I decided to start doing what a lot of artists recommend to see how it works out. Lots of artists tell you not to paint on white and to instead pick a dark color, usually grey or a dark shade of the most dominant color in your picture. I picked grey for now and I will try the skin tone next time. So far, it makes it a lot easier to see what you’re doing as you add progressively lighter and lighter colors. Plus, for me it feels easier to control how much you shade different parts when you shade this way. For digital art, just fill the background with whatever color you want to put in the background. For traditional art, just pick a canvas that has the color you would like to have as the base. Of course, none of this is 100% necessary and you can always just use a white sheet of paper when following this guide.

To sketch the character, choose a color that is light enough to show up on the dark background, which is the whole point of using a dark background to begin with. These lines will show up very well.

After getting the lines out, you can now start to throw down the colors. Start with the darkest colors. On the face, the areas that are the darkest depend on what you’re drawing. For this character, the darkest areas will be under the eyes, between the nose and the cheeks, under the nose and under the mouth. If you’re drawing a neck, the area under the chin will be darkened too. With take one, don’t worry so much about getting it accurately. Just get the general area colored because you can always color over areas that need to be tweaked.

Next, start laying some more shades on the side of the nose facing away from the light source, the edges of the ears, the chin, and near the darker shades. When two different shades come together, blend them at the edges.

Now select the lightest skin color. Add highlights to the middle of the nose and the cheeks for this drawing. Where the highlights land depends a lot on the light source, but for an area where light is all over, those areas get the most light.

Cover the areas that you haven’t covered on the face yet with the base color that you would like the majority of your character’s skin color to be made up of.

Now start throwing down those special colors over the character’s face. Put reds in the cheeks, yellow on the forehead and blue or green on the chin (or nothing). For some characters, these colors are stronger than with other characters.

I finally got sick of staring at vacant holes where there should be eyes. You can do that too by simply filling in each eye with a colored circle and a color that is not pure white, but close to being white.

Then, start shading all around the eyes. Shade under the eyes and above the eyes lightly. Shade between the eye and the eyebrows very lightly, though strongly enough so that you can see the shading. Add a little yellow to the corners inside the eyes. Add highlights on the tops of the eye sockets.

Now, start adding details to the irises. Add black circles in the center of the irises where you want the pupils to be. Draw one or two rounded white objects on the eye to indicate the glare, where the light bounces off of the eye. Off of the pupil, start drawing lines, alternating between short and long lines. Surround the iris with a darker version of whatever color you used.

Next, move on to the mouth. Mouths are really interesting in that they come in different sizes and different people have lips of different thickness. This character is an Asian girl with tiny lips. The top-middle part of the mouth has a little dip, which sorta reminds me of an M. The lips are thinner near the corners of the mouth and thicker near the bottom. The lips also tend to curve inward on the sides on the lower lip. Some bottom lips are wider, while others just seem to dip. Painting lips can be very fun and lips can be very, very intricate. Some lips are very reflective and there are also nice little folds that curve outwards and travel upwards and downwards. I decided to not play around too much with the lips until later.

For the ears, draw the basic shape of the ear. The outer edge of the ear has a fold on the top half that wraps around the ear until it reaches the middle of the ear. The ear canal is drawn using shades.

When drawing the hair, I happily discovered that the whole laying down darker tones helps with the hair in Photoshop because you can still see the light strands when you create a new layer and set it to multiply. I guess using that method is better for darker hair. Anyway, regardless of whether or not you’re using traditional or digital methods, fill in the hair with the mid-color. That’s a color that you sorta pick at whim, since color shade really depends on lighting and whatnot.

This is only part 1! More details will be added soon.

Alex

Thanks for checking out my latest tutorial. Like promised, I will now be looking at the iris. The iris ended up taking up the entire guide because I didn’t take into consideration how very complex the iris can be.
Irises are where the eyes can get really fun and captivating. If you don’t believe me, just look at the iris of a friend. Irises have all sorts of colors within them with little lines of color. These lines exist because the iris actually has the ability to widen or close in order to get more light in dark areas. Eyes also have a shininess to them, making them even reflective under the right lighting conditions. Neat to look at, but tough to draw. That is, until you get used to it.
With cartoon eyes, you can completely skip the iris and just draw circles with dots in them. If you’re lazy, you can even just draw dots. These are great for simplistic cartoons and save enormous amounts of time. But artists who want to draw eyes that are prettier try to capture the enormous amounts of color found in the eyes. Blending a variety of shades and colors works fine for cartoon eyes, but to achieve the realistic look, much greater care must be taken.

For both realistic and cartoon eyes, the pupil is usually the easiest part. For stylistic reasons, some cartoon artists completely omit the pupil altogether. But most of the eyes I’ve seen have pupils in them. All that’s needed is a simple black circle in each eye. Make sure that this circle is symmetrically drawn.

Thus ends the easy part. Next, we’re going to add the shading found at the top part of the eye. This is done by covering the top part of the iris with black. Make sure to leave some space between the pupil and the black because you will want to make the roundness of the pupil obvious.

Next, we’re going to take part of the black and erase it. Choose the color you want to make your eye and find a good, solid representation of that color. We’re going to be drawing over the black with the color you’ve chosen for the eye. Be sure to leave small lines of black behind after covering most of the shading.

Next, we’re going to take those parts and smudge them upwards. Why in the world would we do that? Because in real life, shading doesn’t start and stop abruptly. By throwing in a little black in gradually, the shift from brown to darker brown to black will seem more realistic. (At least I hope so)

Now it’s time to add those neat folds I’ve been rambling about above. This can be done by drawing lines that extend from the pupil to the outer edges of the iris. For these lines, pick colors that are lighter than the base color for the iris.

Next, draw a squiggly line that moves through every single one of the lines you just drew, using the same shade that you used to draw the lines.

Start smudging the lines, moving your smudging tool from the pupil to the outer edge of the eye. Do this carefully and slowly so that you can change any mistakes you made. You want the lines to sorta merge with the pupil very faintly.

To add to the gradual shift from the top shading to the bottom shading, you can use a burn tool in Adobe Photoshop CS4in order to go over the top part of the iris. This program can also be used to create the highlight effect using the dodge tool as seen on the bottom part of the iris. You can then adjust the eye with the hue/saturation feature and use the blur tool in order to make some aspects of the iris appear more seamless.

The final part is the glare. Glares can be really sophisticated, but for now, let’s just add a simple white circle. Place one or two white circles of different sizes on the eye and blur them in order to make them seem like they’re actually a part of the eye. This glare really helps make the eye appear more round.

This iris is all well and good, but what if you do not have the time to detail the iris. Or what if realistic eyes just aren’t your style and you want to create beautiful cartoonish eyes. Creating pretty cartoon eyes starts with finding an attractive color. There’s no hard, fast rules for selecting the right color so you’re going to have to trust your gut instinct. I felt like using a dark blue.

Next, pick a darker color and create a trapezoid going over the top part of the eye. Then pick a lighter color and create another trapezoid near the bottom of the eye. Finish up by drawing a curving line near the bottom of the line with the lightest color. That’s four colors total. Then blur the edges where different colors meet. One way to do this is to use a selection tool and select a particular section of the eye to run the Gaussian blur filter on if you’re using Photoshop. Otherwise, you can use a blending stick or tissue to blend the edges together so that they come together seamlessly.

That’s it for this one. Good riddance, it’s getting late. There’s a couple of odds and ends when it comes to the eyes that I haven’t covered yet and they’ll all be thrown into one big super tutorial which will come out eventually. Until then, I’ll be covering a completely different topic: shading.

Alex

I’m not even sure who this character will be but she’s temporarily named Angora. I might not even use her since I don’t hold on to characters unless they feel right. Maybe she needs some redesigning.

My story takes place in a setting inspired by pre-history Philippines. I’d draw her wearing the clothes that people wore during that time frame, but they mostly wore nothing. That reminds me of a museum exhibit I saw of Native Americans. Some of the figurines of the Native Americans were completely nude. That was so weird since I was shielded from all nudity as a kid and then I’m exposed to a culture that sometimes runs around naked. I guess I learned from that how values can be way different from culture to culture.

You might think “hey, she doesn’t look Filipino.” Well, actually she’s Negrito. From the research I did, Negritos settled in the Phillippines before the Austronesians, an indigenous group from what is now called Taiwan.

That is the initial sketch I started off with. I like that sketch and might use it for a different drawing. How did she change so much? A whole bunch of reasons. The main reason was that I wanted to practice foreshortening, which is something I need to learn how to do with the body. Well, I didn’t really succeed at foreshortening her because that is tough!

What’s foreshortening? Foreshortening is how objects seem deformed at different angles. I guess I made her arms somewhat foreshortened, but their sizes are roughly the same and not large enough to show a real contrast.

So now what? I drew new torso lines in order to make her body appear turned to the side. I also foreshortened her shoulders, making one appear larger and one smaller to indicate that one shoulder is turned farther away from the point-of-view.

Next, I made her sides more shapely and raised her chest. Now she doesn’t look like she has the body of a 90000 year old woman. (I meant to say 900, not 90000).

At this point, I decided to redraw her clothes. Why? She looked like she was wearing a kimono or tunic, which doesn’t really fit with her character. But nudity doesn’t work for me, so I made up some clothes. I also redrew her arms. I liked how they looked, but they look way too long right now. I think this is where I was getting tired two nights ago because her proportions are extremely out of whack. I started drawing her legs because I wanted to shorten her dress. With dresses, its really important that you draw all of the legs out in order to make sure that you have the proportions right.

I did a little resizing and drew out the basic shape of the head.

Then I drew her face. I was aiming for a face that was both delicate and Negrito, but I ran into a problem. Most cartoon and manga faces are European/Asian inspired. Rarely do you see other races represented. I really had nothing to go off. I wanted to emphasize this character’s ethnicity, but I also wanted to keep her features relatively simple. So I experimented with the nose and lips until I got the results that I wanted.

I also added hair, my favorite part.

Then I added lineart and widened her features. I don’t know why I did this and I think I’m going to change it back later.

As you can see now, I colored her. I don’t know if I gave this advice out yet or not, but setting your coloring layers on multiply allows you to color without coloring over dark lines. This is good if you have a hard time coloring within the lines.

Then I used a handy-dandy color scheme generator at: www.colorschemer.com/online.html

Just plug in the value for one of the colors you’re using and it’ll generate colors that are compatible. These colors should pop out more when put together.

So I drew her and showed her to Marisol and she drew all over her. She took her mouse and drew all these lines all over my drawing like it was nobody’s business (joking. I asked her to).

This is sort of like an artist’s version of proofreading. It really helps to have someone else look at your artwork before you finish it because they can see mistakes that you missed. Being an artist doesn’t have to be lonely.

I took her advice and adjusted her. But I gave her brown eyes instead of blue.

Like usual, I have to finish most of my tutorials in multiple blog posts. This isn’t because tutorials take that long, but because I have to write these in gaps of time between school and work. I wish I could write more tutorials, but time is always so short. Still, Marisol and I promise that we’ll always keep updating. We won’t be those people who stop posting out of the blue.

I love you all,

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

Alright, so right now it’s pretty plain, and looks something like this 

Azcona needs clothes! This design is really simple, and quite lazy, I had no idea what kind of clothes I wanted him in, so I just threw something together.  Now this brings me to the next step.

With a soft round brush, or a hard brush with 70 percent opacity, paint the clothes with their base color. This is what I figure would be the color clothes he’d wear, I can change it later, which I just might end up doing. Anyway, fill in the shapes, clean it up a bit and it should look like this.

Alright, now start taking a darker color and fill it in, define more shapes to the clothes, add shadows where they should be, like where the creases and wrinkles are, folds and all that good stuff.

Alright, so I went to Image, adjust, hue/saturation and adjusted it so that it was a bit more black. Also, I took a small pixel eraser and started to erase parts of his cloak to make it look more tattered. Also, with about 3 pix hard brush, I drew loose strings that would come from those rips and tears, as if you know when you rip something, there are fibers that are ripped too.

Alright, here I drew  more shadows and fibers, along with doing the piece near his neck, which is like a tight turtle neck cover. Nothing much here, but I wanted to show a picture of how that works out. Just use a slightly darker color from the base color and make horizontal lines, and repeat the process getting a little darker at a time.

Ok! Now the fun part, I’m going to show a very quick and easy way to draw the cross. It’s so simple, you’ll be amazed to find out just how it’s done! So what you want to do is draw everything in a dark dark color, almost black, but in the hue you want. For me, I want the beads to be red, so I’m going to start with a dark dark red color.  Alright, now that I have that, I’m going to take a small brush, 3 pix is what I usually use, since it’s nice and small. So I take a vibrant red color and make the little red dots inside the darker ones, which gives it some volume, but we’re not done yet! Now I take an almost white color and add tiny tiny white shiney dots on the side where the light is, which makes it seem to pop out a lot. I go back to the skin layer and make shadows where the necklace is, and take a soft brush, with the vibrant red color and lightly dab it on to look like the reflection is hitting on skin.

That’s all for the clothes! It’s turning out nice, now just the background is left! I’d upload that one right now… but I’m too busy listening to this guy sing and falling in love with his voice! He’s amazing and I think everyone should check him out on Youtube! <3 But that’s for another time….

-Tala

Anyway, I’ll try to get as much as this tutorial up as I can, since I’m also going to be hanging out with Mari and Alex today, which I look forward to! <3 They are truly great and my medicine for everything. Now, how about we get to that tutorial now shall we?

Start on a new layer, above the skin layer. First you need to pic a soft brush (which is just a hard round brush with the settings on Other dynamics –> opacity jitter set to pen pressure and flow jitter set to pen pressure) and start shaping out the hair. Now, the color isn’t too too important right now, as I’ll show you how to change that without having to make a huge mess of everything. For Azzie, I picked a dark reddish brown color, something that would almost resemble black, even though I didn’t want to go too dark there, it works fine. Sketch out the flow of the hair, shapes, that sort of thing, right here it doesn’t have to be perfect, we’re just using it as a base.

Alright, taking a smaller brush, about a size 7-9, and a darker color, I start to give the hair some dimension, coloring out dark clumps of hair, giving it more shape, and then taking a smaller brush 3-5 and making wavy strands. The more strands, the better it turns out. Hair isn’t just a big clump, it has motion, and there’s something about loose strands on a guy’s face that makes them look mysterious and sexy, that’s why I LOOOVE guys with this length hair. XD Aherm, anyway…moving out of fantasy land… once you depicted the hair, take the blur tool and get it to a nice large size, and brush lightly over it, to where it’s blurred enough, but not too much to smear the detail away.

Alrighty, now we’re getting somewhere, see it’s not so bad! Here I did the same thing as above, only taking a lighter color than the base color and shadow color, and started to make more strands with a hard brush set to 3-5 pix. Keep working on the flow of the hair, making more loose strands as it gives a wavy motion kind of look and really enhances your picture. After that, use the blur tool again, going very lightly over the hair. Do you like how it’s turning out so far? Of course you do! If now, then… >.> maybe you messed up. =P

Continue with the patern above, adding light strands, tracing shapes and making the hair really flowy. For every new color you use, try to blur it out, because hair isn’t perfectly sharp, it has some detail, but most of it is pretty blurry, besides it blends very well this way. Here I added some blue for the reflection of the background I’m going to be using.

Now is the part where I said you can change the color. I’m realizing that this brownish red color is way too light for Azcona, his hair is dark, he needs to have it dyed. Oh no! Look at all that hard work though! Does this mean we should start all over from scratch? No no child, you don’t need to, for there’s an easy way to fix this, just follow my lead.

Go to image—> adjustments—-> hue/saturation (Or just hit ctrl+u) and a little menu will pop up with three different options, hue, saturation, and Lightness. Hue will change the color of the layer, in this case the hair. Scroll through left and right for different options, I chose to keep it the same hue, but what I want is to make it darker. I went to saturation, which tones the color down, or really brightens it up, but I toned the color of mine down just a bit, to where it was a little greyer. Then, Lightness. If you go completely to each end, you’ll see one is pure white, and one is pure black, while I like the pure black look, I don’t want to lose all that detail I added in, so I turned the lightnes down just a bit to where it was dark, but you could still see the details.

Here is the end result, I still have my details in there, and the hair is nice and dark. I went and took a 3 pix size brush and very lightly painted some blue highlights where the reflection would be. I also colored in his eyebrows to match his hair color. There you go! It’s simple, and if you want, you can even add more colors to this, maybe even add more strands (but don’t go too crazy or else it will look like the hair is just made up of nothing but string).

That’s all for the hair tutorial, quick, easy and fun indeed! More should be coming soon, maybe I can finish one before I go to sleep tonight… since I have icky work in the morning at 9 am! Bahhh, May Neptune have mercy on my soul. ;-; Any how, till next time, this is Tala signing out!

Photomash 2

*Collapses*

Wow, Marisol here, back after a short hiatus to work on a new tutorial. It’s been a busy few days here for me, and I am tired! I’ve been working on the tutorials and studying for my psychology final and tying up some loose ends with things. I have great news: I got an A on my psychology paper! Psychology is one of my worst subjects, and I’ve never done well in it–until now! It takes me to get an A now. Yay! That makes me happy.

Alex and I also updated our “About Us” page; we’ve added images of ourselves. Also, please send a warm welcome to Tala, our newest member to the Sketching House family! Tala was suppose to be with us to begin with, but work and school come first. She will be contributing shortly and her profile will be posted in the About Us section in a few days.

Okay, as I have mentioned, I created a new tutorial. After a long wait, I finished the third part of the Photomashing tutorial and the Photomashed outline drawing, so now, after you reach the end of this, you can forget how long and monotonous this tutorial was. I’m kidding, I hope you don’t forget because many of the techniques you learn here can be transferred to other projects. So, without further ado, Photomashing Part Three: Coloring!

1) Open the finished image you had from the Outline Tutorial. Is it open? GREAT! We’re ready to begin!

First, you’re going to pick colors that you want to use for this project. Go to the layer button on the top of the Photoshop screen and click on “Create new Layer.” In a free corner, we’re going to create a color palette for this image. Choose a color for the skin, clothes, hair, eyes, and lips. Create lines or dots for these colors because we will use the eyedropper tool to use these colors later.

Before we go to step two, let’s go over the the tool settings on Photoshop:

Yeah, the image is a little blurry, but I couldn’t help it. The image shows where the brushes are located, where to choose your colors, and the layers toolbar. There’s also a place for the brush opacity.

2) Now that we have our color palette, we’re going to create a new layer and title it “Skin Base.” Move the outline layer to the top of the skin layer. The outline layer will ALWAYS be on top. Use the eyedropper tool located in the toolbar and choose the color you’re going to use for your skin color. Click on the paintbrush tool and then adjust the brush in the upper toolbar and set it to size 30 and pick an airbrush for the coloring. Airbrushes are softer, so you’ll have a more natural tone to them. Color in the skin using the brush. Don’t be afraid to color outside the lines, because future layers will hide those “mistakes.” You don’t need to be perfect (only God is perfect), so please feel free to color over the eyes, lips, and eyebrows. In fact, I recommend it.

3) Now we’re going to color the jacket. Create a new layer and title it “Jacket.” Make sure the outline layer is still above this layer. Choose the color you are using for the jacket (or whatever your character is wearing; why am I assuming you have the same image I have?), and again, choose the airbrush paintbrush. Color the jacket. If you have any other clothes in the image like I do, you can color that any color you choose, also.

4) Now we’re going to color the hair. If you remember from my digital hair tutorial, creating hair digitally is very easy. Create a new layer and title it “Hair Base,” then choose the color you want the base to be. If you remember from the Digital Hair Tutorial, pick a color that is darker than what your hair is going to be. I chose black, even though my hair is going to be brown. Why? Because the black base will act as the hair’s undertones.

Color all the hair the dark color. On my image, the black looks like a calligraphy pen exploded, but don’t worry; it’ll look better letter. Trust me, oh mysterious viewers. Don’t forget to color your eyebrows, either.

5) Create a new layer and title it “Eyes and Lips.” Choose the color you want for the lips and color them in. If you want a more dressed up look, choose a lip color that’s DARKER than usual. If you want lips that look more natural, pick a lighter lip base. We’re going to shade these later.

Pick a color you want to use for the eyes. I’ve always loved violet eyes, so that’s the color I used. Make sure that when you color the eyes, you create a light source. Without a light source, your eyes look dead; we don’t want zombie drawings… unless you want a zombie, then by all means, be my guest.

6) Now we’re ready to shade. Go to your “Skin Base” layer and click on it. Next, create a new layer and title it “Skin Shade.” Use the eyedropper tool and select the base skin color. Now, open up your color palette and choose a light shade that is 2 SHADES DARKER than the skin base. You are still using the airbrush tool. Determine where your light source is. The light source is coming from where you indicated light in the eyes. You don’t want a light source that is all over the place; the image will look goofy. After you found the light source, color the opposite side (where you indicated the light is not hitting) and color the edges of the skin with the darker color. You will also add the color along and underneath the nose. Also add a littl bit of the dark color underneath the lips. Color in underneath the chin and the side of the neck. Create “circles” under the eyes.

Now pick a color that is two shades darker than the color you just used. Overlap the darker color over the edges of the color you just used, but leave the other color out still. You want to create depth with your shadows.

Next, pick a shade that is two shades LIGHTER than the base color. Where the light source is, airbrush this color on the edges. Now your skin looks more realistic. Notice how your image is starting to have depth?

7) Now we’re going to shade the eyes and lips. Go to the “Eyes/Lips” layer and click on it. Then create a new layer titled “Eye/Lip Shade.” Use the eyedropper tool to select the lip colored you used. Now, use the magnifying glass zoom in to the lips. Choose a color that is TWO SHADES DARKER than the base color. Color the inside of the lips near the line that indicates the smile and color that, using the airbrush tool, in order to indicate shadowing. Also color in the sections that are away from the light source this color.

Choose another color that is another shade darker than the previous color and add this color slightly to the edges of the color you just used. This creates depth.

Now, choose a color that is two shades LIGHTER than the base color. Color the center of the lips LIGHTLY with this color in order to indicate shine–like lip gloss. Use the blur tool to soften the colors into each other.

For the eyes, you can do whatever you want shading-wise with the irises. Anything goes here! But with the whites of the eyes, choose a grey color and shade the whites at the TOP. This makes the eyes pop at you and shows the shadow of the eyelashes.

Choose a smaller brush (size 3) and create eyelashes by starting at the top of the lid and going up and out as shown in the image (or you can download eyelash brushes).

8 ) On to hair. Isn’t it exciting? After you click on the “Hair Base” layer, create a new layer and title it “Hair.” It’s 4am here currently, so for now, I’m just going to tell you you to visit the digital hair tutorial until I’m more awake.

9) Now we’re going to shade the jacket. Go to the “Jacket” layer, click on it then create a layer titled “Jacket Shade.” Choose a color that is two shades darker than the base color and color the sections that are opposite the light source. Any areas that are folded also have these darker tones, also. Use the blur tool to smooth the edges.

Next, choose a shade that is two shades lighter than the base color and the sections that the light is hitting in this color. Use the blur tool to smooth out the edges.

You can also click on the “Outline” layer and use the blur tool to smooth out the outline so it blends into the picture more.

10) Now at this point, you can say your image is complete, but you can add a background like I did. Now add your signature, your image is complete!

This seems like a lot of steps, but it’s really easy, trust me. Now it’s late and I gotta go to work in the morning.

This is Marisol, signing out!

Ever since I was young (many moons ago), Lady and the Tramp has ALWAYS been my favorite Disney movie. I had a cocker spaniel for almost 17 years, so I have ALWAYS loved cocker spaniels. My cocker spaniel was my little “Lady,” so even though my baby girl has passed away, cocker spaniels and Lady and the Tramp will always have a soft spot in my heart. I also find Lady and the Tramp to be extremely romantic and a great date movie… I am serious! Girl from the right side of the tracks falls for a boy from the wrong side of the tracks—CLASSIC! So, in honor of Lady and the Tramp and its upcoming 40^th Anniversary, why don’t I teach you how to draw Tramp? Since I have a lot of papers to work on right now, I am going to use a tutorial I created on E-How over the summer.

NOTE: I DO NOT own Disney, Lady and the Tramp, or ANY PART of Disney!

Let us begin!

1) Draw a medium-sized circle that will serve as Tramp’s head. Add a cylinder to the lower left part of the circle. This is his muzzle. Add two lines to the lower right corner, about a half inch apart. This is his neck.

2) At the base of the two lines that you have just drawn, add another circle. Draw a smaller circle to the right that is slightly upward. The second circle should be three-eighths of a centimeter to the right of and above the larger circle (I use measurements to sound smart, however, it does not really matter to me). Add two lines that connect the circles.

3) Add four columns that stem from the circles you just added. Two columns should start from the larger circle and splay out and slightly forward. The other two columns should originate from the back circle. These are the legs.

4) Now add circles to the bottom of each column. These are Tramp’s feet. Add a curved triangle to the back of the small circle for a tail. Add any shape you like to indicate the ears on the top of Tramp’s head. I say any shape because I am a bit obsessive compulsive, so I have to use the precise shape. You can add squares, triangles, ovals, decagons… I do not care; just DO NOT let me see what you did, I will go CRAZY!

5) Trace over your guidelines and start to flesh out Tramp. Erase your guidelines and add details. Please press slightly harder with your pencil when tracing over your guidelines so your outline does not get erased. If you are using Photoshop, create a new layer.

6) After you have fleshed out Tramp, add fur and features. For this part, use a image of Tramp so you can get his face correct. It took me about two hours to create his face because for some reason, the Lady and the Tramp characters are the hardest for me to draw. I think it is because if the spacing between all the facial features has to be absolutely precise; if not, the whole image just looks weird!

7) Color your image! Tramp has four colors: Medium grey, yellow grey, white, and black.

8 ) Send your completed image to sketchinghouseonline@gmail.com! We’ll post your image on the “Viewers Page!.”

That was easy, huh? The method I just showed you with the drawing of circles is useful for any other image you care to draw.

Well, with that, I am off to go finish a paper or two. The semester is almost over, thank God. I am experiencing severe burnout.

Remember, have fun and happy drawing!

Love always,

Marisol

CHEESE!

1) Choose a dark blue color (but not too dark) that will serve as the base color. Use the paint can tool to color the whole image that color. I like to use a light Navy blue color. Keep in mind, too, you don’t just have to use dark blue, because you can use purple, also. You can use other colors, too, like pink, green, orange—whatever LSD trip you want to go on (we do not condone drug usage of any kind at Sketching House).

2) Choose the BURN tool (the folded hand) from the tool menu and pick the LEAF brush from the default brush menu of the tool bar. Set the opacity to 15 on the tool menu and make the leaf brush between the sizes of 70 and 74; I use the default of 74. Use the burn tool and darken portions of the image, leaving UNBURNED portions that will be tended to in the next step. Make sure you darken some portions of the image so that those portions will appear almost BLACK (or depending on whatever color you use, it should just be really DARK).

3) Take the DODGE tool (right click the burn tool, pick the tool that looks like a round thumbtack) and use the same LEAF brush that was used in step two. TIP: You may keep the brush size between 70-75, but any sized brush between 60-75 will do just fine. Now in the LIGHT areas you left in step two, use the dodge tool to create light white to bright white sections in the sky. These white sections are like “Milky Ways,” indicating star belts. Make sure the white space doesn’t overpower your dark or medium spaces.

4) Create a new layer and title it “Stars.” Take the paintbrush tool (not the leaf brush) and use brush sizes 5-14, and vary the stars. TIP: Where the white parts are, add more stars. Where it’s black, add very few stars.

5) After you finish the stars add a third layer called “Star Bright” and put your brush tool on fade brush, using sizes that correspond with the star sizes you used in step 4. Pick FEW and RANDOM stars, preferably in the star belts, and lightly tap over the stars ONCE to make them glow. This is the night sky.

Whoa! That was simple, huh? Now spice it up with flying monkeys, flying pigs, gremlins, macaroni noodles or something fun and worthwhile. Enjoy yourself!

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Read my blog in the “Everything Blog.” I’m a bitter and angry woman right now.

Love always,

Marisol

1) Set your chosen image as the background in Photoshop, GIMP, etc. Create a new layer and title the layer “Hair Base,” and set the image opacity to 53 percent. Color where the hair should be using any color you choose. You may use multiple colors if your character has multicolored hair or is a clown, but either way, get creative with your base color. However, do not create strands yet. In fact, don’t create strands in this layer.

Make a new layer and wait for the chimes to tell you to move on to the next step. *DING!*

That means you can go onto step two! Hooray!

2) Title your new layer “Dark Tones.” In this layer, you will add several strands of hair that start from the top of the head. The strands are created using a size three brush (although size four is nice, also; whatever floats your boat). Change the layer opacity to 100%. Additionally, you can change the paintbrush opacity to 100% if you choose. Use multiple dark colors for your hair’s dark tones. Dark tones are one-three shades darker than the base color. Mix all three.

Additionally, make sure you overlap and “muss” your hair. If not, your hair will look unrealistic. Have strands that go every-which-way and have fun with your dark tones. Also, create “flyaways,” like those annoying “sticky-out” strands of hair we girls get during the winter. I’m experiencing static-electricity hair right now because it’s been 25 degrees every day this week; yeah, not fun AT ALL. THAT makes me angry (among a few other things).

*Ehem* Now, we’re on to step three.

3) Now create a new layer called “Midtones.” Here, you’re going to use colors that are equal-to and slightly lighter than your base color (step one). Now create strands of hair like you did in step two. Use less midtones than you did dark tones; you do not want to overpower your shadowed pieces. After you add your midtones, take your blur tool, set it to 45%, and LIGHTLY go over your strands.

4) Create a layer titled “Light Tones.” Now you need to use colors that are up to four shades lighter than your base colors. Those shades that are 3-4 shades lighter than the base color go where your light source is, and those shades that are 1-2 shades lighter can be spread out, but not abundantly. DO NOT add a bunch of light strands all over your character’s head; this will look unrealistic. Instead, think about where you would like light to shine from, then add the strands in those areas. After you add your strands, use your blur tool, set it to 412 on the airbrush setting, and one click blur your hair.

5) After you add your light tones, flatten your image. If you need to fix your dark tones, take the burn tool and lightly go over spots you feel need to be darken. After this step, you have successfully completed creating digital hair.

Wasn’t that simple? I told you! This technique also works with anime hair, male hair, animal fur, and back hair if want to draw that (but why would anyone want to? I have a fear of back hair)! Fool around with your techniques, also and see if you can create your own method of creating digital hair. Have fun and enjoy creating hair! Yippee!!!

MARISOL’S CLOSING THOUGHTS

Sometimes, there’s just too much pressure and too much negativity. People are always driving me to be perfect, to be what they want me to be. Sometimes, I can’t meet those expectations. Sometimes, the love of my life ignores me when I need him most and he grows emotionally distant. Sometimes, I feel so empty, and I wonder what the point of being here is. Sometimes, I feel hopeless, but I keep going on because my life is worth living and enduring through anything. I can’t run, I can’t hide, I have to fight. I wish some people would have more of the ability to fight and face their critics with grace and dignity.

Love always,

Marisol