How to Paint Realistic Portraits With Accurate Likeness Using The Grid Method

1. Introduction: Welcome to this digital painting course. My name is James Martin. I'm a freelance artist who has been in this industry since 2018. I'm also a freelance writer and civil engineer, but today, I'll be an artist guiding you through the process of creating realistic portraits using the grid method. During this course, you will learn about the fundamentals of building organic form and details. We shall also talked about grids and how to work with them to create realistic portraits or any portrait in the style that you want. We shall learn, use the knowledge to build on Andrew our very own portrait while exploring all the design principle or form, value, light, reddish, color, spective. And so we shall combine them and come up with a realistic looking portrait that he's also close in lightness. The reference image. We shall learn, top it off with a project. From each one way you draw and paint your very own realistic and expressive portrait and submit it for feedback from me and other students in the class. By the end of this course, you'll be able to draw your very own realistic and expressive portraits for your family, friends, and clients. I look forward to seeing you in the course. 2. Making Of Grids: We shall first create a new layer on top of the image that you are going to be working with as reference. On the new layer, you're going to select a brush that is hard enough to make bold marks. You can decrease the brush size using the left bracket keys on your keyboard or the right bracket keys. All right bracket key. To increase the brush size. We shall learn make a straight line on the new layer by clicking Shift. If I just click on one side of the canvas and then you go to the other side and click shift. This will make a straight light through the Canvas, touching both points at the opposite end. You will then copy and paste that layer by clicking old. Dragging on that layer. Your drug it top to create another line that is a few millimeters away from the original line. Then you'll merge the layers containing the lines and repeat the drug and match process to create multiple lines and on the Canvas. This will help you create horizontal lines very fast. After which you rotate a copy of them to form vertical grid lens. The greater the number of grid book says, the more accurate you will be, because it will help. It will help you move from each grid element much easier. But this is also, this also has a downside. It will make your painting and, or your reference image much less visible. As you can see here. Let's imbalance that you must make. It will be more accurate for you, but but then you have to make it in such a way that it doesn't have a destruct. You. Use the syllabus command to save copies of this file. You'll be making two copies of the same file. So that on one of your copies of the files, you'll be deleting the reference image and using it as you're painting file. There are four. Delete that reference image and substitute it with an undertone that you're going to be painting on. With this. How have our grid setup and ready for us to start our painting. 3. Building Form: We 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 color true present a late skin tones. Within mark the general light direction using the arrow. With a default chalk brush in Photoshop, begin making marks that throw note the forms of the South Hall into a spherical volume. Notice that I'm shifting the color downwards to form dark tones or to represent the shadow regions. And they shifted upwards to form the late areas. This is called a tonal shift. This however, is not the 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 muddy. This is non trade. Unless you are painting creatures with green-blue, human beings have red 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 at tonal values. Then I shift the color controls down into more red hue. This is a complete process of shifting may Hughes, 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 not black. But they are generally dark tones of the clustering body. Therefore exaggerated that effect. To make it more apparent. We can then begin smoothing out the surface using a soft airbrush. With opacity controls on. Make this smoothing selective so that you don't smooth over all the texture. This will introduce randomness and interest 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 realistic portrait. 4. Sketch By Grids: We shall now use the grid we've made in the previous tutorial to begin laying out a silhouette of the figure. Try not to cheat this process because much as we are coping according to the grids. We're also training silver important aspects of our skills required to produce likeness. When we do, when we draw later on without grids. As you draw, train your mark making process to feel organic. This means that you need to avoid straight line when drawing organic forms such as the human body. This is required if you need to, if you need your painting to come out natural and realistic. Agreed is also going to train you in learning about proportions so that you can judge naturally, judge how well your features work together. Later on, when you have no grid to guide you. It is important to also keep the forms of the face in mind that you do sketch them as volumes to prevent flattening out the image. That is why I told you to avoid painting straight lines. If you see that your sketch has straight lines, just know that you're flattening out those areas. It will do you a lot of good to go back to those straight lines and try to make them carved in relation to the form. 5. Pen Selection and Base Color Blockin: When you are done with a sketch, you, we're now going to make a clean selection and fill it with local colors. For these, we shall be using a pen tool in Photoshop, but feel free to use the Lasso tool as well. If you're comfortable with that. When making the selections, however, make sure that you're zoomed in to the portions of the canvas that you're selecting. And use the selection tool of your choice to make the silhouette while preserving the edges. Utilize the pen controls as much as possible to make sure that you have a cuffed and smooth surface. This will help you avoid flattening out your image. When you're done. You will select a new color. And with your image selection active, create a new one below the sketch layer or no net selected layer. Begin painting in the best or local colors that you have selected. The colors before. And let them have full opacity and flow. Since they are only the best colors and we need them to cover every part of the image. Then be scared to use bold colors like black for the hair. Shall be making it look very realistic and the rendering fix. 6. Form Lights and Eye Painting: We shall now create a new layer and position it between the sketch and the sketch layer and the local color layers. Goal here is to approximate the colors you see when painting. Tight on the pen pressure controls so that you do not paint with full opacity like we did with the local colors. When painting. I kept this basic, so I use the soft brush, which is just a default in Photoshop. But I think this is important because it not only helps you build forms is Lee makes changing the size of the brush, it can help you build general texture as a deed in the eye areas. This type of texture is very important because it simulates the skin volume around the eyes very well. To quickly shift the brush size. To quickly shift the brush size, you just have to use a scale bracket keys on the keyboard. To move the canvas around. You just have to use the space bar, drug and drug on your pen tablet. When using the soft brush, will, shall be varying the sizes, our Lord, so that we can come up with a texture variations in need. We also need to keep zooming in and out of the canvas, which you can quickly do with control plus spacebar on your keyboard. This will help you build even more detail while zoomed in. In the eye areas. 7. Further Painting of Eyes and Mouth Forms: We shall continue detailing the forms of the face, starting with the eyes in this lesson. When painting the eyes, think of them as spheres so that even when you are building the forms of the skin around them, you will treat those forms as fierce to do not forget to paint the shadow and light interactions. In this painting, I was not so bold where the lighting, because it is how I prefer to paint, but feel free to go darker than this. But if you do, make it also more saturated and shift the colors as I showed you in the video on how to paint forms. Remember to zoom out and see how your image is walking. Also reduce the opacity of the grid significantly at this point that you can't see how well the values walk given in the areas that are beneath the grids. This painting I constantly smooth dot my painting, which helped Mrs. Heather values and how they work together much more is the this is not a must. You can smooth out the forms late. 8. Initial Stubble Paint: We are now going to walk on the chin area and the stable. For that. First establish some dark grayish tones to Democrat pitching positions. After which leaves the grass brush in Photoshop. To create the initial stable. It is important to check scattering so that the grass brush marks appear random. But also to increase the randomness. Make sure that you use different paint directions. Constantly shift the settings until you get a scatter result that is close to the photo. We shall use those settings to build a stable. While building this double, make sure it follows the forms of the area. This can be done by painting as you're building the forms in a normal way in arterial, stick to one color. In the initial stages of painting this table, we shall add variations when we get to the forms and painting. Liked. Remember to keep zooming out so that you see how forms work together. 9. Defining Forms of Lower Face: Continuing with a cleanup of the face, wanted to make the forms of the face more defined. This is important in building expression, defining as many muscle forms. The skin contractions helps in making the expression more authentic and realistic. You have to define as much detail as you can see. You also have to keep in mind that the light is very important. This is why I'll first turn off this double layer and paint some darker tones on the lower side of the head and neck area. Only after defining them in terms of light and shadow. Return to this table and make that layer visible. This will help in making the painting appear as having light and shadow. 10. Varying Form Finishes: We now want to vary the form finishes to get rid of the very most and uniform effects in our walk. This is achieved by painting with a brush sizes. We shall also build the forms in the ears as well, so that we get rid of the flattened areas would not form. Do not be afraid to blow out. Your highlights. Since we are also painting. From reference photo that has blown out highlights, make sure that you maintain a balance between the smooth areas on the rough areas. By creating breaks in the skin. Also, make sure that this double layer and the hidden layer are not clipped to the original local layer. Those little hairs that fly away are important in selling the realism and preventing the painting from appearing flat. 11. Making Hair Volumes: We shall now use this double brush to create the parts of the hair on the side. Now only difference here is that we're going to, we're using a small, a smaller brush with a scatter size, smaller than the beard. Make a selection for the hair. Under the hair brush. We used for the eyebrows shall create volumes of hair using that brush. In the beginning. Just make them wavy according to the reference image. Stay away from strict lanes, but let them feel like they're following the head shape. You also need to add shadow underneath the hair to make it feel like it's part of the head. You also let some short flyaway score from the general hand mass so that they can add to the realism of a hair. 12. Painting Handforms: Shall not walk on painting the forms of the hand. And all that we do here is to paint the forms as they interrupt with light and shadow at the various planes. This is a very good exercise to inventing how light interacts with the body. But at this stage, the grid is mostly just a formality as its main walk of establishing proper, proper proportions is done. Try however, to define the forms of the organic shapes while keeping in mind that we are going to be rendering the plots next. 13. Cloth Forms: When working with a cloth material, it's rendering is a little bit different from the skin. The folds are much less blended. Skin folds. For instance. What is important is to render the cloth while keeping in mind the underlying body form on which it is seated. Developing a believable volume is a first step to making the shot cloth realistic. When doing these, make sure that you have a thumbnail of your painting in the Navigator Panel to help you see what you're doing in a zoomed out position. But this does not mean that you should abundant zooming out of your Canvas. You should keep doing it to see how well your values walk with each other. Carefully experiment with creating floats. The work that goes into creating realistic folds is a result of practice. So do not worry. You will get a hang of its own. But when you're creating them, vary the brush sizes by using the soft brush to create subtle bumps in the closed material while using harder brushes and textured brushes to create the creases and the shadow areas around the forms so that they can appear realistic and in harmony with the whole painting. With these, you will have learned how to paint a realistic likeness of someone. 14. Outro: I've quite done this lesson to focus on the basics of painting realistic forms. Most of it has been sped up to make sure that they cover all the important topics that you need to become good at painting. Task now should be to paint using the ideas we've talked about. Feel free to revisit the lessons for those areas that you may not have understood. All that they may have been too fast. When you are comfortable with the walk. I have lived a project and the description that you should consider doing. After getting it done. Please post your work here so that I can take hello, can give you some feedback. When need be. Students who will also be able to give you a helpful feedback as well. My socials for our gyms and a score, a schedule on Instagram, although I'm not there at the moment, but that's it. And James, sake of my take on YouTube. That's it for this course. Please share your feedback as well. That either potential students can know whether it is, whether or not this course will be useful for them. Your feedback will be very important and very helpful as they walk on posting more courses. So please let it be January. Thanks for watching.