tutorial portrait painting by italiener

8/3/2019 Tutorial Portrait Painting by Italiener

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Painting the Portraitwith Photoshop

Digital Painting


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2 Digital Painting - Painting the Portrait 200 Gerald Jelitto

Painting the portraitin Photoshop

This small manual explains my painting

technique with Photoshop. I hope you findit helpful!

The main tools in Photoshop for digital

painting are:- brush tool

- smudge tool

- eraser- polygon lasso

You should also have a graph tablet. Im

using a Wacom Intuos and Im very happywith it! :-)

Lets take a picture of a nice girl (I lovebrown eyes and dark hair. Dark hair is

easier to paint... :-))

At first, I create outlines with a small redbrush. I think I dont have to tell you much

about that. Just create a new layer abovethe picture and reduce the transparency

of the original picture to... whatever you

like...

By the way: As a beginner I would not startwith curly hair and blond hair.

Brushes:

Before we start I have to tell you that Imusing a lot of custom brushes. The best

brushes Ive ever found are created by DanLuVisi. They helped me a lot to improve my

skills. You can download them here:

http://adonihs.deviantart.com/art/My-

Brush-Pack-895479

For the deviantArtists: Please FAV the brushset if you use it!

Creating the basics:

I always start to paint the face. For this Iuse a big round and very soft brush. Mystandard colors are:

Red comes later on:A natural skin color has also red tones, butfor this I use a separate layer with a darker

red and a soft light filter.

Basic brush settings:For the basic shapes I use the big soft brush

(Lighting brush, 00px) by Dan LuVisi. Just

as you can see in the screen.

I start with 00% opacity - so the layer hasno transparency anymore. I start with a

very bright color.

If the basic shape is done I reduce opacity

to 5 - 20%, flow to 20% and use a darkerskin color.

Small opacity and small flow provides a

very smooth gradient.


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4 Digital Painting - Painting the Portrait 5 200 Gerald Jelitto

A few minutes are gone and I have a basicprofile. Every part of the face is included

but very abstract at the moment. The face

looks a bit dark but I use very bright colorsonly at the end of my painting.

At this time I still use the same soft brush

but with a smaller radius.

Zoom out!!!Its important to view your work from a

distance. Never work all the time with

200% magnification! You want to lighten upthe nose at 200% magnification and think

well, looks great! but if you zoom out itcould look terrible because the bright nose

doesnt fit to the rest of your painting.

Glossy eyes:Dont forget a reflextion in the eyes. Eyesare wet and glossy so we need a little bit

reflection in it.

You can create the eyelashes with thesmudge tool. (Explanation on the next page

eyebrows)

Eyebrows:For eyebrows I use the smudge tool. In

Photoshop CS4 you can rotate (R) your

workspace. For me it is easier to paint fromtop to bottom so I rotate it until it feels

comfortable.

Brush settings for smudge eyebrows:- hard brush with px radius

- Threshold: 95 - 98%- Brush properties: active; size-jitter 0% ->

pen pressure

Put some red into it...Now I its time for me to put more red into

the skin color. For this I use a separatelayer. Im using soft light in my layer

properties. Just use a darker red tone likethis one:

If Im done with that I can merge bothlayers (face/body layer and red soft light

layer).


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Digital Painting - Painting the Portrait 7 200 Gerald Jelitto

Smudge it!The second step is to smudge the hair tothe outside. Again I am using a brush by

Dan LuVisi.

Take a look at: http://adonihs.deviantart.com/art/My-Brush-Pack-895479

I use his hair brush for my smudge tool.

Shadows:Do not forget to put shadow behind thehair. Otherwise you wont get a plastically

feeling!

At first I use a brown-tone for shadows.In the darker positions I use black. I do not

recomment to use only black for shadows.Otherwise your skin color looks dirty.

Hair - the details:

Which brush should I take for this screen?Correct! The hair brush by Dan LuVisi! ;-)

The only difference between the original

brush and my brush is the brushsettingfor offset (hopefully this is the right

translation). Ive turned it down to %.

I use this brush with low opacity/flow. Ofcourse you use the brush tool in this case

and not the smudge tool... you want topaint something and not to smudge...

Painting Hair:

At first, I create a basic shape (on a new

layer). This should be easy... :-)

Thin hair:Here you can see Im using very thin hair

(on a new layer!). Just take a normal hardbrush with dark color (brush tool). Normally

Im using a px hard brush with high flowand opacity.

Blur it!The hair Ive created previously before is

now blurred for more depth. To achievethis, click on filter -> blur - > gaussian blur.

I also erase some parts (big, soft eraser

with 0% opacity, 0% flow ) of my thinhair. I think it looks more realistic...

Highlight it!Now I create a new layer for the thin

highlighted white hair. Its a hard standard

brush with 80% opacity, 50% flow and pxradius. ...this takes time...

Use the white color for the whole hair

shape! If youre done, take a big soft eraserand erase (with 0% opacity for example)

the white hair from the darker parts - butnot completely!!


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8 Digital Painting - Painting the Portrait 9 200 Gerald Jelitto

Painting skin:

To create realistic skin we need some

pores. And again you can use one of Dansbruhes.

This time its his Texture brush.

Normally I use them in a radius of 0px.But this depends on your workspace size

(My standard workspace: 00 x 80 cm -

50dpi).

Create two new layers above your face/body layer. Use the Texture brush on one

layer with white color and with dark/brown color on the other layer. Just spray

everything full of small dots like you see iton the left side.

Do we need separate layers? Yes, its

better. Imagine you want to smudge

something in the face you would alsosmudge the dots and the result would be

ugly! :-)

Now erase it again - similar to the thinhair handling. Use a big soft brush with

medium opacity and flow until it looksrealistic. You can also try out the layer

filters soft light and overlay for yourskin pore layers.

In the next step we are creating big poresor birthmarks. Again, add a new layer and

create bigger dots on the skin. If you have

enough dots, erase them again! :-)

If you compare this image to the previously

one you recognize I have also lighten the

skin up a bit.

The final brillianceThe final step is amazing. It was a mere

chance! A few months ago I painted aportrait and selected the wrong tool. But

it exposed to be great for creating realistichair.

If youre done with hair painting you merge

all hair layers down to a single layer. Letsplay it safe: Please save your painting

before merging.

After that you select the burn tool andchoose the Texture layer brush by DanLuVisi (we will use this brush also for the

skin pores on the next page). Select afitting brush size like 0px.

Dont put the Exposure value too high.

The result looks like that.


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The face is done now. Integrating new elements:

To have a bigger challenge I do not want to create just a painting out of a picture. I want tointegrate new features which make the composition more individual and interesting. I wanted to

have a hand and interaction with something - at this time I didnt know what it would be. So I triedout some knives but it didnt fit to the rest of the painting - in my opinion :-). I had to think about

the great artwork of Mario Wibisono (http://raynkazuya.deviantart.com) and wanted to have a morefareast touch. So I decided to integrate a fan (hope its the right translation :-)) and some motives

which fit to asian/japanese style - I hope!


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I started to brainstorm elements regarding to Japan and I had to think of cherry blossom. I work

with a lot of layers so it is easy for me to change the color of a specific element. Mostly I use Hue/saturation (CTRL + U) for it. Now its time for some highlights...

Lights:

To have a dynamic and vivid painting we need lights. Here are the next steps for my light effects.

First I make the hair silhouette more bright. Im using a new layer with a big sound soft brush either

in standard filter mode or with the soft light filter. On the next page I created some ray of lights.I just take a hard brush and make some big dots on my new layer. Then I select the motion blur filter

and change the layer to overlay mode.The last four images: You can compare them. You see the difference, dont you?

Clothes:The clothes - lets say its some kind of kimono - consist of a few layers. First I created an abstract

shape with a bright and a dark color. Then I used the smudge tool to get this crinkled style (watchbelow) and changed the color into more black. In the next step I created a new layer (in overlaymode), took the dragon of my fan and placed it randomly on the kimono. I duplicated the dragonlayer four times and used the burn tool with small dots to get this glittering style.

Duplicated dragons of my fan

Overlay


8/84 Digital Painting - Painting the Portrait 5 200 Gerald Jelitto

Written by Gerald Jelitto

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Gerald-Jelitto/7979

http://italiener.deviantart.com/

Thanks to Dan LuVisi for his brush pack.

Brush Pack: http://adonihs.deviantart.com/art/My-Brush-Pack-895479

tutorial portrait painting by italiener

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