Happy 2019 everybody
I am making a weird face in the mirror and using it to get me going on some kind of drawing here
Do you remember this Batman painting I did in my style video?
Well, I've been asked numerous times to elaborate on this particular style
So I'll apply it to this drawing and talk a little more about what I'm doing, some design theory, a few art
fundamentals, and provide a more in-depth overview on how to achieve this graphic. look. Of course right now
I'm in the preliminary sketch stage, and I've got my drawing on its own layer, which will be useful later
I feel like preliminary drawings vary a lot from artist to artist in the sense that every artist will need to have different
information in place before they feel comfortable in moving forward. When I do a line drawing first, I need it to be accurate
but with enough left unresolved that I still have things to resolve in the painting process.
So what qualifies as accurate for me? Well, good 2D shape design first and foremost. That's what will carry this piece.
I also want to make sure the anatomy is somewhat honest and, in particular, the planes of the head are feeling in place and
dimensional. I am not worried about exact values, general cleanliness, or detail. Later in the process
I will want those things ... but introducing them too early for me hurts the process rather than helps it. I always want to leave myself
Room to negotiate. Let's put it that way. All right, so I'm gonna set up my painting workspace now
I'll make sure my drawing layer is set to multiply mode and I'll lock the layer so I don't accidentally paint on it
I'll make a layer underneath the drawing call it base colors, and let's get to some color now
This technique is all about the polygonal lasso tool: selecting shapes and filling them in. That's a good base color
But I don't want my flesh tone to just be one color
So I'll grab a different shape up here in the brow area and search for a different color. That's too strong by itself
So I'll fade it back. In Photoshop that's CTRL + SHIFT + F and I'll kind of mix the color into the base color that way.
Now I'll grab some shapes around the middle of the face and make that area more red. Again
I'll overdo it and then fade it back
This allows me to mix colors visually and relieves the pressure of, like, "picking the right color"
I arrived at this method from my experience with watercolor believe it or not! With watercolor
you can put down a wash,
then grab a different color and mix it in while that wash is wet. The wet into wet media will create all kinds of little
transitions. And I've learned a lot about how color works by doing this. Now, in this style
I want to mimic those transitions, but while keeping every edge sharp to the pixel. On a value level
I'm only working with local value right now, you know
The hair is an overall dark local value the eyes and teeth are an overall light local value
The skin is somewhere in the middle. I'm trying to keep the piece simply arranged in that sense.
So when I do these color transitions, it's important they don't jump out of their local value.
You can use layers for color transitions - like this blue beard is on a layer and I'm just adjusting the opacity.
It's an alternative to using the fade tool. This can be nice because we can adjust these colors later.
So I'll start working with layers here right now.
I'm getting in a pizzazzy background to emphasize the graphic nature of this style.
Another thing I want to mention is when you're working with these shapes,
try and have fun with them! Like, this shape right here is completely off the wall.
It doesn't mean anything from a draughtsmanship standpoint. If anything, it's abstracting the picture. And that's true of most of these shapes.
They're bringing a sense of fun to the picture. At least,
I'm having fun making them. And the way you feel when making something can often translate to how the audience will feel.
I'm also trying to make simple and readable good shapes.
This opens up a whole can of worms...
If you want to know my philosophy behind good shapes, check out Episode 4 of my '10 Minutes to Better Painting' series.
I'll put a link on the screen and in the description.
Ok, so I am done with the base color phase. I'll group them all just for organization.
Then I'll make a new group and call it shadows and I'll set that entire group to multiply mode.
I'll make a new layer and start drawing in my very first shadow shape!
This is a very descriptive shape in the sense that it defines a lot of the planes of this head.
This is where the accuracy of my sketch comes in real handy. Now I'll just grab ... any color, really. It's on a layer
so I can always adjust it. I'll fill it in then
I'll pull up a hue/saturation window and just move this color around
until it speaks to me, really, and because this is on 'Multiply' mode, all my little base color
transitions are still there interacting with this overall shadow layer. On a new layer
I'll add a darker color to separate the side plane of the nose from the front plane of the cheek.
And now I'll carefully draw in the irises, making sure that they are also fun weird shapes.
Alright, let's add an effect. Go to the FX button and hit 'Stroke'.
This will put a outline around the elements on this layer. And you can see the settings I'm using here.
You can change the thickness the blending mode the color. I'm just searching for something
That looks cool. And I'm not too hung up about it either,
I know I can always go back in later and change it. This aesthetic reminds me of watercolor as well!
The pigment pools up around the outsides of the strokes creating a kind of outline.
This is just how watercolor behaves and I really enjoy that organic wet-edged look.
So I'll apply it to this painting but mostly in the dark values,
almost as if to simulate a darker wash being laid over a lighter wash. Okay
so what I'm gonna do now is go into my initial shadow layer and
take some selections and bring them back into the light.
These are some particular
planes of the head that do catch light when the head is lit from this angle. And here are just a few more shadow shapes,
including the eyebrows themselves, which are a darker local value that I failed to block in earlier. Now
I'm looking to deepen the cast shadow on the neck. Just switch this layer to multiply mode so it goes darker, and okay.
I'm going to enter the next stage of this process. I'll be putting in some half tones. So I'll make the group
I'll set it to multiply again
Because a half tone is a plane that's turning away from the light. So it's darker but not enough to be in shadow.
So it's just slightly darker.
It's knowledge of the planes of the head that will give you clues as to where these half tones go.
This goes back to the fundamentals which are a critical part of any style you happen to be painting in. Speaking of fundamentals
Here's a mini side lesson!
This 3D object is made of three distinct planes. And I'm about to introduce a light coming from this direction.
Okay and ... light! Nice. Let's bring in a value chart.
So overall these two planes are in light.
The plane on the Left gets the full intensity of the light because it faces it directly. The middle plane is turning away slightly,
so it gets a halftone. These two values are close together on the value chart.
I think of them as a family united by light. This plane is in shadow.
And here's also the cast shadow.
These two values are also close together: a family united by shadow. Between the two families,
I like to leave a little bit of a gap. Now, this is not a rule, but I find it really helps keep clear
what's in light and what's in shadow.
I think that's one of your primary duties as a painter - to make that distinction for the viewer.
Back to the painting now, even though I'm generating lots and lots of layers and shapes and planes and values here
I'm trying to observe that fundamental structure. And now we are at a critical part in the process:
I'm about to turn off the line layer! Are you ready?
There it goes! And left to their own devices, these pixel-hard shapes
deliver the picture in a very graphic way. And now every decision from here to the end, I'll make without the line drawing.
I'm now fully immersed in the visual language of this style.
I've exhausted the information that my line drawing carried and I now need to seek out new information.
I'm ratcheting down toward the smaller things that will help bring this to a finish. There's still lots of work to do though.
I feel like I need a jolt of inspiration.
So I'll grab that main shadow layer that first one I did and I'll just skew the color around. The
value is holding the form in place. I can do anything with the color. I
kind of like it when it's a little bit bluer. So let's set it there and forge ahead!
Blocking in a few more shadows.
Sprucing up the background a little bit. And now it's time for the next big pass.
I'll make a new group call it 'Lights,' and set that group to 'linear dodge' mode. And
I'm now looking for planes that face the light directly. As we've just seen, they're going to be the lightest. Somewhere along the line
I lost my color shift in the shadow. I will skew that back into place.
Let's go a little more blue with it a little more extreme.
Anyway, continuing to pick out planes that directly face the light source. The direction of the light also tells me where the highlights should go,
so I'll put those in too.
And now for the very first time in this picture,
I have my lights, my halftones, and my shadows working together. At this point it's a free-for-all.
I'll go into the shadows ... go into the halftones ...
go into the lights ... and just continue modeling the form with these planes.
If you're interested in broadening your understanding of the planes of the head,
I am producing a video class that covers just that!
It'll be a series of lectures and demos that break down the essential forms of the head.
My goal with the class is to provide the tools to illustrate the head from any angle with confident form and light.
These fundamentals can be used on more realistic stuff as well as cartoony design! And like I do with all my classes,
there's a special pre-order price right up until the class is released. I'll throw a link in the description.
Back to the painting. I'm revamping the teeth. My preliminary sketch didn't quite cut it.
I'm roughing it out again with a pencil brush,
then I'll go in with the lasso tool and cut out the shape.
And I do have a little gap in my teeth there, although it's not that big.
In fact,
this whole painting is looking like some alternate-reality version of me. A version of me that's been to one too many Vegas nightclubs.
Anyway, just to talk about this workflow a little more: I find this very useful for character concepts, visual development ...
It doesn't take too long to arrive at a presentable picture using this technique.
It's also quite versatile. Like you can stop at multiple stages. I could have ended this five minutes ago,
which in real time is like 25 minutes ago,
And I still would have had a picture that
communicated the overall idea. Or you can take it all the way to a finished illustration
which is kind of what I'm trying to do here.
Getting to a finish just requires finding all the little planes, being happy with all the little color shifts, making sure your design decisions are
interesting wherever possible. You know, with very little repetition between shapes. In fact, let me show you what I mean by that.
Here's a close-up of the nose. Notice how these three shapes are three different sizes.
That's a design choice. An intentional choice that I think helps keep variety in the piece.
And I think variety is usually good. Now contrast that with the nose that looks like this.
I've made the shapes equal here. Now, that's a small change.
It's not going to make or break the picture.
But I think I'm not alone in thinking that usually the former is more desirable than the latter. The key word
there is 'usually.' None of this is art law!
Anyway, I'm back here adding some stubble. I'm using a scatter brush to do this, switching my color a lot.
I could have done this with shapes, but that might have been just a nightmare. Another thing
I often do when I make a selection is I hide it before making an adjustment.
I'm just about to apply a sharpened more filter to the stubble.
There it is. That kind of helps the brushwork sit with this more graphic style.
And I forgot to mention: see the overall blueness of that beard?
I did that with a color correction layer that I put on top of my layer stack.
You can see it there ... 'Layer
34.' That layer was set to overlay mode and it's colored blue, as you can see.
I've made the PSD file for this publicly available. You can find the link in the description.
So if you want to dig through these layers yourself ... be my guest!
Alright, it's time to address over complication. I've added a lot of shapes and I think I've overdone some of it.
So here's a previous version of the picture, and I kind of like the left eye better before. It's less cluttery.
So I'm auditing my layers and subtracting things rather than adding them.
You know, you might think the entire picture was better before! Again, this approach offers many different exit points.
The eyebrows are looking a little flat,
so I'm going to add volume to them with these graphic cuts. Kind of a play with positive and negative.
Just going over the picture adding little bits of modeling where I feel like it's needed. And as a final step,
let me show you one more thing
you can do. Add a layer on top of everything, call it 'Patch-up,' then find a shape that could use some
de-cluttering, and manually fill it in. I admit this is a bit on the brute force side of things. Not the most elegant solution.
But I'm right at the end of this process. So I think I can do this without getting myself into too much trouble.
In fact,
I would only do it this way at the end. These tiny little
Adjustments do make a big difference and when I'm done with them, I've got a finished picture! And again
I invite you to download this PSD, rummage through its layers and give this technique a try yourself.
I think you'll have a ton of fun with it.
So I'd like to invite you once again to check out my store for longer, more
in-depth painting lessons. A lot of stuff there already, and lots more to come in 2019!
Also big thanks to my patrons! And hey, Patrons,
I'm gonna release the raw recordings of this video to you
So you can watch this in real time! All of that, and much
more on my Patreon page. And I think that wraps it up for me, folks.
Thanks for watching. And as usual, I'll see you in another video.