Painting the Portrait

with Photoshop

Digital Painting

200 Gerald Jelitto

Painting the portrait in Photoshop

Creating the basics:

This small manual explains my painting technique with Photoshop. I hope you find it 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 happy with it! :-)

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

Red comes later on: A natural skin color has also red tones, but for 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 has no 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 darker skin color. Small opacity and small flow provides a very smooth gradient.

Lets take a picture of a nice girl (I love brown eyes and dark hair. Dark hair is easier to paint... :-)) At first, I create outlines with a small red brush. I think I dont have to tell you much about that. Just create a new layer above the picture and reduce the transparency of the original picture to... whatever you like... By the way: As a beginner I would not start with curly hair and blond hair.

Brushes:

Before we start I have to tell you that Im using a lot of custom brushes. The best brushes Ive ever found are created by Dan LuVisi. They helped me a lot to improve my skills. You can download them here: http://adonihs.deviantart.com/art/MyBrush-Pack-895479 For the deviantArtists: Please FAV the brush set if you use it!

Digital Painting - Painting the Portrait

200 Gerald Jelitto

A few minutes are gone and I have a basic profile. Every part of the face is included but very abstract at the moment. The face looks a bit dark but I use very bright colors only 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 up the nose at 200% magnification and think well, looks great! but if you zoom out it could look terrible because the bright nose doesnt fit to the rest of your painting.

Eyebrows: For eyebrows I use the smudge tool. In Photoshop CS4 you can rotate (R) your workspace. For me it is easier to paint from top 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 separate layer. Im using soft light in my layer properties. Just use a darker red tone like this one:

If Im done with that I can merge both layers (face/body layer and red soft light layer).

Glossy eyes: Dont forget a reflextion in the eyes. Eyes are wet and glossy so we need a little bit reflection in it. You can create the eyelashes with the smudge tool. (Explanation on the next page eyebrows)

Digital Painting - Painting the Portrait

200 Gerald Jelitto

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 hard brush with dark color (brush tool). Normally Im using a px hard brush with high flow and opacity.

Smudge it! The second step is to smudge the hair to the 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 the hair. 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 brushsetting for offset (hopefully this is the right translation). Ive turned it down to %. I use this brush with low opacity/flow. Of course you use the brush tool in this case and not the smudge tool... you want to paint something and not to smudge...
 Digital Painting - Painting the Portrait

Blur it! The hair Ive created previously before is now blurred for more depth. To achieve this, click on filter -> blur - > gaussian blur. I also erase some parts (big, soft eraser with 0% opacity, 0% flow ) of my thin hair. 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 px radius. ...this takes time... Use the white color for the whole hair shape! If youre done, take a big soft eraser and erase (with 0% opacity for example) the white hair from the darker parts - but not completely!!

200 Gerald Jelitto

The final brilliance The final step is amazing. It was a mere chance! A few months ago I painted a portrait and selected the wrong tool. But it exposed to be great for creating realistic hair. If youre done with hair painting you merge all hair layers down to a single layer. Lets play it safe: Please save your painting before merging. After that you select the burn tool and choose the Texture layer brush by Dan LuVisi (we will use this brush also for the skin pores on the next page). Select a fitting brush size like 0px. Dont put the Exposure value too high.

To create realistic skin we need some pores. And again you can use one of Dans bruhes. 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 it on the left side. Do we need separate layers? Yes, its better. Imagine you want to smudge something in the face you would also smudge the dots and the result would be ugly! :-) Now erase it again - similar to the thin hair handling. Use a big soft brush with medium opacity and flow until it looks realistic. You can also try out the layer filters soft light and overlay for your skin pore layers.

Painting skin:

The result looks like that.

In the next step we are creating big pores or 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.

Digital Painting - Painting the Portrait

200 Gerald Jelitto

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 to integrate 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 tried out 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 more fareast 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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Digital Painting - Painting the Portrait

200 Gerald Jelitto



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...

Overlay

Duplicated dragons of my fan

Clothes:

Lights:

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 (watch below) and changed the color into more black. In the next step I created a new layer (in overlay mode), took the dragon of my fan and placed it randomly on the kimono. I duplicated the dragon layer four times and used the burn tool with small dots to get this glittering style.

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?

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Digital Painting - Painting the Portrait

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

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Digital Painting - Painting the Portrait

200 Gerald Jelitto

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