This tutorial/walk-through will show you how to turn a photograph into a highly detailed and almost realistic digital painting. I will mostly be covering portrait painting techniques rather than the entire body. If you’ve never really attempted to paint in Photoshop, achieving great results is easier than you may think; especially using this technique. Let’s get started.
What you will need:
- Adobe Photoshop (I used version CS3)
- Drawing tablet (highly recommended)
- A quality portrait photograph
- A little patience and a few hours of time
Worth mentioning before starting:
• If you don’t have a drawing tablet, you may have trouble drawing things like hair using a mouse. I highly recommend you invest in a decent tablet. It will greatly enhance your ability to paint and draw more accurately. I use a Wacom 8×10, and I couldn’t do without it.
• Program your tablet’s “hot keys” before you begin painting. This will save you a lot of time. The configuration settings for my Wacom are located in the “system preferences” on my mac. I personally like to have the “alt”, “cmd”, and “shift” keys programed into my “hot keys”. I also have the “undo” (ctrl z) (cmd z on mac) shortcut programmed. You don’t want to be reaching for the keyboard every time you paint a bad stroke.
• Make sure you take advantage of the “alt” key (”option” on mac). When you have a paint brush active, holding the “alt” key will allow you to switch to the “eye-dropper tool” on the fly. You will be using the eyedropper tool quite often for sampling colors. It is recommended you program the “alt” key into your tablet.
Find an image:
First step is to find a quality portrait photo. Feel free to chose an entire body shot, but this tutorial will mainly be covering techniques for painting your subject’s head.
For my image, I chose the 2006 Playboy “Miss July” centerfold of Sara Jean Underwood. I went with this photo for a couple of reasons; it’s fairly large and detailed, she looks beautiful, and I wanted to see how well I could draw skin.
The image was scanned into my computer at a resolution of 400 dpi, then imported into Photoshop. When you’re selecting your image, keep in mind; the larger and higher the quality, the easier it will be to paint in those intricate details like the eyes.
If you find your photo has some color issues, take advantage of Photoshop’s great image adjustment tools (Image > Adjustments) to make any necessary corrections.
Sara Jean Underwood – copyright “Playboy”
Document Setup:
Create a new Photoshop document and name it “photo”. Now import your chosen photograph into this document. This will serve as your reference image throughout the painting process.
Now create a second Photoshop document and name it “painting”. This document should be positioned beside the “photo” document you just created. Having the two windows side by side will allow us work in one window and view our photo in the other.
When creating the “painting” document, you may or may not want to use the same dimensions of your photo. If you plan on printing and possibly framing your painting, then consider using a common frame size. I created my painting document a bit larger than my photo, this way I could zoom in to paint the detailed areas easier. I used a document resolution of 300 ppi, which is high enough for print (if I ever chose to print).
Below is what my Photoshop document setup looks like. You can see how I have my “photo” document window on the left, and my “painting” document window on the right.
Create a tracing guide:
One of the most difficult parts of painting is keeping proportions correct. For example, lets say you draw the left eye a half an inch too far to the right. As a result, now the left side of the face may also be drawn a half inch too far to the right.
Now you are left with eyes too close together and a skinny face. And you may not even catch the mistake until half way through your painting. To avoid this problem from the get-go, consider using a tracing guide to assure proper proportions.
You may be thinking “What’s the point in creating this tracing guide when I can just trace directly over the image itself?”. Well, it’s a personal choice I guess, but I don’t like to paint directly over a photograph as it makes me feel like I’m image-editing rather than painting.
I actually find it easier to paint over a flat white color (tracing guide) rather than attempting to paint over a photo itself. It’s tough to distinguish what’s been painted and what hasn’t when painting directly over a photograph. Really, it comes down to what works best for you. For this tutorial, I will be referring to a “tracing guide”, so it’s assumed you are using one as well.
To create your tracing guide, first drag the “photo” document layer to the “painting” document using the “move tool”. Now give the newly dragged layer a name. I named mine “template”, and reduced the opacity to about 50%.
Above the “template” layer, create another layer and name it “tracing guide”. With your drawing tablet pen, begin tracing the important features of the template layer (mouth, eyes, nose, eyebrows, hairline, face contour, neck line).
I wouldn’t get overly detailed here; this is just to help with proportions. Once your tracing guide is complete, you can turn off the visibility to the “template” layer.
Throughout the painting, use both, the “tracing guide” as well as the photo “template” layer as you see fit. The image below shows my tracing guide to the right of my photo document:
Create a painting layer:
You don’t want to paint directly on the “tracing guide”, so lets create a new layer above that one, and name it “painting”. The majority of your painting can be done directly on this one layer.
Things like eyelashes, eyebrows, facial hair, freckles, and hair should be put on separate layers however. We will get to that in a little while. As of now, your “painting” document’s layer list should look something like this:
Creating a path selection:
Next step is to separate your subject’s head and body from the background area. This will allow you to stay inside the lines when painting. It will also allow you to easily place your finished portrait painting onto any background. Lets start with the head. Select the “pen tool” and start drawing a path around the contour of the face (shown in image below).
When your path is complete, go to your path’s palette and give it a name. This saves the path automatically. Now you can access it any time you wish by just going into the path’s pallette like seen below.
Now to use this newly created path, you first have to make it active. To do this, just right click on the path (inside your document window) and chose “Make Selection” from the listed options. When the dialog option appears, just hit ok.
Now you should see the “marching ants” appear where your path was. Just repeat this process when ever you need an active selection to work in.
Painting base layer:
Let’s get some color down. With the “eyedropper tool”, select a neutral skin color from your “photo” document. (Note: when ever I mention selecting or sampling a new color, I’m referring to the photo document).
With the new color selected, chose a soft brush (brush size and pen pressure is up to you) and begin filling in the head selection. If you have your selection activated properly, then everything you paint should stay contained inside the head area.
Adding depth:
When I’m painting I like to reduce the opacity or flow of my brushes quite a bit. 100% is too strong in most cases. Play around with the values to see what works best for you. Tip: the number keys on your keyboard allow you to quickly switch opacity values. 1 is equivalent to 10%, 2 is 20% and so on.
If you are using a pen tablet, one thing to consider when painting is turning on your “pen pressure” in Photoshop’s brush settings. As seen in the pic below, this can be done by changing the “control” setting under “shape dynamics”. Changing the control to “pen pressure” will allow you more control with your paint strokes.
Also in the the brush setting presets is an option called “other dynamics”. I highly recommend you change it’s control to “pen pressure” as well. Rather than trying to explain how these settings will effect your brush stroke, it will be easier for you to just take a minute and familiarize yourself with them if you haven’t already.
Keep in mind, the main settings for your pen tablet are located in the tablet’ program settings. Here you can change the “tip feel”, which determines how hard you have to press down when drawing. My Wacom settings appear in the “System Preferences” on my Mac. They probably appear somewhere in the control panel on a PC.
Now we are going to add some depth to the face. Go ahead and sample a new color from your “photo” document. This time, chose a darker skin tone from a shadowed area of the face. Back in the “painting layer” with your head still actively selected, start painting in the shadowed areas.
Continue sampling colors from the photo document and painting in the appropriate areas using soft brushes set at low capacities. After awhile you will begin to see things like the cheeks, chin, nose, and forehead take form.
If you utilize your tracing guide and reference image throughout the painting, you should be able to move along quite smoothly and problem free. Don’t be worried about mis-painted strokes, just paint over them.
Remember to be patient, the entire process takes some time. Keep experimenting with various brush sizes and capacities, and pen pressures to see what works best for you.
Note: once you have painted a variety of hues in your “painting” document, it’s not really necessary to keep sampling colors from your “photo” document any more. Save the time and start sampling from colors in your painting when possible.
In this image below, you can see my nose is looking pretty good. It still needs more work, but now I’ve got the basic shading and shape how I want it. The great thing about painting digitally is that blending colors is much easier than painting with oils on a canvas.
I find it best to not get too far ahead with any one part of the face. So lets catch up by drawing in the eyes and mouth at this stage. As you can see in the image below, I haven’t added any detail yet because I want to go back in and touch up my skin and facial structure a bit. The cheeks are flat, the chin isn’t defined, and the eyebrows are just brown lines.
The painting won’t look like the subject unless the bone structure is precise. In the image below, you can see the big difference that a little added shading can make. The skin is blended better, the cheek is more pronounced, and the shading around the eye area has been improved. I also added detail to the eyes, eyebrows, nose, and lips; which I describe below.
Eyes:
For the eyes you will be using a harder brush. Make sure you are zoomed in to both your photo and your painting.
For the iris I drew dozens of various colored lines in overlapping fashion. I also added a few freckles and eyelashes; both on separate layers. For the wrinkles surrounding the eyes, use a harder brush and try to draw every wrinkle line individually. The reflections of light were also added to create depth. Here is a zoomed in shot of my eyes:
Eyebrows:
First, zoom in. Create a new layer and name it “eyebrows”. With a small brush size (I used 1 pixel size) begin drawing individual hair strands over the basic shaded brow we created earlier. I lowered my brush opacity a bit when drawing these hairs because 100% tends to leave too strong of lines.
Since hairs are thicker at the root and thinner at the ends, try painting with your pen pressure turned on. Press harder for the hair’s root side, and use less pressure as you reach the other end.
Notice how eyebrow hairs do not all flow in one single direction. This is true for all eyebrows. Also keep in mind that the left and right brows are not the same either. Don’t just create one, duplicate, and flip.
Body:
You may want to create the body on a separate layer. For my painting, my subject is nude, so basically I just created the body like I did the face. I began with drawing a path around the body edge, making the path selection active, and began filling in the area with a neutral skin tone. I then continued to sample various skin colors to add depth and shadow.
If your body has clothing, of course your painting technique will differ. Since clothes are made out of many different types of material, you may have to experiment with various brush types or textures.
Mouth:
Make sure you are zoomed far enough to see the cracks and light reflections of the lips. Before you add those details, first make sure to create some depth by painting in the darker and lighter areas of the lips.
For the teeth, avoid using straight white. If you color sample your reference image, you will see that your teeth are more likely made up of light blues, greys, and yellows. I added a little more border around my teeth to separate them a bit.
Hair:
Drawing hair can get a little tedious; so take a break if necessary. A couple things should be mentioned before starting. First, make sure you put your hair on it’s own layer. It’s much easier to erase the hair than it is to re-paint a screw up on the face. Second, don’t draw all the hair strands the same color. Mix it up a little, regardless if the overall color is dark or blonde. This will add depth.
Ok, lets get started. First turn on the “tracing guide” layer. The hair outline we traced earlier will act as a guideline. Now pick a color that totally contrasts your subject’s hair color. If they are a brunette, chose a blonde color and vise versa. This will make it easier to see which parts of the head have hair drawn and which parts don’t. Here is what my hair looks like in it’s first stages:
With a base in place, start drawing strands of hair. For fine hair like in my painting, I found it better to use a harder brush set at just 1 pixel, with the “flow” set to about 50%. Mess around with the pen pressure settings if you feel the need.
If your subject has long hair like mine, it may be difficult drawing one continuous strand from head to end. Don’t worry too much about doing that. Your hair strands will be overlapping anyway, so drawing with shorter paint strokes shouldn’t be a problem as long as you don’t over do it. Keep filling in the hair area using different shades.
For the blonde hair in my painting, I used dark browns, greys, whites, and yellows. The dominant color will show through as long as you don’t overdo the other colors. Try to avoid using just one color when creating the shadowed area; mix the colors up a bit. Here is my hair with a little more detail added:
If you just keep adding strands, you will eventually begin to see some pretty realistic hair taking shape. If your subject’s hair is straight like mine, try to vary the strand lengths a bit. Also, don’t be afraid to draw in some stray hairs every once in a while.
your hair is looking a bit to uniform throughout; try adding a few more lighter colored strands to show light reflection, and darker strands for the shadowed areas. Here is my hair with even more fine strands added:
Finishing touches:
Hopefully you are happy with the results of your painting so far. Now is the time to go back and make any necessary revisions and add those final details. If you haven’t added the ears yet, go ahead and do so.
People have imperfections such as blemishes, freckles, and scars on their face or body. Adding these will help add to the realism and depth of the painting. Just make sure you create them on a separate layer so you can easily erase any unwanted additions.
Background:
I chose to use a simple gradient for the background to my painting, but chances are you will chose something quite different. Just create a new layer and place it below the previously created layers. Now what every background you chose, it will be on it’s own separate layer.
When choosing a background for your painting there are a couple of things you may want to keep in mind. First consider the direction of the light source. If you find an image with a light source that differs from your subject; you can always use Photoshop’s canvas flipping capabilities (Edit > Transform) as a work around.
Also keep in mind, the over all color of your background will most likely differ from your portrait. This can easily be tweaked by using the color settings in the (Image > Adjustments) menu. The “match color” tool works especially well for this sort of thing.
Completion:
Well, that’s it. I hope your painting turned out great, and you were able to learn a new technique or two. If you have any tips or tricks of your own, please do share. I would like to see the results of your following this tutorial as well. Please email me your paintings. I would appreciate it very much.
Please email me your results, I would love to see what you come up with. If you have any suggestions or tips of your own, please share!
