Basic Digital Painting

This tutorial shows one of the ways I do digital painting. I used Painter 7.0 for this example, but the same sort of thing can be done in Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Open Canvas, The Gimp, or almost any other computer graphics program. I used only two tools - the Brushes->Round Camel for applying color, and Liquid->Just Add Water for blending. This is a modified comic-type style, where I fill an area with a base color and then apply highlights and shadows to it, and I use this when I'm painting from a well-developed lineart sketch. If I started without the lineart, I'd use a different, more painterly, method of laying in my colors. All of the images except for the last one can be clicked on for larger versions.

This is a complement for my step-by-step painting and Simple Metal tutorials I did based on Jiraiya and Tsunade from Naruto.

Legal Stuff: All images in this tutorial are by and copyright to Telophase. Permission is granted to download and save a copy for your own personal reference. You are not allowed to upload, post, or publish this tutorial or images in print or electronic form without the express written permission of Telophase, and you are most certainly not allowed to claim any of the images as your own work. The character of Tsunade and her character design is from the manga and anime Naruto, was created by Kishimoto Masashi, and is copyright © to Shueisha and TV Tokyo.

Telophase's portfolio is at www.telophase.net/portfolio and her DeviantArt user page is at telophase.deviantart.com. She may be reached through either of those webpages.

Step 1:

If you want to follow along the steps with the same picture, I have a transparent gif of Tsunade's face here. Open this up in whatever program you use and put a layer filled with white below it to color on. If you do that, you may post it online to show off your coloring skills as long as you credit the lineart to me and link to this tutorial or my DeviantArt webpage.

First, get your lineart. I put my lineart onto a separate layer with nothing but black and transparent pixels because I like the flexibility that offers. You can do that, or change the layer blending mode to Multiply (Photoshop, Painter) if you don't want to tint the lines any color or Gel (Painter) if you do. I have it set to Gel here, and I am painting on the bottommost layer - the canvas.

Zoom in as much as you can, so that the area you are working on fills the screen. This gives you better control.

I will be coloring just her skin in this tutorial.

Step 2:

First, pick a base color. I chose a neutral orangey-peach since I was doing her skin and she's fairly pale. Fill in the space you want to color. You'll want to start with the element that is the farthest away from the viewer -- since Tsunade's hair and clothes both go over her skin, I chose to do that first. because I don't have to worry about coloring outside the lines - the clothing and hair will be painted over the skin.

If my shapes were completely closed, I could select them with he Magic Wand selection tool, expand the selection by 1 or 2 pixels to eliminate that white halo that usually shows up, and simply fill the shape, but I have lots of little open spots in my lines, so that's not an option for this picture.

Step 3:

She's all colored in now. It's getting down to zero hour for the most important thing you have to decide ... where your light source is. Shadows are the darkest on surfaces facing away from the light source, and highlights are the brightest on points closest to the light source. Unless you are accomplished enough to break the rules effectively - because all rules can be broken, as long as you know when to do it - you should keep a consistent light source. I am doing a simple one here, one light source, because I don't want to mess about too much with reflected light or secondary light sources, because they can complicate a picture hopelessly if you're new to this sort of thing.

Step 4:

The light is coming from the upper left here. I often find it useful to make a new layer and indicate where the light is coming from, and that's what I did in this example.

Many new digital artists just use the Dodge and Burn tools to make their shadows and highlights. You should not do this unless you are experienced, because Dodge and Burn make fake-looking shadows. They react differently to different shades of color, it makes your shadows inconsistent in appearance and texture, and it doesn't look like a real shadow, it looks like you ran the Burn tool over your picture. Don't believe me? Try my way once and see what a difference it makes. The Burn and Dodge tools are best used, if at all, for small spot adjustments near the end of your painting.

So: pick a new color. Keep it in the same general family of your base color, but make it darker. I decided to go with a fairly dramatic shadow for Tsunade here, so I picked a dark tan color that was slightly redder than the original base color.

Paint the shadow color in on any areas that recede from the light source. This is where having a fairly good idea of anatomy comes in handy, because you can picture the head in three dimensions and see which areas recede. I did a big shadow on the side of her face farthest form the light, a very thin one on the side of her face closest to the light, because I wanted a sense of that far cheek rounding away from the viewer, under her chin and lower lip, a thin line on her upper lip, the inner corners of her eyes, underneath the tip of her nose, and the far curve of her breast. You can see when you click on the small image and see the larger one that I wasn't too careful with my edges - I didn't need to be, since I was going to blend it all.

Step 5:

Now, you start blending the edges. Keep the anatomy of whatever you're doing in mind, because shadows are sharpest right next to the edge that is casting the shadow. If you compare this one with the next step, you can see that the forehead and cheek shadows are softly blended, but that the shadow under the nose is fairly sharp on the tip of the nose and soft on its far edge, and the same with the shadow at the corner of the eye - it's sharpest at the bridge of the nose, where the shadow is being cast from.

I forgot to take a screenshot of the color all blended in before I went on t the next step, but you've got the idea, I'm sure.

Step 6:

This step isn't strictly necessary, but it'll make your shadows incredibly rich. Do the same thing again, only picking a darker color, and stroking it only in the darkest areas. I started doing it here on her cheek right next to her hair, and under her chin.

The color I picked was still darker and redder than the previous color, and it was also slightly desaturated, to make its tone cooler. Cool colors recede while warm colors come forward, so if your shadows are cool in tone, they look much deeper. You can even get some nifty effects by using cool grey or blue instead of a color related to the base color, or by picking the color that is opposite on the color wheel to the color your highlights are going to be. Experiment!

Step 7:

More of the second shadow color laid in. I added very small lines of it right on the tip of her nose and the corner of her eye where the nose tip and bridge cast the shadow, right under her lower lip, and a small one where her breast was farthest away from the light source.

Step 8:

Blend again! Still keep in mind that the sharp edges of the shadows are close to the light source. Look at her nose tip and the corner of her eye on the larger view of this picture to see.

Step 9:

Refine your shapes. I decided that the shadow cast by the bridge of her nose needed to extend farther down her nose, so I blended it down. I also decided to make the tip of her nose a little bit rounder, so I extended the lighter area of her nose into the shadows a little bit at the tip.

Step 10:

Highlights. I decided that my light source was going to be a warm yellow, much like the morning sun, so I picked a light butter-yellow tone and scribbled it onto the areas that were closer to the light source -- middle of the forehead, eyelids, cheeks, nose bridge and tip, lower lip, a small line of highlight along the top edge of the upper lip, chin, and the curve of her breast.

Step 11:

You guessed it: blend again. Remember to keep the areas where two edges meet, like the tip and bridge of the nose, quite sharp, because those edges cast shadows.

Compare this picture to Step 9 to see how much more life it has.

Step 12:

Often I only put one layer of highlights on, but since I didn't use a really light white for highlights, I decided to put a few more in. I picked pure white, and dabbed a tiny bit onto the highest points of her face.

Step 13:

And blend again. If you overblend anything in any of these steps, you can always apply more color and blend again.

You're done with coloring! Now shrink your image back down to print size and look at the finished product.