Introduction

Hello, and welcome to my first tutorial on painting techniques. My name is Thorbjørn Winther, I am a Danish based digital artist, and I hope you will enjoy and learn something from this tutorial.

 

This tutorial is the first of a series, showing off the different ways I know how to paint. I will walk you through every step of the way, and hopefully, you will find it useful. These tutorials might seem long, but that is not without reason. I want to share every bit of information I have with you, and that calls for details.

 

I hope you have the patience to follow along on the journey, of making the painting seen above.

Sketching

First things first, we need a good sketch to start off our painting. I have created a 50x70 centimeters canvas at 300 DPI, and renamed the default layer to Sketch.

When I sketch, I do so in blue. I find it makes it easier to paint properly over another color, when getting to the black and white faze, and not to get the layers mixed up. Obviously you can do so in whatever color you want, or you can do it in black if that suits you better, I just prefer to use blue for sketching.

This is my sketch, it’s not insanely detailed, but plenty to work for this tutorial. I will most likely be adding more elements as I move forward, but for now, this works fine. The hair is placed on a separate layer. I do this, because I have a tendency to change my mind about what hairstyle I want for a character. That way, I won’t mess up the face or in general be too bothered by it, if I do change my mind.

Shading A

There are two levels of shading, one much more detailed than the other. That is the one I call “Shading A”. To create Shading A, I start off by lowering the opacity of the sketch layers (often I add them to a folder first, especially if there are a lot of different sketch layers). How much I lower the opacity varies, but about 50% or so. Then I select the Colored Pencil tool, and start shading with that. On Shading Layer A, I do sort of a line/shading combo, but all of it is done with the Colored Pencil tool.

It’s not the prettiest thing to look at at this stage, and the eyebrows are still missing, but it’s getting somewhere.

As for the eyebrows, I use a special hair brush, which I have gotten through the Assets Store. If you search for Hair Brush there, lots of good brushes pops up. Try them off, and pick your favorite. The one below, is my personal go-to.

Don’t forget to put the eyebrows on a separate layer, you don’t want them to get blended in with the skin or anything.

 

As for blending, I mostly use the Gouache Blender, which gives off a little texture, but not too much. Below is a series of images of the blending process. Sometimes I will need to erase a bit, especially in the smaller detailed areas. For instance his eyelids got a bit murky, so I used the Kneaded Eraser to add a little more white, then the Colored Pencil to outline again. The Kneaded Eraser is really good for this type of work, because you can “lift” the color off gradually.

Here is a pretty good example of the before/after effect of blending.

Here you can see the finished blending of Shading A. You can think of this as the “giving form” shading, while Shading B, is more of a “light direction” type of shading. So let’s take a look at that.

Shading B

Now for the second layer of shading, one should think more about where the light comes from (and therefore where the shadows fall), than giving form to the subject itself. Here I’ve marked out the light direction, and where the light spots of the drawing should be in yellow.

To add the shading, I turn the size of the Colored Pencil way up. I want it to be a relatively light layer, but enough to show light direction.

Here I have put down some more Shading B.

And here it is blended. Try and compare it with only Shading A put down, it really does make quite the difference to have two layers!

Soft Light

This step is really simple. Create a new layer, flood fill with one color, and set the blending mode to Soft Light. Usually I go for a reddish color, but you can go in other directions. Just keep in mind that this will be the colors of your shades.

Coloring

Now our painting is ready for coloring, and for that I start by using the Lasso Tool, to marque off large areas. It is much quicker this way, than using any kind of brush from the beginning.

Once I have selected as much as I can, I flood fill with the color I want, and set it to Multiply blending mode.

I always do the parts close to borders by hand, I just find it to be more accurate and actually be quicker than trying to do it with any kind of marque tool. For that I use the Pen Tool.

Now as you might be able to tell, the fraying at the bottom doesn’t look too good like this. Therefore I blend those edges, using the Wet Bleed Blender. I do so by carefully dragging paint up, from the colored portion and into the frays, giving a much softer and better looking transition.

The part on the left is blended, the part on the right is not. I think it’s pretty easy to see which looks better.

Now I haven’t quite decided what to do about the background yet, in fact, this color is somewhat of a placeholder. Instead of just sitting around and pondering this, I move on to the skin. I go through the same steps of selecting large portions first, flood fill, then paint in the more detailed edges.

Now comes time for some highlights and details! For that, you create a new layer and clip it to the skin layer. Clipping is done by clicking the button seen below, and what it does is basically keeping what you paint on the layer, safe on top of the other layer. If you draw or paint outside of the lines, it won’t show, and you can safely move on.

To paint in the highlights and additional shading, I use a brush I have found through the Assets Store. It has a great flow and blends the colors as you go, which makes it quite perfect for adding light. I have several of these types of brushes, but the one shown below is the one I use the most.

This is what the skin looks like, after adding some light and a little bit of additional shading.

Now let’s repeat that on all the other parts of the painting!

And there we go! Now it’s time to add some details!

Details - Buzz

Doing a nice fuzzy buzz-cut is one of my favorite tricks, which is exactly why I included it in his hairstyle. It’s super easy and fast to do, and it really does add some detail. Start by creating a new layer, and, using the Lasso Tool, marque off where you want the fuzz to be. This time you need to be a little more careful, and work all the way to the edges.

Then you find the Spray brush. You might need to adjust particle and brush size to get it right, but after that, you just spray the entire area. I usually go for a color slightly darker than the base of the hair.

Now as you can see, there are some not-too-flattering edges, that makes it look weird. To get rid of those, you take the Soft Eraser, and adjust the size to being pretty big. Now you can lightly soften the edges of the fuzz, making it look much more realistic.

Details - Tattoo

Starting this tutorial, I wasn’t entirely sure if I wanted to do a tattoo or not, and even less so what it was going to be. Working through the painting, I find that his neck is quite bare, and thus a nice, big tattoo would fit in great. I have collected all the layers into folders, because I need a blank canvas to do the tattoo. Sometimes I will use an entirely new file, but this is really just a one-shot kind of drawing, where I don’t want or need to save anything for future use, so I might as well do it here. Anyway, I hide all the layers, then start off with a new sketch.

Now seeing as this is a tattoo, I won’t keep the style exactly the same. Instead, I want big bold lines, and some powerful colors. Below it has been inked with black lines, using the G-pen.

I put down some base colors with the G-pen, then add a single layer of shading (also with the G-pen) clipped on on a new layer. The clipped layer is set to blending mode Overlay. The picture below is of the finished tattoo.

Now to get the tattoo placed, I start by collecting all the layers in a folder. I then copy the folder, just in case I mess something up, and hide it. I make the character and background visible again, and the manipulation of the tattoo can begin.

First step, getting the size and rotation about right. Then comes the liquify tool, and to use that you have to first merge all the layers. Simply select all the layers, left click, then select Merge with layer below. Now it’s really just a matter of nudging and turning the tattoo to look like it fits on the character’s skin.

I then lower the opacity to erase the parts that aren’t supposed to be visible (like his earring and at the back of his neck), change the blending mode to Hard Light, and push the layer down below the Skin layer. The reason for the latter, is that it will look more easily lighted in the right places, and more properly blended with the skin itself.

Background

Time to take a look at the background I have neglected since the beginning of coloring. For starters I want to give it the same treatment as I did the character, with the oil pastel brush. I start by darkening the whole thing a bit, on a new clipped layer, just to give the initial texture.

I then add a lighter color around the edges of the character, to make it stand out more.

I put a gradient (Night Sky), and set the blending mode to Screen, on another clipped layer.

Then I find one of my all time favorite custom brushes, and paint with big, broad strokes.

This is also on a new layer, clipped and set to Screen.

Finally I do a color adjustment, by simply flood filling a golden/beige-ish color, clipping it, and setting it to Overlay.

Final Touches

There are a few final touches I want on the character; just a little bit of rim light, some dabs of red, and stuff like that. I always do these last, even after the background, because I feel it’s better to have all the other stuff down the way I want it, before adding these finishing touches. Now to start off with the reddish sheen, I create a new layer on top of everything else, and set it to Soft Light.

I use the same Oil Pastel brush as I did for the highlights/blending, and just lightly brush in the red where I see fit. I go over it once more with the Gouache Blender, just to get the color really soft. I then do the rim light on a new layer, set to Glow Dodge, using a yellow/gold color. I use the same procedure as with the red, brush it in, then blend further.

And that’s it! I add my signature in the bottom right corner, and call it a day!