Face painting tutorial (an old scape one updated)///////////

This is a tutorial that details how to do a basic sketch of a face. Particularly it looks at one way that the program can do the job.

First I started with a reference pic. I don't always do this, but if you want a lot of detail I strongly suggest it. Since my ultimate goal is to do photo-realism in fantasy and historical settings I want to get all of the details. So modern photos often provide a base for something that doesn't actually exist. Anyway, here is my reference.

I take that portrait and put it in a window within photopaint (or painter or photoshop, whatever your tool of choice is. Or I suppose you could print it and tape it to the side of your monitor. This way I can look at it and my work side by side.

Start with a big image...I use 2000x2000 just to be sure I have enough room. Then take the regular brush and trace the basic outline of the face. Some suggest starting with the eyes, or some other element, but for me, this is the most important. It sets the bounds of all other elements. And the slight nuances of the chin, forhead, neck etc. really give the different looks to faces. I try to do the whole head with one stroke to make it smoother. Put your brush on about 85 softness so that you don't get nasty hard lines. This part is fairly quick, but remember to LOOK AT THE REFERENCE MORE THAN YOUR WORK! You are recreating the original, you must look at it often.

Once you have the basic outline fill in the area with the same color. Once this is done it is time to refine your quickly drawn outline.

Now that you have a solid color image of the basic shape of the face take your eraser tool, with high softness and begin to refine. The great part about it is you don't have to work in lines, but shapes. Just keep crafting it until the shape matches. As you go ask yourself questions that help you to reproduce the lines better, such as: Is the original's chin more rounded or sharper than mine? (In this case, the original is more rounded and has less slope at the bottom end) "Is the jaw line longer or shorter?" (I had to increase the length of the jawline.) "Is the sweep of the side of the face sharp and angular or rounded and soft? Is mine like the original?" (Mine was close but needed a little more round feel.)

As you answer these questions make adjustments with your eraser. If you go too far simply undo or paint it back with your brush. Once you have the face shape just perfect you can go on.

The next step is to find the area where each of the facial elements will go. The first step is to open a new layer and start drawing with a black pen a ROUGH outline of what you want. As always refer to the original more than prescribing to set formulas. Don't THINK you know the face, just put what you see. In my example below you would think this is going to be a portrait of the elephant man. But it worked :) It doesn't have to LOOK good at all, just show you the placement. I eventually erased most of these marks and just left lines at the top, bottom etc to tell me where they went. In addition to the eyes, etc. be sure to draw any noticeable areas of shading or light variance. Draw in the rough placement of the lines by the mouth, the place where the highlights are on the brow, nose, etc.

Now turn down your line drawing to very low opacity and go back to your original layer. It is here that you must decide whether to use dodge and burn or manual color selection for your skin tones. In this case I chose manual color selection. In fact, when looking at the tones on the face I would often use the color picker tool (eyedropper) and pick up color right from the reference pic. Then begin applying broad amounts of color to the areas to get your value pattern. At this point you will be convinced that this whole project IS NOT GOING TO WORK. Don't stress it, that is normal. Just smooth them in with the smudge tool. And it will start looking more human. Be sure not to turn the smudge so high that it breaks things into rough looking patches....keep it fairly small, even though it takes more time, and work it along the lines of color change and then slowly over into the various color patches. If you were not using a reference photo you would have to pick a light source to do this part as you would have to construct the shadows.

Here it is further along in the process, with the simplified line overlay layer accentuated

by this point the lines are quickly becoming unnecessary as you can tell from the reference where things will go. Remember to have your reference open at all times. Once you get the basic shading of the skin done, start a new layer. Then start to do the individual elements such as the lips, eybrows, eyes etc. It is here that I tend to use the dodge and burn tools since they make it easy to do fine gradations of color. But really either way works. Once you have the lips done for instance then you can merge the layers and blend it in with the smudge tool. Watch the shadows on the lips. The top lip is almost always smaller and darker. The bottom lip is more glossy and has more highlights because the rounded shape picks up the light...which often comes from the top at some angle. Give several shades to the bottom lip, darkest around the edges and the highlights in the middle. Then blend it in.

When drawing your lips, etc. you might want to work by lines...or simply shapes again....you can draw the outline, fill it in, then re-work the shape as we did with the face. Again ask yourself if the curves, etc. match up.

In the next pic the lips are done and I am in the middle of the nose...notice how I outline it ,but then you blend in the outline. The only points where you should see anything like an outline in the final is in those areas with VERY hard shadows...for instance, around the nostrils of the nose, especially on the right side away from the light. Even then it should be blended in. The rest of the nose is not an outline but again various shadows to give depth. Recreate them from the reference. Again BE SURE to work in a separate layer. If you don't you will kick yourself when you mess up and realize you don't have enough undo levels. And SAVE NEW VERSIONS OFTEN. That is why I could do this tutorial. I compulsively save versions, alternate versions, etc. to try things new. That way I can always go back.

Next I added a neck using the same process as on the face....then started with the whites of the eyes. Here I used dodge and burn, starting with a light grey. I used the dodge highlights to make lighter areas and used the burn shadows for the edges, but not much in this case. Generally it is easier to burn than dodge...least for me...but if you start with white it doesn't really burn in photopaint...not sure about photoshop. Blend it in to give a round look.

Now for the pupil, iris, etc....just put in a plain circle, grey, or brown, or whatever color you want. Then use dodge and burn around the edges until you get the look you want. Then smudge.

I did this part some time ago, and looking at it again today I realized I had a lot of things wrong. So I redid the neck, cut the eyes and lips out and replaced/reworked them, made the whole head a bit shorter, etc. to make it more like the original. Then added the hair, border, etc.

Here is the final image, I still plan to work on the hair strands etc. a bit, but I really like it. Good luck on yours! (I am planning to rework the color on this...needs work.....

ooh, now look what you did.

made me think I was gonna be able to do that.

shame on you :evil:

;) joking, nice tutorial, not something I will try in a close future, but still, will probably be useful, even more so on this new Art Discussions board. keep up the good work man

Actually, it wouldn't hurt you to try right away! The only way to learn is to practice. Just my progress from the last time I did this portrait to my new update was huge.

So start now!

You forgot step #1 - Having artistic talent. :P I couldn't do that to save my life, believe me.

You're a good artist, but one thing I found funny was you took an asian woman, drew her, and somehow, she looked latina. Maybe it's just me...:lol:

Awesome job.

You forgot step #1 - Having artistic talent. :P I couldn't do that to save my life, believe me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You're a good artist, but one thing I found funny was you took an asian woman, drew her, and somehow, she looked latina. Maybe it's just me...:lol:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Awesome job.

its just you but she does have latina lips.. asian and latinas.. *pur*

nice tutorial :D i think im going to use that sometime and i see now that i never knew about one highlight spot.. >.<

That's very impressive, great job.

I always got the idea that she was latina anyway. But either way I was just trying to draw what I saw.

IF you dont mind telling your secrets what program did you use and where did you get/how much

IF you dont mind telling your secrets what program did you use and where did you get/how much

I take that portrait and put it in a window within photopaint (or painter or photoshop, whatever your tool of choice is

the rest you can google I think.

I'd lock it for an old bump if it wasn't such a nice tutorial. In the future, just pm him :)