Photoshop Tutorials

Description

Before we go another further with coloring the rest of our subject, let’s work on and finish her face. The face and facial expression of any human subject will make or break the emotion of the entire finished piece, so this part is especially important. Zoom in very close and trace the outline of her mouth with the pen tool. Fill. Then pull out the tablet, select a soft, thin brush (B) and a soft black color for outlining the eyes. The tablet is pressure sensitive and will be able to most accurately bring out the emotions in the eyes.

As you can see, right now the face looks flat and lifeless, therefore, our next step is to shade in features of her mouth and add light to her eyes. Pick a light source—that is, the direction the light is coming from—so you know where to draw the highlights and where to draw the shadows. For this particular image, the light is coming from the top left corner, so there will be more light on the left side of her body and less on the right.

Chose a soft brush and use the tablet to add in shadows and highlights, manually picking colors. You can use the dodge and burn tool (O) to emphasize these shadows and highlights after you have put them all in place.

Doesn’t this look much better? Now to color in the rest of our subject—skin, hair, jingling coins, and the rest of the accessories. Return to the pen tool, trace the outlines, and fill everything in with their correct color. We should be here.

Be sure all of the layers are in their correct order, for example, her bangs are over her face and her shirt, her clothes on her body and not behind it, and her coins and accessories are on top of everything else.