I know… I didn’t draw their feet. I really hate drawing feet. I’m not too good at it and I never know what angle to draw the feet at. Maybe eventually I’ll learn how to draw them.

I still need to name the character on the left. Maybe I’ll do that right now. Um… Pan… Pangan… Panganiban! Gani for short. He’s a character I kept envisioning in my head but I couldn’t get him from my mind to the screen until now. Does he look how I envisioned him now? Who cares?

I’m starting to feel restless about the ratios and after I finish the next how to draw guide, time to master the anatomy of the limbs, folds, shading and fine itty-gritty details. For now, let’s finish the tutorials on how to draw different ratios.

How to Draw a 1:7 Ratio Character

Start these characters off by drawing the circles. Draw 7 circles on top of each other for the one character and draw 8 circles for the other character. Then start figuring out where the shoulders, hips, arms and legs will be. For the character who is 7 circles tall, I placed the shoulders near the top middle of the second circle from the top. I had his hands reach the top middle of the circle in the middle, which was also where I put his hips. Of course, the feet are at the bottom. As for the 1:8 character, I decided to have fun and go overboard with the size of the shoulders and muscles. His shoulders could be found in the middle of the second circle from the top. His hips were placed in the middle of the 5th circle from the top. Wow, maybe I got a little excessive there.

When learning how to draw, sometimes its easier to start off with pencil on paper rather than going digital.

In the spirit of continuing chronological order, let’s do the 1:7 figure first. Determine the direction that you want the face to go. Wherever the face is turned, draw the eye farther away from the camera smaller than the eye closer to the camera. For the nose, figure out how much of the nose you want to show. The nose can really strongly define how the character’s face looks. Spend plenty of time on the face because despite how you draw the rest of the body, the face will define the character. Bodies with some mistakes can be forgiven.

For the body, it helps to draw the entire body before adding clothes. That doesn’t mean that the character needs to be drawn completely nude, but rather that you should draw the outline of the character before adding each detail. For this character, I researched different tribal clothing styles and tried to use colors from animals that are found in the character’s locale. The skin draped across the character’s chest is from a spotted deer hide. I’m not sure what the thing is tied to the center of the skirt but it looked interesting on a different tribal outfit and I felt it added some culture to his otherwise very practical outfit.

Go off and choose a color for your character’s clothes. There’s really no tricks when learning how to draw colored characters that I know of. When designing the clothes, I first intended to use colors from animals that could be found in the Philippines. I used the Philippine spotted deer for the fabric wrapped around his body and then inputted that color into the color scheme generator. The other colors were chosen using this generator. Of course, you don’t have to use the color scheme generator. But I wanted the character to have colors that worked well together.

Choose a skin color. Luckily for me, I noticed that one of the colors that popped up on the color scheme generator looked like a really convincing dark skin tone. I only lightened it slightly so that the lines could be visible. As for the hair, I tried to use a color that was almost black but not so dark that the lines separating the hair weren’t visible.

Here came the fun part for me. Adding the spots for the spotted deer hide and the pattern for the piece of fabric in the front. For the fabric in the front, I kept the design simple and used a color that was compatible with the color of the green fabric. For the spots, I added varying sized dots and blurred them out. Okay, I actually used brushes from here. For the blurring, you can use a kleenex to rub the edges of the spots in order to make them blurry. If you’re using a graphics program, you can use the blur tool.

Next, I got really experimental. I decided to give the character a good amount of shading, but I’m not sure how it turned out. The light is coming from the left, so most of the shading is from the right. I didn’t want there to be too much shading on his face, since I didn’t want to obscure the features. In addition to the light source, one of the things to pay attention to when shading is where the dips in the muscles are. On the neck, I paid more attention to the muscles than on the rest of the body, creating really defined shadows under his chin. I created these shadows on Photoshop by creating a new layer and drawing black on the areas that I wanted shaded while setting the opacity on the layer to 50%. Maybe it needs to be lower.

I used less pictures in this one. Do you prefer that I use a gazillion pictures showing each feature being drawn or a few pictures submitted at milestones? I guess maybe I should break things down with each feature when I’m trying to demonstrate how to draw a very specific thing. Hmm.

The next tutorial will be coming really fast. I already drew and wrote the tutorial and all I have to do is type it up. Until then…

Best of luck in your endeavors,

Alex

Paint.net

Pros

I think Paint.net is the best starter program for those just learning how to do digital art. Paint.net lacks a lot of bells and whistles. The program runs a little faster than Photoshop and much faster than GIMP. In fact, I still use Paint.net for really simple edits because it runs faster. Also, their filters rock almost as much as Photoshop’s and you can download free plugins in order to expand your arsenal.

Cons

Paint.net is kinda skimpy on its features and their brushes really suck. The only brush that’s useful at all is the basic brush, unless you’re creating simplistic designs.Paint.net also doesn’t have a lot of the features that I’ve grown to love and rely on when using Photoshop. They have the lasso tool, which allows you to select specific parts of an image you’re working on. But they lack the polygonal lasso, which is great for artists who don’t have steady hands. They lack the pen tool, which makes it difficult to select very specific sections of the art and also makes it difficult to create complex polygons with curves (though they do have the curves tool). But for me, the most unforgivable sin for Paint.net is that they lack a blur and smudge tool. Without those tools, a lot harder to blend different parts of your image together. They do have the blur filter, which can replace the blur tool if you select certain portions with the lasso tool and you have a really steady hand.

GIMP

Pros

GIMP has most of the really important features on Photoshop. They have the coveted pen tool. They also have the essential blur and smudge tool. I can’t remember if they have the polygonal lasso or not. But that tool can be replaced by the pen tool easily. They have some good filters and plenty of plugins. This is a good program for those who want most of the features of Photoshop but never want to pay for the Photoshop program.

Cons

Oddly enough, the size of GIMP’s brushes are limited. This is a strange feature, since it can’t be that hard to increase the size of the brushes. GIMP also has the slowest running time. When using GIMP, I was met with frequent crashes. Also, for some reason, the lines that I created using the pen tool weren’t always perfectly smooth.

The Moral

Adobe is a little absurd charging nearly $1,000 for their Photoshop programs. Yeah, Photoshop is seen as the absolute best graphics program out there for most digital artists. But how do they expect starving artists to ever afford that much money?

Download GIMP http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gimp-win/gimp-2.6.4-i686-setup.exe

Download Paint.net http://www.dotpdn.com/files/Paint.NET.3.36.zip

Alex

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Hi, everybody! Marisol here. Alex offered some ideas for free programs, but if you are heavy into digital art and you enjoy doing it, there are programs that are under $100 available. Yes, they’re not as fancy as any of the Photoshop CS programs, but they are just as good. Alex mentioned that there is Photoshop Elements and Corel Painter, both of which have their pros and cons. I own both and I was fortunate enough to receive them free with my Wacom Intuos Tablet. However, both programs are well worth the money if you’re willing to spend it, especially if you’re really in to digital art.

Photoshop Elements

I happen to like Elements more than CS. Sure, Elements is what the title implies: the elements–your really basic digital tools. As Alex mentioned, Elements doesn’t have a pen tool, but everything else about it is great. You have your blur and burn tools, which are essential in digital art creation, but you also have the option of creating brushes and downloading brushes like its nobody’s business! Photoshop Elements has fantastic calligrapher brushes which make up for the lack of pen tool. However, I never really understood why the pen tool was so important. Basically, if you use the right pressure and you go along in small strokes, any brush can dublicate the pen tool look, but that is my opinion. I’ve never had a pen tool and when I did use it, I found it difficult to handle.

Photoshop Elements is basically the same as PSCS, just without the bells and whistles. A lot of the features are the same and the program is easy to use. Personally, I love Elements because of some of the cool effects you can create with it. There is a photo fram feature and a feature where you can create Andy Warhol-esque images. Very cool. Photoshop Elements is the best bang for your buck.

Corel Painter

Personally, I am not a fan of Corel Painter mainly because I find it difficult to use. Sure, the features are great, but I find the program to be glitchy and lacks that special oomph that makes it a great program. The drawing feature on Corel Painter is hit and miss because sometimes the lines pick up, others times they don’t, no matter what the pen pressure is. I find it to be very lax on features, however, it’s a great beginner’s tool. If you are a beginning artist, practice with Corel Painter, but I highly recommend you download the free trial. However, a lot of hardcore artists do use Corel Painter and love it, so maybe I have had bad luck.

Marisol

I’m back with part two of my assorted brushes guide for Photoshoppers. Why? Because picking the right brush is essential when learning how to draw with a tablet or a mouse. If you’re short on time, go ahead and skip to the calligraphy and Paint.net sections because the rest of the assorted brushes aren’t that good. Just make sure to check out brushes 14, 15, 18 and 20.

Assorted Brush 14 – Star

Pretty stars strung together creates a line that looks like a bug or centipede. This brush will be useful for anything that needs little spikes coming out of the sides. If you run the lines over each other, you will create a fuzzy-looking smudge. Individually, this brush forms stars. But these stars get really blurry as their size is increased.

Assorted Brush 15 – Starburst

The ultimate brush for creating pretty stars. Strung together, this brush looks like a weird necklace or some prickly thing. They are also great for creating sparkles, such as when a character’s teeth are really clean. When drawn over each other, these starbursts can create fuzzy caterpillars.

Assorted Brush 16

This brush is mostly useless, though it can sorta create good textures. When drawn in a line, this brush can create lines that make me think of jewelry, but the lines look kinda blurry.

Assorted Brush 17

This is another blurry brush that might be useful for creating some textures. Drawn in a line, this brush looks like a table cloth that had black ink dabbed all over it.

Assorted Brush 18

This brush might be useful for drawing dirt or a bushy material.

Assorted Brush 19 – Confetti

The confetti brush doesn’t seem too useful, though this brush looks like a spine or something metallic when drawn in a line.

Assorted Brush 20

This is a really cool brush that can create really awesome font that looks very 3D. When the brush is drawn over itself, the brush can create a 3D plateau. The line also makes me think of a bug that is viewed from the side. A very 3D bug.

Assorted Brush 21

This is a VERY blurry brush that hurts the eyes. I dunno if you even want to use this brush at all. If you ever find a use for this brush, please email me.

Assorted Brush 22 — Triangle

This brush will mostly make normal lines and splotches that have little spikes all over them. Whatever is drawn will have very triangular tops, bottom lefts, and bottom rights. There are probably some good uses for this brush.

Assorted Brush 23 – Triangle Dots

Use this brush whenever you want to have 3 lines in the form of one line. I can’t think of any practical applications for this, but there probably are some.

Calligraphy

I will eventually be checking out the other Photoshop brushes, but for now I have three sets of brushes that I’m not going to check out. One group is the calligraphic brushes. A lot of these brushes are way too similar to evaluate individually. They’re great for writing calligraphy of course and also great for creating really rippling effects. They also look really cool.

Wet Brushes

Another good set of brushes are the water color style brushes. Use these if you want to get the watercolor feel when using your tablet. I picked blue because I was getting sick of black. These brushes are so beautiful, they made me cry.

Paint.net

Finally, there’s the Paint.net brushes. Paint.net, along with GIMP, is one of the best free graphics programs. But while Paint.net is useful in a lot of ways, they aren’t very innovative with their brushes. However, while a lot of them might suck for drawing, they’re brilliant if you need texture or free screentones. Need a brick wall and don’t want to spend the time drawing it? Find a brick-like brush and size it until you find a size that makes you happy.

Ooh, also check out the special effects brushes. Great brushes for really lazy people.

Why do I say lazy? It took me under 30 seconds to create this.

What’s left? The thick section, natural section, goofy faux section and dry section (by Gillette :p ).

Goodbye!

Alex

Assorted Brush #1

This brush is made up of small circles that are strung together. When drawing in a line, this brush creates what looks like a slinky, cord or some type of microbe. If you scribble the lines together, it forms a black splotch with little renegade circles all around it. If you use the mouse to make single clicks, this brush will create tiny circles. This can serve as an alternative to using the ellipses tool. All you have to do is resize the brush using “[“ or “]” in order to get the right sized circle. However, the lines will be blurry. This might not work if you are searching for more fine lines.

Assorted Brush #2

Assorted brush #2 is just like brush one except that this circle has two circles instead of one with one circle contained within the other circle like a bulls-eye. The result is a darker line and little individual circles that look like tiny bulls-eyes. Like the other brush, as you increase the size of this brush the lines get blurry.

Assorted Brush #3

This brush is made up of a bunch of X’s stringed together. This brush has all sorts of uses ranging from texturizing a picture to creating something that looks like a metal fence. Individually, this brush can really create interesting texture when the brush is scribbled in one location, though scribbling too much will only create a black blotch. Making singular clicks of the mouse will create little X’s that could be used for stars. If you enlarge the X, the X becomes more blurry and the X appears as if its made out of blotches that start off larger in the middle and get smaller towards the tips of the X’s.

Assorted Brush #4

This brush is a diagonal pound symbol. But when used for drawing lines, it creates a line that has a rough edge and a thick black line in the middle. This creates nice little edges on the lines that are great for texture. I like how the text looked when I wrote it. When the brush is drawn over itself, it creates very thickly black blotches with rough edges, which reminds me of some paint mediums. Placed individually, this brush creates a sharp that gets progressively more blurry the more you increase the size.

Assorted Brush #5

I like this brush a lot. The lines created by this brush have very scratchy edges that look manmade at the same time because they are so uniform. This might be a useful brush for drawing the silhouette of an animal such as a caterpillar. The edges of the brush are reminiscent of fur. If clicked individually with a mouse, this brush leaves nice little gridlines that can have different applications.

Assorted Brush #6

Do you want a lizard, a fuzz ball, or a spiral? This really awesome brush creates the illusion of scales with drawn in a straight line and creates what looks like a ball of fur when the brush is draw over itself. When clicked individually, this brush creates a little spiral. Let your imagination run wild with this brush.

Assorted Brush #7

Made from diamonds. Not sure if a diamond is an artist’s best friend. This brush can create lines that look like they have bad quality. This brush might be useful in some way, but I can’t really think of any uses right now.

Assorted Brush #8

Looking to create lace? This brush brush is for you. This brush allows you to draw lines that look like laces. A very fun brush to use, but I cannot think of any applications beyond creating lacy material. But that’s good enough to make it useful.

Assorted Brush #9

I guess this is a cool brush. At a smaller size, this brush creates lines with really interesting edges. Make the lines larger and they start to remind me of centipedes. The symbol used to create this brush is kinda strange. I don’t really find the blotch in the middle really interesting.

Assorted Brush #10

I like this brush overall, though I don’t like the blurriness of it when you create larger sized strokes. This brush gets thicker as you travel horizontally and thinner as you travel vertically. The brush creates a 3D look that reminds me of the ribbon brush. The splotch is kinda boring and the individual mouse clicks created little marks that could be flames in the right picture.

Assorted Brush #11

Even though the shape of this brush is way different, this brush is like the opposite of brush #10 in effect. Lines get thicker as you travel vertically and thinner as you travel horizontally. The brush is kinda shaped like a genie lamp. I like how the left side of the brush seems to fade.

Assorted Brush #12

This is a cool brush but I’m not sure what it would be useful for except for really neat font. The lines sorta make me think of the edge of a rock, but that might just be my eyes playing tricks on me.

Assorted Brush #13

I almost skipped this one. This brush might be useful for texture, but it mostly only creates what looks like railroad tracks. But it’s a little too much on the blurry side.

That’s it for the first half. There’s a bunch more brushes in the assorted brush section like the star brush and the black widow brush. I’ll hit those tomorrow.

Alex

So the first thing I did, I went back to the background layer, finding a good brush that I could use to shape clouds and the sky, I picked these colors, though you could use anything you want.

Now, just take that same brush and start blending, you’ll notice how the background starts to look a little more like a scenery, here I can almost see clouds developing, which is just what I want.

Now I changed the adjustment and hue a bit so now it’s a darker blue, which I like, it blends in better this way. I grabbed a light  color blue and a small hard brush and started making the linings of the clouds, highlights give them that depth and definition.

Now to make the moon! The moon is just about the easiest step ever! Take a large soft brush and with a pale blueish gray color, make a circle, the shape of the moon. Then, take a light blue color, a little smaller brush, not too small, just a smidge smaller than the one you had and make the center of the moon for the glow. I make a custom brush for the craters, but usually I add a dark shade and make the little marks in there. After you’ve done that, duplicate the layer, gaussian blur the layer, and pick a mode that bests suits you, I tend to like Overlay.

And here, I added more highlights to the clouds, taking the dodge tool over them, making the reflection of the moon more prominent. Also, I added the little bit of background in the far off, the church which is basically a silhouette with a light blue lighting. So there, all you do is make a solid dark shape of the building, then where the light hits, add the highlight of that color, in this case blue. That’s all there is to it! Now, you could leave the entire picture like this and it’ll be fine, you’re done! But, if you’re me, and feel like it could use an extra something, try to flatten the image, duplicate it, blur, gaussian blur to 3.0 or something, and change the layer to Overlay or anything else you like. The end result may look like this:

Tada! I used overlay as my option, and though it really takes away from the detail, since everything was so dark, it really enhanced the mood and feel of the picture. I love how it made the background really bright and dark at the same time, that’s a pretty sky isn’t it? Look how smooth the skin turned out! The church in the back also looks creepy and mysterious, just how I wanted! Well that’s it for this tutorial series, maybe I’ll do another one within these next days I’m off.

So there you have it folks! From skin, to hair, to clothes to background! Hope you enjoyed. Now I’m off to sulk a bit and drown myself in music. Sayounara!

-Tala