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

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