"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. 

With the rocks/dirt after painting the them I added some light and dark areas on them. 

Step 9: Final touch ups

Here I added some more shading and highlights to anything that I felt needed it. 

And that's it! 

To see more of my art you can check out the following links:

 

A step by step of "The Lost Ones"

I thought it would be fun to do a simple step by step process of how I go about painting. I personally enjoy looking at other artists' step by step process because I'm always able to learn something from them. It's also fun to see them bring their ideas to life. Anyways, I hope you enjoy! 

Step one: The sketch

This is were I set the scene up and get all my proportions, poses, outfits, hairstyles etc. the way I want them to be. 

 Step two: Blotching in colors and shades (aka the ugly stage)

I didn't take a screen shot but what I do before this, is paint all the base colors with no shading. After doing that I then go wild with creating "clipping masks" and start roughly fiddling with the shading (as you see above). Figure out the lighting early on is vital, as you can see above I used yellow and blue. I also begin roughly setting up the background. 

Step three: Blending!

After you've set everything up you can begin blending all of those ugly blotches and start smoothing out the skin and clothes. In this part I also added the eyes and lips for the female on the right. The photo on the bottom you can see how it looks when I start to blend the colors. 

Step four: Hair and more skin blending

Like skin I start off with blotching in the different hair shades, except I use a hair brush instead of a soft brush. I then smooth out the colors (still using a hair brush) and at the very end I add the highlights and smooth out the tips. On the second photo you can see how it looks after the tips have been smoothed out on the red haired female.

Step five: Clothes detail 

With the female on the left I blended the colors, added some texture and detail to her outfit.

Step six: Details

In this step I added eyelashes, eyebrows and skin texture!

Step seven: Background time!

Added clouds and fiddled with the color for awhile.

Step eight: More background 

I blended the colors more on the bottom and added some yellow lighting to it.

Step nine: Light rays and some minor details

I added the light rays with a soft brush (opacity set very low) and added a warming filter. After it was brought to my attention I changed the left female's hand a bit.

I don't remember how long this took me since I never keep track of time when I'm drawing, but it took me over 6hrs to complete. 

If you're interested you can check out my DeviantArt and Facebook for more updates and artwork. 

Prismacolor easy skin tone tutorial

Over the weekend I spent a large amount of time working on one of my art midterms. During the process I felt it would be a good opportunity to make a small tutorial out of it. In this tutorial I used Prismacolor pencils (set of 48), a mechanical pencil and a kneaded rubber eraser. I hope you find this tutorial helpful! Enjoy!

Step 1: First thing I did was draw a sketch. After drawing the sketch I used my kneaded rubber eraser and dabbed at the lines until they were substantially lighter. This can be done with a regular eraser.

Step 2: When coloring anything whether it be in black or white or color I like to start with a base color. Starting with a base color makes it easier to add colors and blend. The color I picked for my base was "Light Peach". I went with a very light color because I wanted her to have very fair skin. Again if you want a tan look all you would have to to do is use a darker color. It's also important to remember to shade lightly and not to add too much pressure on the pencil. 

Step 3: The next few steps I use slightly darker shades to enhance her face and shaded areas. As you can see in this step I used the color "Goldenrod"(yellowish brown) under the hair, under her neck, around her cheeks, the nose and eye area. Again I'm not putting a lot of pressure on the pencil just lightly shading. 

Step 4: Because I don't want her face to look too yellow I picked a pink color(Peach) and went over the shaded area like in step 3. 

Step 5: Using the same color as in step 3 (Goldenrod) I went over the shaded areas yet again but this time putting slightly more pressure on the areas I wanted to shade even darker. You can see these areas would be right under the hair, eyes and neck areas. 

Step 6: Here I did the same exact thing that I did in step five except with an even darker brown color (Burnt Ochre).

Step 7: Time to make things really pop! This is usually my favorite part of coloring, when you get to see your drawing come to life. For the even darker shading I used one of my all time favorite colored pencils, "Tuscan Red". For the eyes I picked two blues, one light colored and one dark colored (Light Cerulean Blue and Violet Blue). I started with the lighter color as a base then went over with the darker blue on the top of the eye leaving the bottom a lighter color. I didn't add pupils because I wanted her to have a dazed expression on her face, but if you wanted to add you would add now.

Step 8: Time to give this girl some lips! Again I start with a light pink base color (seeing a pattern here?).

Step 9: Darkening the sides of her lips I went over lightly with "Mulberry" and then went a bit harder at the very sides of her lips and center. 

Step 10: Using "Tuscan Red" I darken the very edges of the mouth and the very center. I used "Blush Pink" to highlight the top and bottom of her lip. The brown color "Burnt Ochre" was used to shade around her mouth.

Wasn't that easy? Once you get used to this process you can go on coloring just about anything. If you want to color a more sickly looking face all you would have to do is incorporate more blues instead of pinks and yellows. For a darker skin tone more browns instead of pinks. Whatever skin tone i'm painting I usually pick around two light, medium and dark colors. 

Here's the end result after adding eyelashes and hair color. One of my favorite things about Prismacolor is how the blending of many colors looks so eye catching. Her hair wasn't difficult to do at all. I started with a light blue base color then using long strokes went darker and darker leaving the highlighted areas alone.

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! Have fun drawing!