Since summer vacation began, I’ve had the opportunity to draw more and experiment with new Photoshop brushes. Previously, I shared some of the drawings I did using some of these new brushes, but those images were on a smaller scale, so it may have been difficult to see the effects. As mentioned before, one of my favorite brushes is the downloadable skin texture brush, simply because the brushes make skin appear more porous, eliminating the smooth airbrushed look that Photoshopped skin usually has. Here’s how to draw textured skin using skin texture brushes.

1) Color the entire skin area with a base color. Use a regular Photoshop airbrush brush to complete this.

2) Move your cursor over to the brush selection menu and click on the two small arrows that are to the right. Find where it says “Load Brushes” and open the menu. Find the folder titled “Skin Texture Photoshop Brushes” and open it. The brushes have loaded into the brush selection menu.

3) Create a new layer from your “Layer” menu. Move over to the color selection at the bottom lefthand corner. Choose a shade that is one to two shades darker than the skin color you chose as your base. In the brush selection menu, pick skin brush 91 (the second brush on the list), and increase the size of this brush to 291px or larger.

4) Change the brush opacity to 80%. Move the brush lightly over the skin base color so you create a slightly mottled appearance. You now have the look of pores on the skin. Cool, huh?

5) Take your blur tool and change the opacity to 45%. Lightly run the blur tool over the mottled skin in order to smooth it a bit so the skin doesn’t look heavily freckled. The skin base is now complete.

6) Create a new layer and call it “Dark Shading.” Determine where your shadows will be. Choose another skin texture brush from the brush selection menu and adjust the size to meet your needs. I like to start with the lightest darks then move up to the really dark tones, but you don’t necessarily have to do this. If you do, choose a dark shade that’s four times darker than the base color. Use this tone all along the shadowed areas you wish to have. Next, move onto your darker tone which should be one to two shades darker than the first dark tone you used. Place the darker tones where you feel they need to be. Finally, pick an even darker shade for the dark tones and place those where you deem necessary. Notice how the brushes created a dappled appearance? This is what you want.

7) Take your blur tool and keep the opacity at 45% or lower. Lightly brush over the dark tones to create a smoothly blended appearance.

Create a new layer and call it “Light Tones.” Choose a skin texture brush and an almost white shade of the color you used for the skin base. Determine where your light source is and add the light shades based on this. Again, use the blur tool to smooth your edges.

And tada! You’ve created a skintastic skin appearance!

Wasn’t that easy? I hope so. Happy drawing!

Mari

It’s currently really early for me, too. I could not sleep a wink last night for some reason, yet, I was very tired. Personally, it sucks. I’m very tired and I have that somewhat dizzy feeling I usually get when I’m very tired. It sucks more because, today, Alex and I are suppose to go back to Artist’s Square to do some antique shopping. I better get a lot of coffee in me, or else I’m not going to survive the day.

*Yawns*

I have an idea. How about instead of me rambling on about how tired I am, how about we do another tutorial? We’ve done hair–digital, long, short, and medium length–eyes, lips, but we haven’t structured a full face. I have three methods for structuring a face: anime style, unfeatured, and features first. Today, I’m going to use a style that I’m totally unaccustom to: unfeatured. This is going to be scary.

*Rubs eyes and yawns again*

Now, dearest Mari, what is an unfeatured face, you–our wonderful, yet mysterious viewers–may ask. The answer is simple, my friends. An unfeatured face is a face structure you draw BEFORE adding the eyes, nose, and mouth. I usually draw all my facial features before, THEN add the face around it, then a friend of mine–who is totally annoying me at the moment, but that’s a rant for another time–pointed out that, sometimes, my faces look goofy because I do things that way. Well, poo on him. To each their own, I suppose. But anyway, that is besides the point. So, I figured I’d try doing the face structure FIRST, then add the features. Now every character I draw kinda looks like Jennifer Aniston. Hopefully, this will not be the case for you!

Additionally, for this tutorial, I apologize for my shading looking very dark and askew. My family, for some reason, has an aversion to using lights in my house. I think it has to do with NIPSCO raising the electric bill 50% or something. Eep!

Now for the tutorial!

FACE STRUCTURE

1) First, you’re going to draw a figure that looks like an egg standing on the tip. The tip will act like a chin guideline, the fat part, the top of the head. You know, I never really noticed this, but all our heads are kinda shaped like eggs. Wow!

Next, we’re going to separate our egg into sections. No, we’re not separating our yolk from our whites; we’re not cooking today. What I mean is that we’re going to literally section off our head so the face itself will be easier to create later on. Starting from the chin, measure about an inch to half an inch up; Draw a straight horizontal line at this point. From the line down is where the mouth and chin will be. Next, measure half an inch up from this line; create another horizontal line. This sections off where the lips will go. From that line, measure, once more, a half an inch up. Draw another horizontal line; this is where the lower half of the nose guidelines will go. Now, measure 3/4 of an inch up and add a horizontal line; this is where the middle nose guideline will go. Then, from the 3/4 line, measure half an inch up and draw a horizontal line; these are where the eyes will go.

WHEW! Holy moley, that’s a lot of measuring. Did I tell you I was not accustom to this? I’m mathematically challenged. Oh, I forgot to mention, adjust my measurements to actually fit the dimensions of your image.

Moving on to step two…

2) At the top of your head, create a basic hair outline. This will determine where you want the bangs to be. This outline doesn’t have to be too detailed.

After creating the hair outline, you’re going to shape the face. You can square off the bottom edges of the egg shape to add jaw definition, if you want. To make this simple, I stuck to the egg shape. Once you drew the lines defining how you want your face structure to look, start shading. The outside edges of the face should be dark, because those are the vanishing points. Shade darkly, then, take the blendy stick (or tortillion, depending on how professional you want to be) and blend these dark lines into your midtones toward the inside of the face. Don’t forget to shade the neck, too! Create shadows to add depth. I don’t think I created the depth illusion well for this image. Like I mentioned before, my depth perception is really bad.

You also want to create jaw features. From the tip of the egg (chin), shade UP toward the inch line we created in step one. You can make this shading as wide or as narrow as you want; it depends on how defined or how hollow your jaw or cheeks are.

My laptop battery is about to die; I better hurry along.

3) Now we’re going to add ears (ear tutorial coming some to a Sketching House near you!). Where the 3/4 inch lines are, add your ears. Start from the upper line and create a C-shape; create a backwards C-shape for the right side. Create smaller C-shapes, or small R-shapes as I have done in the image to create the illusion of the inner ear. Shade the ears, remembering to start with the darker shades first.

Extend the hair outline and add definition.

4) Draw the guidelines for the eyes and nose. The eyes go in the upper 1 inch section; the nose guidelines go in between the eyes and down to the center half inch section. Remember, the nose has a circle and “wings” at the bottom.

5) Create the nose and eyes as we did in the nose and eye tutorials. Shade and blend. Add circles around the eyes to add definition and give the image eyebrows.

6) About a half inch below the nose, add your lips. Remember, the beginning of the lips consist of one horizontal line and circles. Please recall the lip tutorial, if needed.

Shade the lips and add a light source to the entire face.

You have created a face! Congrats! Oh, and please remove the guidelines; I didn’t.

Next time, I will show you how to draw the face structure using anime style and featured style.

This is Marisol signing out so she can go to work!

Love always!