Digital Painting: From Sketch to Finished Product | Hardy Fowler | Skillshare
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Digital Painting: From Sketch to Finished Product

teacher avatar Hardy Fowler, Digital Artist

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Trailer

      1:02

    • 2.

      Class Outline

      0:54

    • 3.

      Rough Sketching

      2:43

    • 4.

      Inking

      2:47

    • 5.

      OPTIONAL SIDEBAR: Basic Mark Making & Rendering

      8:34

    • 6.

      OPTIONAL SIDEBAR: Basics of Faces

      6:53

    • 7.

      OPTIONAL SIDEBAR: Using Quick Mask Mode to Block in

      2:39

    • 8.

      Blocking in & Painting

      5:22

    • 9.

      Skin Tones

      3:02

    • 10.

      OPTIONAL SIDEBAR: Basics of Eyes

      4:51

    • 11.

      Polish and Presentation

      6:03

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About This Class

Once you have the hang of it, digital illustration is much faster and more efficient than traditional techniques and is the industry standard for producing high quality images at a profitable rate.

The skills learned in this class will help you develop a work flow, applicable to virtually any assignment, that can carry you smoothly from the daunting blank canvas all the way to a finished, presentable illustration. This class will build confidence in draftsmanship, mark-making and use of the equipment.

What You'll Learn

We will go step by step through the process of creating a digital character illustration in Photoshop.

  • Developing Ideas. We'll cover how to develop ideas for your character illustration.
  • Sketching. I'll discuss the basics of sketching and how to get started.
  • Blocking in Color. We'll start applying color and defining tones.
  • Painting and Polishing. Finally, we'll put on the finishing touches and complete the painting.

What You'll Make

Students will create a digital painting of a character face from scratch. You'll learn all the basic skills you need to create a final piece that is ready to share or use in your next project.

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Class Outline

  • Introduction. In this digital painting tutorial, you’ll work in Adobe Photoshop, starting with a blank canvas and arriving at a polished, final product.
  • Class outline. Hardy Fowler will break his process for digital painting into three parts: ideation, painting, and polishing. You’ll learn when to present a draft of your illustration to a client.
  • Rough sketching. You’ll watch as Harvey loosely sketches shapes in Photoshop, beginning with ovals and gradually defining a human face. You’ll look at uses for Photoshop’s brush, eraser, lasso, and transform tools while learning one of the major pros of digital drawing — you can easily transform your sketch as you go.
  • Inking. You’ll learn how to make a sketch that’s ready to present to a client. Harvey will show you how to create a new layer for your digital ink drawing and how to vary the thickness of your lines to imitate real life inking. You’ll explore how to add detail lines in the face and prepare your Photoshop design for the later blocking step.
  • Basic mark making and rendering. In this sidebar, you’ll learn how to add tones to basic marks to increase opacity. You’ll explore the different effects Photoshop’s brush and smudge tools have to offer and learn expert blending techniques.
  • Basics of faces. You’ll learn how light sources can add dimension to faces in Photoshop drawing. You’ll also learn about secondary light sources, core shadows, and tricks that help make digitally painted skin look real. Harvey will render a simple face in gray scale to demonstrate.
  • Using quick mask mode to block in. Here you’ll get a more in-depth look at using layers in Photoshop. You’ll see how they can be used for adding color to the background and foreground without bleeding from one into the other.
  • Blocking in and painting. After converting your outline into a solid shape, you’ll learn to use tone and shadow to make your design appear three-dimensional. You’ll start with broad, loose strokes and move towards a more detailed depiction of your character. Remember, you can always flip your drawing in Photoshop to look at those not-quite-right parts from a new perspective.
  • Skin tones. Time to fill in the skin. To make a character’s skin look convincing in Photoshop, you’ll learn to use the smudge tool to mimic the way artists blend paint in real life. Harvey will suggest realistic skin tone colors and show you how to always paint within the lines of your design.
  • Basics of eyes. You’ll get an eyeball anatomy lesson, learning how light hits the back of the eye so you can depict this key facial component as realistically as possible. You’ll learn the optimal light scale to use when filling in an iris by watching Harvey add eyeballs to his earlier gray-scale face drawing.
  • Polish and presentation. You’ll render eyes and hair, add secondary light sources, and finally polish your digital painting. You’ll learn about the dissolve tool and how to use secondary light sources to tell a story about your character.

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Hardy Fowler

Digital Artist

Teacher

Hardy is a professional concept artist and illustrator working in New Orleans, LA.

He has designed and painted hundreds of characters, creatures, machines and scenes for numerous entertainment industry clients; and his artwork is featured in elite digital art annuals such as Exposé.

In his courses, Hardy distills down years of industry experience—into transformative courses for serious concept artists.

 

Project Based Skill Development

His project-based approach will guide you every step of the way, as you learn performance enhancing techniques, professional processes and the creative mindset that will set you apart.

The imaginative, lifelike and detailed projects you create in his courses will become the digital art portfolio ... See full profile

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Transcripts

1. Trailer: - Hi, - everyone. - My name is Hardy Fowler. - I'm a concept artist, - an illustrator working in New Orleans, - Louisiana. - I don't work for various entertainment industry clients, - including concept, - art and promotional illustrations for video game companies and print markets. - I've had work accepted into various digital art annuals such as Expose and I'm also a - certified medical illustrator. - This class is called digital painting. - From sketch to finished product. - It will teach students to create a polished illustration from scratch. - Using Adobe Photo Shop will cover everything from how to first tackle the daunting blank - canvas all the way to how to present your finish work professionally. - This class is perfect for students or professionals seeking to improve their workflow, - but anyone who wants to learn to paint something cool on their computer we'll get a lot out - of this class. - So enroll today. - I look forward to seeing your projects 2. Class Outline: - so to start our class, - we're gonna break it down into three parts. - Part one is ideation, - sketching and thinking. - Part two is blocking in and painting in Part three is Polish and final presentation, - starting with part one ideation, - sketching and thinking. - First we need to define our project. - What are we trying to show the viewer? - What visual clues can we use to tell the story of the character we're trying to depict? - Once we have that decided, - we'll do a rough sketch. - It should be loose in gestural. - We're not gonna present this to the client. - It's more for our own use, - but you still want it to be solid. - Once we have our rough sketch in place will do an inking pass. - This is a second refined past for presentation to the client. - Let's get started. 3. Rough Sketching: - So all illustration start with a daunting blank canvas, - and we just have to start making marks here. - I'm starting by making some loose, - sketchy oval shapes to start defining the main shapes of the head, - like the top of the head, - the years in the jaw just to get a basic contour shape down. - I'm showing the head from a 3/4 angle so that we can highlight the brow, - jaw and cheekbones. - But use whatever ankle you think shows the facial features that you want to highlight. - I've got my brush settings on screen here. - Uh, - I have sort of a flattened circle shape. - It simulates a chisel tip pencil pretty well, - but use whatever you're comfortable with here. - I'm starting to define the interior features of the face like the eyes, - nose, - cheekbones and mouth. - Know that this video is sped up to about 1.5 times normal speed, - so don't feel the need to be moving the brush around this fast. - Um, - at this stage, - just keep things relaxed and loose and let the shapes come together organically. - Try to keep perspective in mind is all future steps will be based on this sketch - perspective. - Mistake here could be compounded in later steps in Ah, - I I correct a few with the transform tools here. - Um, - make sure that the eyes, - ears and nostrils any paired features of the face all rest in correct perspective lines. - And you can make construction or perspective lines if you if you need them. - But, - um, - essentially, - just just trust your I, - uh, - and things tend to work out. - I'm switching back and forth between the brush tool in the eraser. - Justo, - add and subtract, - defining the muscles of the neck a bit. - Here, - this guys is huge. - Obviously, - it's a little bit exaggerated, - but that's what we want. - Here we go on making a selection, - Teoh to move that I seemed a bit out of perspective. - Um, - the lasso tool and hitting command t to bring up the transform tools very, - very useful on its Ah, - one of the things I like best about sketching digitally is you can transform your sketch on - the fly rather than having toe to start over or ah or anything like that. - It's enormously time efficient 4. Inking: - Now that we have a solid sketch nailed down, - it's time to create a new layer for our inking pass. - I would like to knock back the loose sketch layer to about 10% so that we can just barely - see it. - This helps the new clean inclines to pop out again. - I start with basic contour shapes, - but my brush strokes are much more deliberate and bold. - No, - uh, - no more sketchy lines here. - Try to vary your pressure on your tablet to give that thin to thick line weight variation - that will give a nice simulation of traditional Anqing. - The beauty here is that you can erase the ink, - which, - of course, - is not possible with traditional methods. - We're just tracing are rough sketch here, - but focusing more on brushstrokes than we were in the first pass. - The lines defining the main shape should be very thick and bold, - but later will add ah, - thinner, - thinner lines to, - um to add some detail to the interior. - Since we're doing a craggy, - world weary soldier face here, - we can add quite a few crease lines, - and it will only enhance the desired effect. - However, - if the character you're working on his female or a younger child try to be relatively - sparse with the detail lines that you add. - If if you over describe the creases of the face on a female or a child character, - they start to take on an odd masculine or elderly quality that just looks weird and should - be avoided. - One of my last steps in this part of the project is to sort of connect the lines at the - bottom. - We do that for the blocking in step that will come next. - It'll look a little weird, - like we're we're doing a severed head or a mask or something, - but, - uh, - that all gets faded out in the end. - Anyway, - this step is more for client presentation. - If you're just running, - ah, - rougher draft by them. - This is useful. - It's it's presentable that it looks relatively nice, - but you haven't invested too much time in it. - But if if you're going straight for a finished painting, - you don't necessarily have to do this step. - This is more of, - ah, - an intermediate phase, - something nice to present to a client. - Some more details here, - adding a scar to the eye and the chin just to give this guy some some interests and - backstory. - Little storytelling. - Um, - there we go connecting the bottom of the neck just to create one continuous solid shape - that we can select Ah, - in our later blocking in step. 5. OPTIONAL SIDEBAR: Basic Mark Making & Rendering: - This is a little sidebar video that I'm going to do just to go a little bit more in depth - on this, - um, - topics that needs some further explanation. - So this is a little sidebar from our main project. - Um, - just basic mark making. - So the first thing I'm doing is selecting a default chalk shaped brush from photo shop. - But this is just what I use use any brush that that you're comfortable with. - Um, - I'm just gonna make some basic marks and show you how I add in tones to the image my my - general rendering technique. - So I've got a opacity and flow Both said it about 20%. - And I like to just tap in, - um, - tone and make it build up. - So its cumulative Every time we add tone, - it gets a little bit brighter and a little bit more opaque. - Um, - I'm just making some random random cloud shapes, - I guess, - But just trying to show something round show how I build up the illusion of dimension by - adding tone extremely basic stuff. - Just want what the students to know the the general technique I use. - I switched from the brush tool to the smudge tool a lot. - I like my brush strokes to be rough and varied, - kind of modeled looking. - But then I can smooth things out with the smudge tool again, - sort of, - ah, - brush shaped brush for blending. - I'm blending out the edges of these little shapes and trying to make things a little bit - smoother. - But just trying to make them look textured and interesting, - painterly even, - um, - anything to avoid that flat, - overly soft photo shop e generic look that I think can really identify a beginner if things - look overly soft and computer generated. - I don't think that's a good thing, - so that this is a good way to make your mark seem interesting and painterly. - Uh, - not not so cold and digital as is some people. - Ah, - try to avoid it, - Z, - not something that your clients would be after. - Um, - and I'm just kind of messing around with the smudge tool just to show how you can create - some hard edges and soft edges, - really in the same shape without bothering with selections or anything. - So it was a simple exercise. - I thought we would be good if we rendered a sphere and a cube Um, - just just some basic art school exercises that I'm sure you've all done a 1,000,000 times. - But, - um, - it could be useful when getting to know the software a little bit more and might help the - main project make a little more sense if you know these very basic steps. - So I've filled in some solid, - darker grey shapes, - and I'm just doing some very basic background stuff. - Teoh to try and make it seem like a three dimensional space. - It were occupying, - sort of putting a spotlight on the ground to make those shadows make sense. - And I think I decided I didn't like that horizon type thing I had tried to do in the - background. - So the first thing I'm going to do is show the simple digital way to render a sphere and a - cube that I don't like. - This is sort of my example of what not to do. - It's kind of the chief way to go about it, - Um, - but it's not very interesting. - It does look around, - it gets the job done, - but it's Ah, - it's pretty cold and un interesting, - Um, - adding a highlight, - uh, - leaving a core shadow and there I'm just painting in some reflected lights of the same - thing you You've probably done a 1,000,000 times in art class. - Um, - but just getting to know the software here a little bit here, - I'm a de selecting the parts of this cube that I don't want to paint so that I can just - just paid on that that top edge and sticking with my sort of example of what not to dio. - I'm just doing some airbrushing inside of the selection, - and it gets the job done. - It does make the form seem three dimensional, - but it's it's not terribly interesting. - And it it has that dull digital look that that we're trying to avoid some reflected lights - there on the other planes. - And there you go. - We have a basic cube in a basic sphere rendered, - Um, - now I'm going to start over using the mark making techniques that I just outlined to try - and make something mawr textured and mawr interesting. - So in the sphere were just tapping in some tones. - It's not so smooth and and uniform is the Grady int was which I like it. - You know, - this could be a cannonball or an orange or something organic and interesting other than a - perfectly smooth ball bearing or whatever it might have been. - So I've got the tones dropped in. - Basically, - I'm I'm doing some blending here with a smudge tool. - And again, - I I like the more random, - organic looking variations here. - It just makes a shape much more interesting, - and it it takes practically the same amount of time. - Once, - once you have got a little practice adding in a bright highlight here but same techniques. - Just, - uh, - using pure white instead of a gray color and some blending. - So there we go, - Basic sphere rendered in a more painterly technique. - Now the same thing for the Cube rather than bothering with changing this selection. - I'm I'm just going Teoh paint in some tones, - um, - kind of a timesaver, - really, - and just building up the values, - making some variations in the planes that it doesn't seem perfectly flat but but has some - texture to it reflected lights on the other planes. - I'm adding some some lighter values to that that edge to try and try and make it pop a - little bit and, - ah, - keeping in mind our lights or sort of to the upper right corner of this image may be closer - to the middle. - There we go, - adding Cem. - Brighter highlights to that. - That edge where the cube changes planes, - it almost makes it seem metallic or ceramic and some blending again. - Here. - Um, - I'm blending kind of in a diagonal, - and it helps to define the planes. - If if you only blend in one direction and then you'll see when I go to the other plane, - I changed directions that I'm blending. - It makes those brush strokes look like they're in opposite directions and reinforces the - idea that this is two different planes. - So that's at some basic mark making in basic rendering. 6. OPTIONAL SIDEBAR: Basics of Faces: - So we're gonna talk a little bit about the basics of faces and how how light should strike - them, - how we can help ah defined their shapes just by keeping a few things in mind before we even - start. - So I've got a bit of, - ah, - collage of images I've done in the past, - and we're gonna talk about light sources. - The guy in the upper left, - um, - his light sources up into the right. - First, - the light hits the forehead. - You can see some highlights on the hair above the eyebrow, - the bridge of the nose, - the tip of the nose. - Then on the cheek, - bones on the light side, - the upper lip particularly bright, - right beneath the nose and the chin. - And in this case, - he's got a strange expression. - So got a highlight right under the lip. - And, - of course, - those those light sources need to carry down to the shirt and his collar is well, - but basically the right side of his face is the light side and we let the other side be the - core shadow similar to the sphere we rendered. - This has to look round, - but it's ah more complex shape. - Obviously, - so course shadow on that side of the face, - under the eye, - under the nose under the chin. - And there's a cash shadow on his shirt, - just just keeping that life source consistent. - Once we have that Aladdin, - Cem reflected lights, - secondary light sources to the edge. - So we've got that white white color on the sides on his cheekbones and on his lower lip. - And, - um, - I've even added ah reflected light and orange light just to show the light coming off of - that cigar. - Ember. - Um, - so that's that. - That's That's basically how how to make a face Look around. - Oh, - I've also added some light Coming through the ears from behind. - Makes the years look translucent. - That it's a trick I like to use a lot makes it the skin look riel on the bottom. - Right here. - This is a bit different. - Was going for something more mysterious. - That's what the project required, - so we can just barely see his face the lightest, - mostly on the back of his neck and his cheek. - Um, - I've done the translucent ear trick again here, - but this one was to be more of a silhouette, - make the character seem dark and brooding, - um, - the female character near the middle. - Same general idea. - Ah, - 3/4 view. - The light is hitting the forehead, - nose and cheekbones most prominently. - I've rendered things much more softly here to make her skin seem smooth. - That's one of the main differences in my technique between men and women. - I think that's not uncommon. - Same thing for the girl below, - uh, - light sources hitting in the same places. - Core shadows fall to the same places and their m circling the reflected lights on on the - cheeks to help round out the form of the face. - This character at the bottom a similar to the one on the bottom left. - But I I added a little more light to illuminate the face. - And this monster on the top, - I included. - Just to show that the principles work for any kind of face really doesn't have to be a - person, - just, - ah, - let the light sources fall where you want to highlight. - Um, - all this guy's weird jaw shapes and is, - uh, - craggy brow and forehead core shadow. - And then I'm just adding, - reflected lights to help round him out. - And there we go. - He's he's pretty much a uh, - a believable three dimensional shape. - It works, - works for anything. - So it was an exercise I thought we would render in a simple faces. - A sketch I had done beforehand. - Um, - very simple. - I'm just using the default round brush and I'm going to use ah ah, - higher key Gray. - Just to start start painting in some very basic values were just going to do it in - grayscale for simplicity where we're just thinking of light here, - light and dark How it hits the face. - Um so upper right side of the forehead, - bridge of the nose, - the cheekbone on the right side, - light underneath the nose on the upper lip, - some light on the cheeks here, - the bottom lip below the lips and on the chin. - And already this this looks quasi believable. - You can recognize it is a face pretty easily. - And here I'm just tapping in some some different tones to try and unify things a little bit - and then add some brightness to the areas that I want to pop, - carrying things over to the darker side of the face to say that the contrast isn't quite so - stark. - You want it to be somewhat of a smooth transition. - And actually, - I went to bright on that that part of the head. - So I raced back here. - But there we go. - Just just tapping in values. - Um, - even with this simple brush, - you can vary things quite a bit and make it look nicely textured. - There we go, - some light on the neck keeping in mind that that there would be an area of shadow - underneath the chin on the on the lower left side, - just adding in some details here. - Oh, - I've switched to a pure white here to add some very bright highlights at the areas I want - to stand out mainly the the brow in cheekbone. - Once we have that, - I'm adding some reflected lights to the other side of the face, - the nose underneath the brow and the poor head. - I'm just letting the background gray served to be the core shadow in this case, - just just adding light here. - No, - no darks. - There we have it. 7. OPTIONAL SIDEBAR: Using Quick Mask Mode to Block in: - I thought I would do another optional sidebar to help clarify the quick mask method that I - use for the blocking in step. - Um, - and just to explain the layers a little bit, - Mawr and make sure that this is clear. - So what I've got here is the ink layer on its own layer on what I can do is command click. - I'm holding down command and clicking this image of the layer, - and you can see the marching ants around all of the ink marks. - Eso That's the first step we command Click Inc. - We can see that selection the marching ants around the ink. - I then press cue to enter the quick mask mode. - It goes red, - Um, - and then I hit the tilde a key, - and this is what I call the mask view it It just looks like a negative. - But basically everything that is white is our selection, - and everything that is black is not. - So. - Once we're here, - I select the magic wand tool. - Um, - I have contiguous checked off. - I think that's important in what I will do is select the outside of the silhouette and you - can see the marching ants are going around the perimeter of the face. - So I then select in verse and I fill with white by just holding down option delete. - Excuse me, - Command, - delete. - And now we've got a filled in white, - which will be our selection shape of the silhouette of the character. - And if I hit queue again, - I will exit quick mask and you can see now we've got the marching ants going around the - outside of the face. - Uh, - what I'm doing now is adding a layer beneath the ink layer, - grabbing my science background color and fill the foreground color, - which is option delete. - And there we go. - I've hit de select, - but you can see I have ink on a layer above and the blocked in color on a layer below, - and I'll merge those later. - But it's it's good to have them severed here just just for everyone to understand. - And, - of course, - any time you want to use a layer as a selection, - you just command click the image of the layer and there you go. - You've got the marching ants again, - and you can paint within the selection with with no worries of going outside the lines. - So I hope that helps clarify 8. Blocking in & Painting: - Now let's move on to part two, - blocking in and painting. - The first thing we're gonna do is use our ink layer to create a blocked in solid form. - We'll keep this on. - A layer is a backdrop to our painting. - When it's on its own layer, - you can command click on that layer at any time and call up the solid shape as a selection - . - Once we're done with that, - we will start doing an initial value painting. - Uh, - we'll just use tones to describe the form three dimensionally. - Ah, - this is where all those still lifes and figure drawings from our school come in handy. - Once we have our values the way we want them to be, - we're gonna convert the values into believable skin tones so that it it looks like really - skin and not just a flesh colored mannequin. - So let's get started here. - We have our ink layer. - Um, - I have a step by step process listed here, - um, - a few photo shop operations, - but essentially we're selecting the ink layer going into quick mask mode, - selecting the outside with the magic wand tool, - then selecting the inverse and filling it in with white. - Ah, - feel free to rewind if you needed to see that again. - But now we we've converted our outline into a solid shape. - I like to use a dark kind of scion greenish color for my base. - Uh, - it mixes well with the skin tones that I'll be adding later. - So that's my reason for that. - But I feel free to experiment. - Okay. - I've got sort of the shock default Brush it. - It comes with photo shop. - It's nothing that I made. - Um, - I believe I'll display the settings here, - but I'm just starting. - Teoh drop in some basic tones broad loose strokes to begin with on then, - of course, - will tighten that up later. - But I'm using a light source sort of above and to the left of the face just to give us some - strong shadows beneath the brow and the nose and the cheekbones Always try toe to use your - light sores toe Highlight the features of the characters face that you want to highlight A - strong jaw, - strong cheekbones and brow really helped to sell this, - guys. - Ah, - big, - big, - tough, - mean soldier guy s Oh, - that That was my choice there. - Um ah, - you'll notice I flipped the canvas from time to time. - It just keeps Ah keeps fresh eyes. - Just if anything looks a little weird and you can't figure out why, - oftentimes flipping the campus will make it very apparent. - I use, - ah, - bright orange color to paint my values. - There's there's no reason for it, - really. - I think it it shows up very well against the dark scion. - That might be the only reason Use whatever you want. - You could use flat white for this. - Anything we're gonna we're gonna change it later on. - So this is really just for our own benefit. - Um, - I use Ah, - I think 20% opacity and 20% flow setting for the brush. - But I'm I'm just tapping in and ah, - and dropping those tones in, - Of course, - feel free to erase out If if you think you've been too heavy handed somewhere there we go - racing out of shadow beneath the lips, - adding some highlights. - Try and save your very highest key values for the areas of the face that you really want to - pop. - Um, - for my character, - I think that would be the knows the brow and ah, - the cheekbone. - Eso I'm keeping things kind of medium range everywhere except for right there. - Ah, - good. - Good understanding of anatomy of the faces helpful here us especially with, - uh, - very defined, - craggy kind of face that I'm doing here. - I'm really trying to show every every muscle and bone beneath the skin. - Make make it seem believable. - Make it seem like a living person. - And and not just a drawing, - of course. - Uh, - within limits. - Putting some tone on the neck is well, - ah, - I'm gonna try to do some some strong cash. - Shadows beneath the chin like the ones I have underneath the nose, - the lip and the brow. - Um, - cash shadows. - They're a great way to make your form believable is three dimensional. - There we go, - racing away some tones. - I think I'm doing a light pass of values just to fill in some areas. - It seemed to be to contrast E 9. Skin Tones: - Now that we have, - ah, - some believable values. - We're gonna convert these into skin tones, - and the first thing I've done is change the value layer into a light yellow color. - Then I've made a new layer beneath it that's very important beneath the value layer. - And I'm just dropping in some maroon reddish tones around the cheeks, - nose and ears and lips. - This is really how you make it look like living skin and not just flesh colored plastic. - You have to vary it a little bit. - You want the cheeks in the nose, - the lips in the years to be reddish. - Ah, - and then you can leave the scalp and beard relatively green. - Let that that science based color show through. - Um, - now I've merged the two layers once I've got those general areas defined, - and I'm just sort of sampling colors on the fly by holding down the salt key. - When you're using the brush tool, - just sort of pick and choose colors and paint in. - It starts mixing everything together naturally, - a lot like a traditional painting. - Um, - I've selected Cem some high key Ah, - a new color just to give some highlights to the nose brow and forehead. - Uh, - but really, - this is Ah, - where you just sort of let let your brain zone out and, - uh, - let it happen. - Naturally. - Just pick and choose colors. - Trying to find the forms. - Uh, - three dimensionally, - um, - of, - ah got the shape of the block in selected so that I never paint outside of the lines. - That's very handy. - You can see I have the block in shape on its own layer so we can just command click that - layer whenever we want the selection. - Um, - I switched to the smudge tool here. - It's sort of like using a blending brush. - Um, - but this helps you smooth out some of the rougher values. - I don't want this guy to be to smooth just so that his skin looks looks rough and craggy, - but this is very helpful. - If if you want smoother skin, - um, - here we go. - I'm, - uh, - darkening the ears in the neck painting and some shadows. - Just trying to define the form and make it look three dimensional. - Um, - I'm not rendering the eyes in this step. - I usually leave the eyes for a later step, - just focusing on skin. - Here. - Here, - I'm adding some detail to those scars around the eye that I wanted to show more smudging - here just to blend out a rough edge around the mouth that it wasn't working. - Um, - putting some highlights on the chin. - Ah, - paler greenish color just because it's where we wanted to look like he has a beard. 10. OPTIONAL SIDEBAR: Basics of Eyes: - So this bar will be called Basics of Eyes just to help us learn a little bit more about the - anatomy of the eye and how light hits it. - Help us make a realistic rendering of a nice so a little bit about anatomy. - This is a sectional illustration of the I, - um, - so we can see on the front here I am outlining the cornea, - which is the clear part of the eye. - Inside. - This is the iris. - It's the colorful part of the eye behind the clear cornea in the hole. - In the center of the iris is the pupil for our purposes, - the nearly black dot in the center. - So, - um, - a little bit about how how light hits the eye. - It travels through the clear cornea through the pupil and crosses over to hit the retina at - the back of the eye. - That's how we see probably a little bit more science than then you signed up for, - but, - um, - but anyway, - let's see. - We'll have light coming in from the top. - In almost all cases, - the first thing you'll notice is a very bright, - pretty much 100% white highlight on the upper curvature of the cornea. - Um, - that that's really the ah, - very important thing to make it make it seem like a really I now, - because that highlight reflects away light that leaves the iris beneath that highlight very - dark. - So, - uh, - that lets the rest of the light bouncing around inside of the cornea to illuminate the - lower part of the iris. - Um, - early says that's how I understood things to work in terms of the physics, - but practically for us. - That just means that the iris beneath that white highlight should be dark, - and the Irish near the bottom should be light. - So the three basic things are the bright white highlight dark iris at the top and light - iris at the bottom. - I've got three ah alien characters. - I did hear where the eyes were a big selling point, - and you could see on all three. - They've got that bright white highlight and the irises dark near the top, - dark near the top, - dark near the top on all three, - and the iris is brighter and more colorful near the bottom on all three. - And you can also see that bright white highlight near the center. - But but above the centre in all cases, - and it's very important that it overlaps that dark pupil the black circle in the middle. - It makes the I seem three dimensional, - deep and unbelievable makes it very interesting. - It was another exercise I thought we would render a very simple I I left the eyes out of - our first pass at this simple face illustrations. - So let's do that now. - Uh, - the first thing we need to do is build up the round spherical shape of the globe of the I. - So this issue look like a sphere sitting inside of the eye sockets before we do. - Anything just occurs to me how much this guy looks like Dr Manhattan right now, - but we'll fix that. - Um, - here I'm a racing away the round shape of the iris. - Do that on both sides, - and you have to be careful here to make sure that the iris that that they're both pointing - in the same direction Otherwise, - he'll he'll look like he's either cross eyed or has a lazy eye. - And that's usually not what you want. - Um, - now I'm painting in the dark pupil in the middle. - I'm painting in some darks near the top of the iris like we talked about dark near the top - and light near the bottom. - There we go, - adding some light near the bottom. - I'm ah, - racing back a bit. - Didn't want those eyes to seem to brighter contrast e relative to the the rest of the image - and finally, - the bright white highlight in the middle and we've got it. 11. Polish and Presentation: - So that brings us to part three, - which is Polish. - The first thing we're gonna do is add eyes and hair to our character. - Um, - I've got some neat tricks for both That can really save you some time, - and we'll go through those step by step. - Once we have those in place, - we will add secondary light sources. - Some reflected light and pin lights to really make it pop. - And also it gives us a chance to to tell some some background story about the characters - setting. - Suddenly, - finally, - we'll do one more passive polish and get it ready to present. - So here we go. - We're gonna start with the eyes. - I've started a new layer. - I like to build these up sequentially first with a a reddish color than a yellow than ah, - off white. - But essentially, - we're just trying to render spheres in the eye socket. - Make it look around in there and I'm blending that out a little bit. - Next will erase away Cem around irises. - Ah, - this is where you determine what direction your characters looking in to be careful not to - make him cross eyed. - Um, - there, - um, - erasing away a pupil. - Um, - and make sure to make the Irish darker near the top. - This helps it look deep in in jeweled when when you add the highlight, - finally add a single white dot over the pupil, - and suddenly it it looks like believable eyes looking at you. - Now I'm adding stubble of added a new layer, - and I have simply switched the brush mode to dissolve. - And that's why the marks are little bitty dots instead of a continuous tone, - it's just a different brush modes. - Simple is that makes him seem reasonably believable stubble. - Once I've done that, - I do a Goshen Blur filter just about two pixels and ah, - knocked back the opacity a little bit. - And just like that, - we've got We've got some hair and some eyes rendered, - and this guy's looking pretty complete. - Now for some polish. - We're gonna add secondary light sources. - I'm I'm adding in some white ish light a ziff there, - a second light source to the bottom left of the page. - Here. - This really helps to round out the edges. - Makes makes the character look three dimensional, - also can create a cool mood. - This is also a good opportunity to to do a little bit more storytelling. - For example, - if if you make these reflected lights bright orange, - you could be saying that your character is in a war zone or somewhere where there's a fire - . - If you want to make it a bright, - eerie green, - you could be saying that your character is in some weird alien setting or on a spaceship. - You use those things to your advantage. - Make make everything you do back up the story that you're trying to tell. - It's why it's good to keep these reflected lights on a layer so that you can just a just - those colors without adjusting the rest of the image. - It's very handy. - I'm a blending out a little bit here with the smudge tool. - Once again, - that's our on the keyboard shortcut. - I switch back and forth a lot between the brush tool and the smudge tool. - Just hitting B and R B for brush are for smudge, - adding some some brighter lights on the other side of the head, - as if they're a spotlight behind and above the character. - There we go have switched to that dissolved brush again just to add some hair highlights on - the head and the chin. - Those those tend to pick up bright lights dramatically so that that's a good good trick to - add in. - Ah, - here. - I'm trying to show a little bit of light shining through the translucent years, - kind of like when you put a flashlight up to your hand. - You can see the light coming through and it's bright red. - Ah, - that's what I'm doing here. - Just to to make some light look like it's shining through, - make the ears look believable is his thin skin. - Uh, - now I'm doing one more pass. - Just just sampling sampling colors and painting in wherever I think it needs it. - I'm treating the edges here with a smudge tool. - It flattens out your image if the edges look too hard. - So this is a good way to make those edges. - Receipt is toe smudge them out a little bit, - kind of like a blender brush. - Here. - I'm using the burn tool just to darken a few things that I thought could use a little more - contrast. - I think I I go back a little bit on that, - but, - uh, - that that's a handy tool O on the keyboard is the is the burn tool attempting to adjust the - brightness and contrast. - But I think I like things the way they are. - Finally, - I've just added a mask and I'm using the Grady Int tool to fade out the neck and then on a - new layer behind the character's head. - I'm just doing some white airbrushing and there you have it. - We have a finished product. - Ah, - this has been digital painting from sketch to finished product. - Thanks very much for taking this class. - I hope you enjoyed it and got a lot out of it. - I look forward to seeing your projects.