010 - IFX tutorial - Painting a fantasy-themed portrait
This tutorial was written for ImagineFX magazine Issue#3.
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Painting a fantasy-themed portrait.
This tutorial requires basic painting skills, as well as basic mastery of a program such as Adobe Photoshop. You will also need a drawing tablet, like my good old Wacom Intuos.I’ll explain my methods step by step, from the taking of reference pictures, via the preparations for making the first sketch, and all the way through the painting process itself.
Firstly, when making a realistic-looking portrait, the most important thing is to sort out the personal features of the character you are painting, and to keep the proportions correct. This is why using reference pictures is important: The better the quality of the reference pictures, the easier it will be to find the most important features and recreate them in your painting.
You can easily improvise a basic photo studio in your own living room, by using some bright lamps, or even better, one of those 150 or 500 Watt floodlights which may or may not be lying about in your garage. Lighting the reference model from one side, or from other interesting angles, makes everything a lot more believable. I love playing around with light sources, to see what kind of shapes the shadows can conjure up - especially on the face of the sitter.
My personal opinion is that there are things the mind simply can’t come up with on its own, and this is why I value having reference pictures to look at while painting. This goes for anything from people to objects, and especially things like drapes and fabric folds.
In this tutorial, you will also learn how to make a hard-edged brush, which is the brush I used almost exclusively when creating this painting.
1 - Shooting the reference picture
I tend to just use what I have on hand when shooting reference pictures, like a normal digital camera and a floor lamp (those really bright ones). I prefer shining the light from the side, since this creates some interesting shadows and highlights on faces and drapes. Switch off that nasty camera flash!
2 - Selecting the best reference picture
It’s great to have many pictures to pick from. The way I personally like to select pictures, is to look at two at a time, discarding the ones I like least in each pair. For the composition, I try to find a picture with a good silhouette and an interesting look in the eyes of the model, which is important if observers are to “connect” with the piece. I also tend to pick pictures that are in semi-profile, since these look a lot more interesting than the full frontal ones.
With this piece, I wanted my friend to look a little grumpy, even though he will probably also look quite funny holding his familiar bat. I like weird combinations, and I think this particular duality fits my friend’s character quite well, which is what portraits are all about.
3 - About brushes
When I first started out making digital art in Photoshop, I used the soft airbrush too much. This made everything appear blurry, and I didn’t really get the crispness that I look for in a piece nowadays. One day my girlfriend convinced me to put the soft airbrush away, and tried painting with a hard edged brush instead. The outcome was highly interesting, especially since the process felt somewhat close to painting/drawing with a traditional medium.
4 - Make a hard edged brush
1) Select a custom made brush which is round and hard.
2) Open Window/Brushes.
3) Select “Brush tip shape”, and set the spacing slider to 6-7%. Also make sure the “Smoothing” option is ticked.
5 - The grid aid
When making a portrait based on a photo, the most important thing is to keep the character’s proportions and anatomy as correct as possible. To achieve this, I use the old trick of having a grid as a guide when making the sketch. This is a technique I learned at a traditional art school a long time ago, and it works just as well on the screen as it does on paper.
In Photoshop, I place the reference picture in the leftmost part of the window and the blank canvas to the right, before applying a medium grey colour as background. The grey background makes it easier on the eyes, and later it’s a good middle base colour when applying shadows and highlights.
On this particular reference picture, I created a new layer on which I drew a grid using a pencil which was a few pixels wide. In some places with more details, like faces and fingers, I usually make the grid even denser. The next thing I did was to copy the grid onto the blank canvas in a new layer on top.
6 - Starting the sketch
I toned down the opacity of the grid layer in my blank canvas window, and then I made a new layer, which I placed in between the background and the grid. This layer is where I plan to start sketching.
While looking closely at the reference photo, I drew the outlines of the person grid-by-grid, using a hard-edged brush with black colour set to around 7-15% flow. At this stage, I didn’t draw the character’s hand.
Also, remember that even if you don’t need to think about what you are drawing while using the grid, always try to keep in mind what kind of shapes you are making, to prevent you from stagnating art-wise. I still think in shapes usually, and I also add some help lines to aid me when shading later.
I wanted my friend to wear a helmet, so I added one already at this stage of the process. When making the sketch, I usually start off in medium resolution.
7 - Blocking in and shading the sketch
Once I had a decent sketch ready, I made a new layer between the background and the sketch. Here, I blocked in the character with a greyscale colour with the brush set to 100% flow. Then I merged the blocking shape layer and the sketch layer. (Link the two layers in the layers menu, and choose “merge linked” in the layers drop down menu). I also added some more details to the character’s outfit.If you enable the “Lock transparent pixels” feature on the layers menu, it ensures that you don’t paint outside the already painted elements.
At this point, I started adding greyscale values using black/white colours as foreground/background colours (press “X” to toggle), with the brush set to 3-6% flow.
I always start with the eyes since I need to get this aspect right before I move on - the look in the eyes are a very important part of any portrait. I kept looking closely at the reference picture while doing this, and I usually turn the grids off at this stage. I also increase the resolution around now, before I start adding details and proper rendering.
8 - Making a skin tone palette
I spend quite some time thinking about what kind of skin tones I would like the character to have. I follow a simple procedure, which consists of blending in the main light source colour with the brightest skin tones, and the ambient light colour with the darkest skin tones. For this painting, I wanted to use a cold blue coloured light directed from the right as the main light source, and green values as ambient, which will show in shadowed areas and in backlight from back left.
Since I needed easy access to a pre-made skin tone palette, I made a new layer where I included a range of colours needed for shading the basic values of the skin, from the brightest to the darkest. Try blending the values together to see if it works well, and remember: skin tones are usually darker than you think.
9 - Adding base colours to the sketch
At this stage, I made sure I had the sketch layer selected, then changed the brush mode to “Color” and the flow to 5-10%. I also turned on the “Lock transparent pixels” feature in the layers menu.
Using the Eyedropper tool by holding down the “Alt” key, I picked the brightest skin colour from the skin tone palette I made, and applied this colour to the brightest areas of the face. I went on like this with all the different skin tones, and added rough base colours for clothes, hair, eyes, etc. At this stage, the colours usually look a bit off, but this doesn’t matter, since all you should be concerned with is establishing a good base to start off with.
10 - Rendering the skin properly
Rendering the skin properly usually means painting over everything you’ve done dozens of times, and mixing lots of colours. Before I started, I made a new layer on top of the character, in case I did something silly later. Then I changed my brush back to “normal” mode, and went on rendering the skin properly step by step.
What is important at this stage is to mix colours, and to avoid monochrome palettes. Some prefer mixing colours on the side where they’re painting, but I prefer mixing directly where I paint. An example: In the area where the bright skin colour meets the dark green skin, I paint a translucent brush stroke with the bright skin colour over the dark area, then I use the eyedropper tool (alt) and pick the new value I create there.
If I need some purple or blue hue around the eyes, I make a blue colour, paint a translucent brush stroke on top of the skin colour, and colour pick this new value. Remember to look closely at the reference photo and try and sort out the different colour values of the different kinds of skin variants.
11 - Adding foreground elements
The hand was made in a new layer on top of the character, and I used the grid again to aid me with proportions. The bat was something I painted freehand after looking at several pictures of bats. I added colours using the same procedure as in step 9.
12 - Brushing up and adding details
Here, I added some proper colours to the bat and the hand, and rendered some semi-detailed fur on the bat. The guy’s outfit guy also got some extra details and some better shading.
13 - Embossed details
A nice way of adding some detail to everything from wrinkles to cracks and textures in stone, is to make a layer with a “Bevel and Emboss” layer style:
1) Make a new layer, set the layer to “Multiply”
2) Add a “Bevel and Emboss” layer style, and set the depth slider to the centre or a little more. Set direction to “Down”, Size to 1%, Soften to 0%, and set “Angle” to whatever direction you’re using for the light in your scene.
3) Use white colour on the hard edged brush, and keep the flow around 5-15%.
14 - Making the background
Since this is a portrait, I wanted to use a simple background, and ended up with this one after some experimenting. As I’ve experienced many times before, the simple solutions are usually best. For this background, I simply made a very rough and messy sketch of the inside of a cave. Using a thin brush with a solid flow, painted with a dynamic and messy matter, creates some interesting details later on in the process. Of course, I made sure the main light source was directed from the right of the picture, giving the brightest areas a blue tint, and leaving the dark areas green.
At the end I simply ran a Gaussian blur filter, and painted on some moody, green fog at the bottom, to lighten it slightly, and to give it some more depth.
15 - Adding soft glow
At this point, the soft brush got used for the first time. I added a soft glow to the brightest areas in the picture in a new layer. It’s easy to take the glow effect too far, and my advice would be to leave it as subtle as possible. You shouldn’t notice the glow, it should only be a natural part of the picture.
16 - Wrapping up
A trick I use to make my paintings look less “computer-perfect” is to add some grain to them. In Photoshop, follow these steps:
1) Make a new layer filled with the RBG-values: R:128, G:128, B:128
2) Add a “Noise” filter, 400% amount, and set the layer to “Overlay” blending mode.
3) Run the “Brush strokes-Spatter” filter a couple of times.
4) Do a normal blur and set the layer “Opacity” to 5-10%.
I also added a couple of overlay layers and messed around with some textured brushes to give the clothes some more textures.
17 - Done
Surprise your friend, and remember that you can get prints of your digital pictures on canvas so that it looks like a traditional painting. Have fun!