How To Paint Realistic and Expressive Portraits in Adobe Photoshop

1. Introduction: Welcome to this digital painting coats. My name is James settlement to and I am a freelance artist towards business industry since 2018. I'm also a writer and civil engineer. But today I'll be an artist guiding you through the process of creating realistic and expressive portraits. During this course, you will learn about the fundamentals building organic farm and details. We shall also talk about the degrees of realism and how you can control that in your walk so as to create realistic portraits or any portrayed in a style that you want. Sheldon use that knowledge to build on and draw our very own portrait while exploiting the design principles of foam, value, light, color, spective, and so on. And we shall combine them and come up with a realistic looking portrait. But it's also very close in. We shall then top it off with a project from each one, you draw and paint your very own realistic and experts portrait. And then you'll submit it for feedback from me and other students in the class. So for this course, I'll be painting using Photoshop CS6. So this means that if you have Photoshop, CS6, CS5, and beyond, which means a Creative Cloud, you'll be able to follow along. You can also use any other software that you feel like. For example, procreate, or any other software that you feel comfortable. Don't worry. There is not much of any technique called technologies that are specific to Photoshop. So feel free to use the software that you're comfortable with. I'm also going to be using the default Photoshop brushes. Mainly the default chalk brushes in Photoshop. But in case I use any other brush, I'll leave it for you in the description down below, so that you can also use a tissue one. By the end of the course. You'll be able to draw your own realistic and expressive portraits. And you can do this for friends, family, and friends. I look forward to seeing you in the course. 2. Basics of Building Form: We'll begin by building form out of a simple circle. To do that, create a circle selection on a new layer and fill it with the best collateral represent a late skin tone. We then mark the general light direction using the arrow. With a default chalk brush in Photoshop, begin making marks that rho naught the forms of the sarco into a spherical volume. You'll notice that I'm shifting the color downwards to form darker tones. A trip present the shadow regions and they shifted upwards to form the light areas. This is called a tonal shift. These however, is not to complete color selection as there is a crucial part of color selection that is required. When shifting the tonal values into the darker areas. You may notice that the darker tones are now greenish. And Maddie. This is non trade. Unless you're painting creatures with green blood, human beings have great blood. Therefore, they require a hue shift after the tonal shift. To do that. One more step is required, which involves shifting the color wheel. Whenever you shift the tonal values. You can see it here. When a shift a tonal values, then I shift the color controls down into a more red hue. This is a complete process of shifting the hues, which will help you create a more realistic looking skin tone. We then use that to add a core shadow and cast shadow. Cast shadows and black. But they generally darker tones of the clustering body. And have therefore exaggerated that effect. To make it more apparent. We can then begin smoothing out the surface using a soft airbrush. With the opacity controls on. Make this smoothing selective so that you don't smooth over all. The texture is to introduce randomness and interests in your painting, which will be, which is very important. It's a very important part of painting realistic portraits. With these, we are ready to paint a realistic portrait. 3. Degrees of realism: I'm going to be working with a concept of light and mass. And I'm going to be explaining how different artists use this technique to just not totally focused on creating their own style, but also in creating visual compositions in their artwork. So the idea here we have our two surfaces, two spherical surfaces. You can see that one is heavily defined by patches of light and shadow, and whereas the other is defined by just blocks of color. So here we just have just simple plain of simple mass of color, right? So these could be any color for simplification sake, I'm living it that white and black. So here this is fun and this is mass. When you're working with, with art, you're going to have late falling on surfaces. So once you know the, the degree to which a render those, that light is going to determine form. Most art is going to fall under two categories. One way of defining form and another. Well, where it's heavily well-formed is heavily defined and another worm mass is heavily defined. If you render a surface and you render the proportion of light versus shadows, you're going to come up with what we call a form dominant artwork. If you're growing and you're just using Khan lanes to define, or you're using colors to define planes and ships. You're not, you're not rendering late, but she just rendering ships of all blocks of color. So there you're using mass. So here we are using late versus shadow. So when you use light versus shadow, you're going to come up with this thing. Form. All right, so you're going to create form to your iso it, Let's go in, you're going to round out surfaces. Because actually when you're looking in real life, the idea of form is when light is interacting surfaces. So what you see as form, I'll just discuss the value changes as it is, but that doesn't relate to it. So it just has blocks of Kyla, nothing like plate. Where is used to define this artwork is just blocks of color. So these are just masses. Masses of, we have names for those things and can also be called chiaroscuro if you're referring to form dominant or no ton. If you're referring to amass dominant surface, you are, it's going to fall somewhere in-between these two areas. When you hear as you move towards here, is going to create some realism. So your, your images are going to look a little bit more realistic. But once you bring for sterilized or like cartoony surfaces, or you're going to base your, your art or your compositions that they're going to be must dominate. So once I combine this, all right, I get that. So it's form is being defined more. You want your work to be biased, or in other words, you don't want to equally make these two surfaces compete. This one is more on the nighttime side, whereas this is more on the chiaroscuro or form side. So, which means here you can easily make out the form of, of this surface. And here you can, you can't see that even though they're both combinations for both of them. But this one is heavily inclined or bias towards this, and this is heavily biased towards z. So these, this creates two different styles of art. There are very many variations. Very subtle variations can cause your walk to appear very differently and it's all subjective. If you don't make them biased, it's going to create mud or it's going to create discord or something unpleasant, for example. So on this surface here, if I'm to increase the opacity of both of them to give maybe a 100, maybe limb is say, 100% of of form of late versus shadow. And also I have a 100 percent. You can see that even though this is a good step or it could be as tail as well. But it's creating this too much noise. Okay, so what most people do is you can. Downplayed in your composition. So for example, I can reduce the mass. And you can see now that this is a little bit different and it's much more pleasant, you can see that this is just our, He's painting his work. He is briskly, heavily Naughton or must dominate. You can see that he blocks out the colors are just fully yellows and greens and Bloods and oh, okay. So you consider is defining form in the sense of so which, which means maybe this is like cubism of sorts. But living that said, it's just there is nothing like late over versus shadow or nothing Lakers mostly briskly blocks of color. So compare that to this one, whereby you're seeing that the shadow areas and the light areas, when you look at the dress of this lady here, you can see that it's not heavily are formed dominant, it's heavily must dominate whereby it's showing you are. He has, he has downplayed the late interactions on this dress here, whereas here you can't see that he has defined the creases. Saw this one is, it's heavily formed dominant. Alright. So, and then in the background there you can see that his downplayed also the late interactions. So this creates a composition whereby these creases are leading you in your eye around the composition. And also, for example, here, this shadow here or at the slate, it all, it's, now he's using the late and shadows to move your eye around this composition. This is another area where he, the artist has used both form dominance and mass dominance in different places. For example, if we zoom in here, you'd see that here on this, on this person's clause here, there's basically no form, right? So it's just mass or a block of mass here. Whereas when you look at the king's clothes and see that there he has defined shadow areas and light areas. And these, these, these shadows are all oil leading, leading into this sort. They are coming like this lake that today are leading your eye right around this place. So here there are no, there are no, there is no visual interest at all. So your eyes good to come back here. And then here, the visual interests also, he has added a lot of form here. So undo consider creases here is they're all bending into the composition. And so, which means that you're going to find that your eye is going to come on, keep, keep on moving into the areas here or it, then here we have another artist's. Again, it's fiscally must dominant. It, it says Norton, it's best. Just simple shades of light and dark or eight. Picasso's are used to use this and defined his title. And also these artists used to use these different his time. All right, so you can't see that how using these can define style. And again, so he didn't eat within a composition. You can have areas where you heavily Muslim in on, areas where you're heavily formed dominant, or the entire composition is heavily dominant or one of them. So for example, this one is heavily mass dominant. And whereas this one has both. So for example, here on the red place, the red, it has these areas where it's heavily must dominate. Whereas here, on the green side here, you can see that these areas here have shadow and they have formed to them. So he has taken the fixed interest to do that. So this is, again, Picasso's work, I guess. So when he was 15, you can see that his work was heavily formed, dominant or chiaroscuro. So he's defining light areas and shadow areas. And as you can see, these are more realistic than these ones were. For example, this one is just defining dark areas and light areas. Okay? Same for this one. 4. Rough First Sketch: Choose any sketch brush of your choice. And we shall begin with creating a cell, because all heads have a secular structure that outlines the top half of the head. Here I am filling for the orientation of the plane, which is this straight line through this. We cut this circle to add is spherical dimension TOEIC. By the help of a resume name, you should didn't begin adding more rhythm lanes to mark the general landmarks, the fish of features. We looked worry about getting it right the first time. Just make it close enough and make sure the orientation of the fissure features is parallel to the INA. The orientation of the Allain also helps you determine the orientations of the nose and mouth in such a way that if you are to draw lines at each section, those orientations must be part of. You can see, for example, that might detainee of the nose shows that one nostril is higher than the other. Just like the Iranians. If you're walking up close, it's best to open another window that is zoomed out. This will help you keep proportions in rhythm. Do this by going to Window and click on Arrange, and then click on New Window. The point of sketching this, which would be to help you define the form using lanes. The mouth should also follow a similar orientation unless you are drawing subjects with add-in animated fishery expression. But for pneumo fifths is kickball through parallel. This fixed the first pass of terrorism lanes complete. It should then Tony beaten down by using the raise or using the transparency I just met controls in Photoshop or the software you're using. 5. Finishing Up the sketch: Use the landmarks took place more Fisher features while maintaining the form directions. When you draw the head mass, let it follow the form of the head. This will be important in making it feel believable later on during the painting process. Familiar with don't want to create a face as you walk around completing the head, outlining the generous ship of the figure with the closest approximation new card. And while doing this, make sure that you have at least what do we do that is fully opened the orange, but fully shows your cameras to help you get those proportions rate, as well as have a typical position in your walk. Avoid street lanes, shop, or hardships when drawing the figure. As these tend to make figure drawings, Steve, an unrealistic. You lanes must be soft and you couldn't do this by making them flowy, make them curvy. For instance, you can see the neck is not as a street lane, but I have slightly exaggerated the keV. This makes it look sort of an organic and interesting. Repeating this technique across your portraits prevents them from Brookings TEA Fund meconium. Flipping your converse is also an amazing advantage for us digital artists. And this is the right team should start doing it. It will hope you see your image in a different perspective, which you can help, which can help you identify errors in your form that your previously blamed. Flip your Canvas. You can go to Edit, then under Edit, go to transform, and then go to flip horizontal too. But I do not recommend doing it twice, says, in Photoshop, you can just use shortcuts to add a shortcut or go to the Edit button and scroll down to the keyboard shortcuts under that, go to Image and expand the options. Then scroll to where you flip your face and flip canvas horizontal and click on it. It will prompt you with a textbox. I personally use control plus F to flip my Canvas so you can input that or you can make it whatever you want. Just make sure that it doesn't interfere with the important shortcuts that you may frequently use. When you are ready. Click into, and then click Okay. You should be able to flip your canvas horizontally with a simple shortcut key, clean up your image. And at this point, it should start looking very similar to the reference image. But do not worry about it. Don't worry if it doesn't look exactly our lake yet. What is important here is to make sure that your sketch proportions irate regardless of what position your Canvas has flipped to. When you propulsion sphere rate, begin sketching the rhythms of the eyes. Keep in mind that sometimes the eyes may not be open. That is why your already trained to sketch the readings rather than that. Or what you think they should be, or what you think the eyes should look like? Correct? The eyes to follow the general directions of Eileen. The trick dr. Bought in a previous lesson. And with this, you should be ready for the painting. But, but before you do, feel free to just stick your team and correct your image proportions. Zoom out a bit and get it done. 6. Blocking in of Base Colors: Begin by setting up MLK grown and volume using the adjustment that delivers an adjustment layer. On a new layer, begin walking towards the closest color tone you want. This might mean copying the except highlight tone in there. If it's, in my case, I wanted to subject colors to be a little warmer than refers. So that's what they did in the beginning though. Try to approximate the true colors of a reference image, but do not color pick from it. Known Trey, don't worry about painting art, say the sketch lanes from now. We should clean that up later. Decides that the clean up mix up paintings look more organic. I'll show you what they mean, not relate to. Use different values of the same color to define form. The areas that face the late should have later and less saturated color values. And then those that don't. And even though we are painting with different values, make sure that the values hominids, in a way, let the create an illusion of volume. Now, we can take another brush that is not very hard versus soft and begin cleaning up the image to get rid of the paint that flows out of the sketch. Lanes. Ask Kish, lanes are not Logisim color as a skin tones, but we can do that by creating a new layer above the sketch layer by layer. Then fill that layer with a generous skin color tone. And then clip layer to the layer of the sketch layer. You can also change the color of the clipping later by clicking on the color icon, of course, and changing it accordingly. Do this to make the sketch lines look like they are part of the skin tones, but there are different enough so that they can be identified. You don't want to lose what you've already sketched. So that is why we make the skin tones or the sketch lanes locally a part of the skin tones. So once you've done that, you can select both layers and then match them. So this will mark the end of a block in fish. 7. First Detailing to loose the line work: Starting with a mouth, I'm going to use this default chalk brush in Photoshop to add volume to the forums. And in the process, we have to lose the lane walk for a more realistic result. At this stage, you can quickly sample the layers from the already existing base colors to create a semi blended look in your portraits. To do this, just click the Alt or Option button on your keyboard to quickly switch between your Eyedropper Tool and your paintbrush. Constantly flip the campus to make sure that your forms rate correctly. And make sure you smooth out the lane walk in areas like the nostril ends, but leave a little indication of the lane walk to define the deepest shadows. You don't forget to turn on pen pressure disappoint to facilitate. Isn't mixing of the tube paints. Focus on using the extinct best, best colors to define the forms of the face and don't introduce the lighter or darker values just yet. Even with these best paints be used later values to define it forms the tiering the light and use the darker colors or the data color values to define areas that are away from the light or areas uttering a shadow. Beyond the first. Treat complex figures like basic shapes. For example, treats the neck as a cylinder fast, as well as the fingers. Because these basic shapes will help you to define form more easily. And they will help you build up to a more realistic look. New paint. 8. Initial highlights and volume definitions: At this point, the form definitions are clear, but they haven't yet fully defined. So you need to introduce a few later tons. These will help you pull out the areas of B, which will increase the form, definitions or the figure. Keep the highlights, lose and Trey to add them towards many areas. In the latest pause symbol. That is same for the hair and make it appear to have volume. Make it appear to roll into their head at all points where it touches the head. This would make it feel like it's part of the head. Don't worry about painting individual hair strands. Just define its volume first with the normal brushes. And we shall get into making this translate. Once later twins are added, uses some brush with pen pressure tandem to blend that the lighter tones into the best Don's preserve the latest points with the latest points that had directly in the late, but make the ages fall into a relatively smooth blend. Do not use a soft brush or a soft airbrush has to do this. Just use the normal brush we're using. 9. General Form definitions: Fingers can be tricky to paint, but you must reduce them to Bessie, cylindrical ships or trust. Do this by outlining each individual finger and then pink later tons into them. This will help you define the R form. Once those highlights how blended. And one says, hey, let's have blended or with a base and shadow colors. So you want to paint in there later tons in the areas that TO it didn't in late. You use later tons and then the areas within these shadows you want to paint with the darker tones and then just add a soft blend to them. And this will define them into a cylindrical shapes. In cases like these where fingers are also making in gesture that is important in a composition. You can focus on painting what feels right to you. But in general, paint what you see. Oil treating them as cylinders, and you'll get different results. Constantly go over your finger paint to make sure that you do not over paint. And from one area wild and neglecting others. The painting has to move and progress no tenuously on. That is why you see me jumping all over the place. Here. I'll just define the ship so he took bit more. I'll also add volume to the eyes using the same technique of building form. And add a small room late on the Sayed that has eat. 10. Creating Contrast With Further adjustments: Now I'm going to paint the eyes with a much darker tone. And it is coding trusted by very late audience, which will help define what they see from the reference image and not be afraid of moving ships around using the Lasso tool. If you feel like they're non trait, the ships should feel right to you and you should feel free to use the lasso tool. 11. Form Shadows, Highlights and Creating Hair Strands: Start by making sure we have defined the forms using the hide ish brushes that we chose. This is important to have different non blended color tones before we switch to the soft brushes to begin the blending process, remember, flipped the Compass and also check your results. In the other window that is zoomed out. Detailing the hair requires a fascial singing in a normal brush. Set to averse more sales. And being odd if few hair strands that are color extensions of the hair Clara or the base hair colors. I do this by sampling a given hair color and then using my brush to pull out a few strand. In the practice of whacking on the portrait to Mauritania sleep. I quickly jump around at this point to correct the shapes and forms that could use a little bit more work. Use this opportunity to make sure that all relating and form definitions are in place. Make sure that the shadows are correctly cast. Apply reflected lates where they are needed. And just generally odd or postulating rules to your portraits, from shadows to highlights. Doing this helps you make the portrayed more realistic. This is another part that you don't want to rush. So take your time. 12. Initial Blend and Final Adjustments: This part is still an extension of the previous lists order in which I am defining the forums a little bit more. At this point, it should feel like the forms blend into each other without the help of a soft airbrush. This will be very helpful in adding interests and dynamism to your portrait. If there is a point you want to change, like shifting and knows upwards at this point. Plus make a copy of the paint layer. And then on the top layer, make the adjustment that you need. After which you can blend and match both layers. I find these to be helpful in keeping your image clean and free from visible cuts. Look, worry about your color tones that don't match the refund. You should have artistic decisions that feel good to you for your mouth. For instance, I did not want it to be the main focus of this portrait. And that's why I did it, give it contrast from the skin tones. These are artistic decisions that you need to make as an artist. Make sure you gradually build up the colors. For instance, when increasing shadow colors, I gradually use darker tones and blend them with the surrounding values to keep the value of harmony harmonious. And they do the same for the highlights. Do the same, and make sure that you keep the value. Family manias. 13. Final Blends and Finishes: It's now time to smooth out of values. Select the soft brush and make sure that the smoothing doesn't just flatten out the values that you have worked so hard to build. This is done by keeping the brush size small and mostly smoothing out Wilson Dean. Denote choose very big smoke brushes. Let's smooth as over one fissure plane at a time. Smooth areas that are on the same plane. And you will achieve display painting with a small brush says that it doesn't go over any planes. When painting or smoothing. Do not do it. For the whole painting. Leaves some parts and smoothed as this will create contrast in your image, which will be interesting. Use this much brush at a small size can begin pulling color values into each other to create the hair strand effect that you see here. This was my edge. Here, Carlos, assuming that they are late mine, to create these illusions of individual hairs forming the hem us, tick your TAM and it's mage, follow the four over here flown. This must be done on the pink there as a smudge function locks destructively. Final touches. Can I add more interest to the road? And you can also create washes off late when your image or your figure using this soft airbrush. But there is very sparingly as it can flatten out your image. If you're not very careful. At this point, what is left is detailing, which will involve using small traces of extreme globe. You can also use the Dodge tool to highlight areas late the hair highlights that need a little bit more isolating. And to add for cause, we can create a brush. And that can also be useful in making here. By the way, to make this brush create a new canvas and set it to 50, 50 by 50 pixels. And using a soft or hard drag the brush, create random sock was on the Canvas. Icc here. Then go to file, Define Brush Preset and sea of your new brush under any name you want. You can then adjust the brush settings as you see here, and then use it in your image. You'll get some Foucault inspirations and use the brush to just recreate what you see and just make them subtle to either fuel for cost your face to the first. Then you can adjust the settings to turn the seven brush into a hair brush. And generate with these. You will have lobbied how to paint a very expressive portrait in Photoshop. 14. Conclusion: I've done this lesson to focus on the basics of painting realistic forms. Most of it has been sped up to make sure that I cover all the important topics you need to become good at painting. Your task now should be to paint using the ideas that we've talked about. And feel free to revisit the lessons for those areas that you may not have understood. All the Tammy has moved too fast when you're comfortable with a walk. I have left a project in description that you should consider doing. After getting it done, please post your walk here so that we can take a look. And I can give you some feedback where I need be. And there are students who will also be able to help to give you and give you helpful feedback. And so you should consider that as well. My socials are at gyms as KJ on Instagram and James sick Almaty on YouTube. So these are my ADSR shows. And if you need anything or to follow me or find out more about me, that's why you kind of do that. That is it for this course. Please share your feedback as well. This will help either potential students to know whether or not this course will be useful for them. Your feedback will be also very helpful as a walk on posting more courses. So please let it be genuine. Thanks for watching.