Drawing With The Lasso in Photoshop

1. Introduction: my name is Julio Carvalho. I've been illustrating and animating things since the nineties. In this Skillshare class, I'm going to show you a technique that I learned a few years ago. Drawing with the Lasso Tool in Photoshop is a nice way to make your digital paintings look cool and sophisticated. I'm going to explain the basic principles of lighting and how to gain volume in your drawings throughout the process of slicing the objects and changing their colors. At the end of each drawing, we'll apply textures so as to make their appearance looks natural. So, you don't need to be a highly skilled digital painter to take this class. I'm waiting for you in the first lesson. 2. The Lasso: first of all, I'm going to pick out a basic and thin brush, and draw a basic geometric solid. Now let's choose the Lasso Tool. In fact, since we're dealing with straight lines, the best choices that I believe is the Lasso tool, let's select the whole area and fill it up with a dark color. So, the shortcuts to fill up an area in Photoshop are Mac Option + Delete to fill up with the foreground color. Common + Delete to fill up with the background color. Windows Alt + Backspace to fill up with the background color and Control + Backspace to fill up with the background color. Let's suppose there is a direct light coming from the left. I'll select the left side of solid and using the palette Exposure I'll enlighten the face. I'll do same on the top, but a little less lit. On another layer, I'll create a cast shadow a little bit darker than the darker side of the object. As you can see in this image, these are the main kinds of lights and shadows, There is a spotlight coming from the left top, and this sphere here is lead by that light. This image is available for download in this class, and you can check it out whenever you wants. Let's create a sphere and enlighten it. For now, I'm not worried about the shape. Let's use the Lasso Tool to slice the areas and enlighten them. Using the exposure panel creating the center light, the half tones, the reflected light, and the cast shadow. The highlight. Let's create another object less of the same thing with a cylinder 3. Sketching: Let's start sketching. First I'll adjust the background. Chosing a not too dark gray. We can choose a gray similar to the background of the photo, I'll choose my brush and you can choose the brush you are used to drawing with. You can use the future liquefy to refine your drawing. Now it's time to polish my sketch. We can erase the dirty areas and retrace it. 4. Values#1: As you can see, I've created a grayscale palette here. The less colors we start with, the more we'll understand the main values in the painting. Let's start blocking the values with the Lasso Tool. First, I'll choose this gray. Now I'll block the hair using a different layer. Let's choose a 50% gray. During the process, sometimes it's necessary rebuilding the shapes and filing them up. Let's adjust the exposure to darken it. From now on, I'm going to select carefully each area in my drawing and using the palate exposure I'm going to define the values I consider correct. And a trick to understand if you are choosing the correct values, is this squinting. Try it. When you look at the for the reference squinting your eyes. Believe me, it will help you significantly 5. Values#2: Let's continue doing the same thing we've been doing until now. 6. Texturizing: The moment I consider my drawing done, It's the time to apply a texture. I'm used to applying textures to my illustrations. In my opinion, they seem more sophisticated and natural after texturized, First lets create a sliced gradient in the background using the Lasso Tool. I'll crop the image. After that, I'll search for a texture on the internet. Texture selected, I'll we put its layer above all the others, and change its mode to overlay, reducing its opacity to about 40 percent. So that's it. See you in the next lesson. 7. Working With Colors #1: First, it's important to choose a skin tone palette. There are tons of them on the Internet, and I recommend you to go to pinterest.com or just Google texting skintone pallets. Even though you want to use all the colors for the palette, it's important to use it as a reference all the time you're painting. Let's start sketching Now it's time to start blocking the basic colors. Let's darken the background a little bit. Let's make the face and the hair on different layers. I'll first slice some areas and. Try to paint them with colors from the pallets Only after choosing at least four or five colors from the palette, I recommend you to adjust them using the exposure panel. And don't forget to squint your eyes sometimes so as to check the values. So, you can start rawing the wrinkles. But, be careful. The goal is not making every little wrinkle. Let's make the blouse 8. Working With Colors #2: Now I'm going to make the final adjustments. Let's merge the layers. Unimportant trick is: checking if the drawing has a good silhouette, we're going to flip it horizontally and, using the filter Liquify, adjust some shapes. Let's flip it again. After that, we can continue adjusting a little bit more. So, let's crop the canvas. So let's suppose there is a blue light coming from here. Let's apply the texture using the overlay mode. And using the grading to create a blue light coming from this corner and a white light coming from the opposite side, let's darken the background a little bit And to finish, adjust the texture color. In fact, I think I'll desaturate it. So that's it. Thank you for taking this class. And don't forget to share your work here. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask me! 9. Bonus Demonstration: -