the face I roughly blot the colors out. Take note that I made two layers for the hair, one layer is the top of her hair and the second later is the back/bottom of her hair. I did this so I didn't have to worry about erasing hair off her face later on.

Same process to the bottom layer of her hair.

Another trick I learnt from a friend was using the "smudge" tool at the tips of the hair to help make it flow a bit better. You can use this tool in different areas of her hair but be wary that if your not careful it can make your hair look odd. So I try using this technique sparingly.

After blotting the colors I take a hard brush and under the "brush panel" I select "shape dynamics". I set my brush size to a fairly small size then start going in and drawing individual hairs out, sometimes using my hair brush to help out. With your small hard brush add extra hairs outside of the area you colored previously to make it more realistic; because everyone has more than one or two hairs that stick out even when it's combed.

Step 5: Texture!

Even though texture is barely recognizable it's extremely important to have. It helps make skin look more realistic. I used to shy away from texture but after I got the hang of it my skin started looking a lot nicer. So don't skip this step! For basic skin texture I use 3 different brushes. I start off with a brush that has about 5 dots and with lowered opacity very lightly adding dots pours to her skin. Below is a video better explaining the process:

I like to add freckles, moles and sunspots to give it a more realistic look.

I went ahead and added some lines and highlights to the lips.

Step 6: More blending

This is step uses the same process as the skin in terms of blending. Around the corners of the armor you will notice I shaded it darker to give the appearance that her head gear is not a part of her face. I also added some highlights on the edge of her head gear. It's these little details that make a world of a difference.

Did the same thing throughout her armor. On some parts of her armor you might notice they are a different texture. To do this is fairly simple. Take a picture of a desired texture then import the image into the the layer above the desired area and create a clipping mask over it. You then can erase, resize, and or change opacity accordingly.

Step 7: Eye Piece

Making this eye piece was actually very simple and quick to do. You can use this process for sunglasses also. I first picked a color I wanted the glass to be which was a bright green color. After playing around with some layer filters I then choose "Hue".

On separate layers I added some highlights and shading around the edges of the eyeglass.

I added a frame to the eye piece and also added shading under the eye piece to show that there is space between her eye and the glass.

Step 7: Background

As always I blotted the colors first for the pillars.

For the bottom of the pillars after blotting the colors I used the hair brush to blend the colors and give it some texture.

Since my original sketch has two more pillars in the back I copied and pasted the pillars I just completed to save time. I first copied the pillar's layers then resized them and adjusted their location accordingly.

After adjusting their size and location I realized I wanted the pillars closer to each other so by selecting "polygonal lasso tool" I roughly made a circle/square around the pillar and brought them closer to each other.

I then turned on the layer for my original pillars and what do you know I saved myself lots of time!

The only issue though is that the back pillars aren't shaded correctly and look odd. So I simply went and touched up the pillars with a soft brush.

But the pillars still looked a bit odd so I deiced to make them darker to give off the appearance that they are located farther away. This was done by simply going to the very bottom of my layer panel and clicked the black and white circle also known as the "create new fill or adjustment layer" tab. Then selected "levels" and darkened the back pillars.

I then added some light with low opacity soft brush.

To give the pillars a more shiny appearance I tooke a soft white brush and drew straight lines. A fast way to get straight lines is by selecting "rulers" (PC: Ctrl>r Mac: Command>r) then grab the upper ruler or the left ruler for a horizontal or vertical line and draw directly on it. To move it use your move tool (V) and simply drag it wherever you want to.

Added highlights on the back pillars.

Step 8: Background details

To add more to the overall image I added some scraps, dirt and small pebbles. For the scrapes on the bottom of the pillars I used a dark hard brush to make small lines with a dark color then selected a lighter color to highlight it.