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katrimav — How I Paint (Tutorial)
#digitalart #layers #paintingtutorial #tutorial #digitaltutorial #howtopaint #tutorialdrawing #howtopaintdigital #howipaint
Published: 2019-02-15 18:17:04 +0000 UTC; Views: 1332; Favourites: 26; Downloads: 0
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Hello everyone! I've been wanting to make a tutorial, or rather show you how I paint, for a while now, so I decided to make it on how I personally paint using this Mulan Fan Art as an example. In this tutorial I will go over how I sketch, work in grayscale, use layers and place colors. I hope you find this tutorial useful!
1. First Sketch
I begin making a rough, loose line art sketch on a mid-tone grey canvas. For this piece I used a pose from AdorkaStock , modifying it a bit. It can take me a while to play around with poses and in the end choose the initial one. For this fan art I had three poses sketched out, but finally decided to go with this one. I also looked up some chinese dragon designs online for Mushu's look since I did not want him to look like his typical cartoony-self.
After this I will start to add the sketch of the face, hair, clothing, accessories, etc.
2. Values sketching
Now I begin to put in values. For this piece I wanted to block out Mulan's figure since Mushu was in the background, so I just filled her in with a lighter shade of grey to separate her out from her surroundings. I set the sketch layers on top to "Overlay".
I then made a new layer, right clicked it and selected "Create Clipping Mask". I took the Gradient Tool, set it to these settings as shown and created the base for my lights and shadows. I wanted the light to hit her hands and the sword below to create a more interesting lighting. Once I got the lighting right and adjusted the opacity of the layer, I merged the layer down. I will do the same to thing the background, making Mushu's face more brighter so it catches his face. I will start painting the background later.
Now on top of that I created another layer, set it to a Clipping Mask again and started to paint the shadows and lights myself.
After this I will refine the shadows and start to "sculpt" out the shapes and add more values. I lower the opacity of the line sketch layer too as I will eventually get rid of it all together. It only acts as a guide for me. I don't worry too much to make the drawing clean and final yet as I will do this again after I've set the colors in.
One trick that I use throughout painting is that I make a new layer on top of the base layer and paint on that. So if I mess up or don't like how it looks, I can just delete the layer and start again, without losing the base or having to smash the ctrl + z command.
3. Textures and patterns
When I place textures or patterns, I usually choose my images using www.textures.com/ or search them through search.creativecommons.org/ For this piece I wanted to add some nice patterns to Mulan's kimono without having to paint them myself.
I place the picture on the artwork where I want it to be. I then set the layer to Clipping Mask again so I don't have to erase the excess parts myself. I then transform the image to black and white so the colors wont transfer into the artwork. I set the layer now to "Overlay" but then we have a problem. The light parts of the image mess up the values on Mulan's kimono. I fix this by setting the image layer back to "Normal", go to "Select" -> "Color Range" and select the light parts of the image. Then I just hit ctrl + x to cut away the unwanted parts and set the layer back to "Overlay" and erase the areas where I don't want any of the pattern. I repeat this to all the areas where I want the pattern until I am happy with it.
4. Colors
Now I begin to add colors. I will hide the pattern layers so they won't distract me as I'm working on the colors.
I first choose the base colors and the color palette I want to use. Since Mushu is a red dragon, I decided to give Mulan blue clothing even though she wears a pink kimono in the movie. This makes her pop out from the background and not blend in with the red colors. I also wanted to hide the pattern layers since I am going to adjust them more after I've placed the colors.
How I actually place color on top of a grey scale drawing is I simply make a new layer, set it to "Color" and just start paint the colors in. They may appear a bit muddy since we have a black and white image under the layer, but I then just simply make other layers setting them to "Color" or "Soft Light and place the colors. The layer mode "Color" lets you paint without losing the values underneath whereas the mode "Soft Light" does affect your values, so be careful with that.
5. Final rendering
Now I just merge the layers down, still keeping Mushu and Mulan separate and start doing the final rendering and color adjustments.
After Mulan is done, I start working on Mushu.
And after Mushu is done I straight up do some final touches, playing with curves and add some special effects. For this I just took some soft smoke brushes to create a smoke element to the foreground and added a light source and details to the background, nothing too major or detailed.
And here we have the finished piece!
I hope this "tutorial" was useful and clear to anyone who wanted to learn my technique on digital painting. If you want to see a tutorial on a more specific subject, please comment your suggestion down below! I might do more detailed tutorials to Patreon in the future 
Skin by SimplySilent