Learn simple how to steps to paint your character drawings on Photoshop.

The Steps for Painting A Caricature

The last video/blog I did, showed you how to “Paint A Line On Computer”, using a caricature drawing of myself. This video/blog reveals how painting a caricature, comic or cartoon with that line on top of it can be done.

• Import Drawing

  First, do a line drawing or import the drawing you want for character painting.
  Follow the steps in the video/blog mentioned above for painting the line. Make sure the line is its own layer.

• Duplicate Drawing

  I begin by duplicating my line. Command (Mac) or Control (PC) J. This gives a line layer above (for finished covering), with one below (a painting guide).

• Create A New Layer

  Click on the copy symbol at the bottom right corner of Photoshop to create a new layer. You will paint on this new layer between the lines.

Start with Flat Colors

• Flat Color

• When painting a caricature begin with a flat basic color for every section. I did this on my face, my shirt, my glasses etc.
• Of course I clean up should I go outside the line. I then make adjustments in the tone of my color as I go.

• When I start painting my shirt, as a way to speed painting it, I put a marquee around the line which helps me isolate the shirt off and allow me to go through it quicker. The marquee prevents me from painting directly on the line therefore I’ll need to go back and paint in missed areas under the line.
• I do the same for my glasses and my eyes. Then clean up underneath the marquee line there as well.

• When I finish cleaning up, I work on some hair textures that I drew in. I paint in a solid color for the hair. Then do a transparency percentage which will allow hair texture to show through from the layer beneath it.
• I isolate my eye color with the marquee tool in order to make an adjustment, using the hue saturation color slider.

• I do the same thing on my lips making an adjustment using hue saturation. Then clean up afterwards.
• I repeat the same procedure to give a shadow under my nose using only flat color for the time being.

• Now I add flat color in the shadow areas of my shirt.

Dimensional Rending

From here I start doing dimensional rending with an airbrush approach when painting a caricature.

•  Determine Light Direction

• I decided to have light coming from the left going toward the right which will cast a shadow on the right side of everything. It’s always important to know direction your light is coming from.
• The fun of painting with computer is that as I paint in some light areas, I shift them if they are not exactly in the shape or place I wanted them to be. Using the move or the warp tool helps with that. I brighten the area up some with adjustment sliders or color shifts on my shirt if it needs. I decided to cool down the shirt color a bit adding a slight blue touch.

• Then clean up my glasses and give a shadow side to it.
• For my face shadowing I created a darker “Layer Adjustment Mask”, then erase out unwanted areas. I shift the colors a little bit and brighten it up so it has a strong sense of light and shadow.

• I do a “Layers Mask” for my hair and I brighten it up and erase out the unwanted so it looks like light is hitting my hair, and there’s a shadow side.
• I decided to give more shadowing under my nose. Now I’ll work on my lips to give a light and shadow side to that as well with a shift in color.

• Then I’ll have the few spots to clean up, a few mistakes I haven’t seen before, shifting my face color some.
• This is where I paint in the nostrils. I’ll add a little more detail to my lips. Bring out some highlights. It’s amazing to me how highlights add more dimensionality.
• Now I give a light area to my beard and mustache. First, marquee it off, then paint in light spots.
• I will give highlights to my glasses making the line straight across and using the “Warp Tool” to put it in place. Marquee it off to make it easier to paint in other highlights.

One of the things I like doing is giving reflective light because it gives more dimensionality and extra color interest.

• In this case I’m using cooler reflective light because my face is overall warm so it make for a good visual balance when painting a caricature.

• My glasses needed a darker area on the arm to push back one portion of it.
• Now I’m working on my eyes, I’ll give myself a pupil, erase some of that out. I’ll put some Shadowing on my iris trying to give it some dimensions. Then give some shadow to the white part of the eyes then clean them up. Now I’m giving myself a lip to the lower eyelid giving dimensionality. Putting some highlights to the eye. Checking things that I may need to clean up. Darken the upper eyelids a little more.

• Put a shadowing on my wrinkle lines, not too heavy, and then a light side to my wrinkles. Soften some of that edge a little bit.
• Putting a little more shadow under my nose for dimensionality as well as on my lips. Some shadow on my glasses. Adding a little more shadow to my nose to feel more anchor to my face.
• I painted a background card for the finished look. Below is the completed character.

Hope that was helpful! Give it a try, and let me know how it turns out!

You may find “Painting with Photoshop On Computer” and “How To Paint Digitally With Photoshop” helpful with related details to this blog/video.

One of my favorite tools in Photoshop allows me to paint within a line or constrained area with great ease. This is helpful for me because my hand has a natural tremor to it making it challenging to keep within the space I want. This tool gives much aid to that problem.

The Marquee Tool

You’ve heard me in the past talk about a “Marquee Tool”. That’s a broken line you can create in various shapes or freehand that constrains or isolate your artistic working space also. In this case I use the square “Marquee Tool”as shown below. You can also check out “Painting With Photoshop On Computer” or “How to Paint Digitally With Photoshop”. These give examples of using a Marquee Tool.

Even though I move outside the line nothing happens except when the brush goes within the isolated square area. And that’s where the painting start. That’s quite useful when you want to stay within a given area. But this post is more about the “Lock Tool”.

The Line or Image Lock Tool

There’s another tool that basically locks the artwork or image and allow you to stay within a line or confines of the image you’re working with. To give an example of this, I’ll use a caricature drawing I did of myself using Photoshop.

The Simple Steps

• The Layer

  Click on the image layer with the line work or image you want to paint. I want to color only within a line or lines itself. Nothing outside of the line or shape.

  

• The Tool to Paint Within A Line

  Then click on the lock tool as shown below. You’ll see the lock icon appear to the right on the same layer. This allows me to paint color into the line and only the line or shape. A wonderful photoshop tool Adobe thought of for the software.

  

• Then Paint

   

  Now just start painting in the color or colors you desire for the image. Below you see I used different colors in different areas, such as the shirt, glasses, skin and hair colors.

  

It means being more careful as lines intersect to keep the specific color where you want it to be.

You can also Marquee off the portions of the lines where you want certain colors to be confined as well which would speed up the approach.

Image Lock

The same application can be applied to an image as well allowing you to paint within that image, but not outside of it. Below is a painted example of the black image being locked, then doing whatever your artistic expression desires within it. You can also use any of the adjustment tools for changing values, colors, Exposure, contrast parameters, etc. you may like.

How do you like the colors within the lines of my Title Art?

Simple! Give it a try. Next time I’ll paint in my caricature.

Getting An Opinion

I ask my children which one of my paintings they thought would be most interesting to do a digital art alteration on. The answer was, either Encroaching Falls or Favorite End. I did both. In this post I’ll give some general pointers to my digital approach to “Favorite End”.

First here’s a glance at the “Encroaching Fall” painting image which I made a digital art alteration to for a “Happy Thanksgiving” post I shared with friends and family on my social media pages.

The Required Challenge In These Digital Art Alterations

The concept given was to bring a minimalist approach to the painting “Favorite End”.  The challenge being, make it foggy to drop out more details, remove the tree branches on the left hand side, remove the flowers to simplify the look, show as little information as possible and still allow it to be a working painting.

Removing The Tree Branches

• Removing The Unwanted

  I started the process by isolating out the tree branches and using “Content Aware” as I deleted them. “Content Aware” replaces deleted material with surrounding color information. In this case, some of the sky area that is in the painting itself.

• Repairing Replacement Info

  Then I used the “Healing Brush Tool” to clean up patches of the sky that “Content Aware” filled in that did not work quite as well for me. There are times I use the brush tool to paint over areas for a better look. Content Aware and Healing Brush are wonderful tools for digital art alterations.

Adding The Fog

• Finding My Way With Layer Mask

  Because I’m not quite sure where I want to take this. I’m simply experimenting with different possibilities, using different “Layer Masks”. Of course, I use “Levels Layer Mask” to give it a foggy look. I’m using “Photo Filters” to try and get a feeling of color I may want. “Selective Color” as well, and “Hue Saturation” to desaturate the color in certain areas to aid the fogginess.

• Gaining Some Clarity As I Go

  I decided to play off a bit of the warm against cools to help give a certain look. Because the fog lessen some cloud detail, I’m painting a white edge to the clouds to help with some of the form lost. I painted in extra fog creeping over the mountains to help solidify the foggy look. 

• One Method To Approach Painting

  Digital painting lends itself to positive and negative painting. When using a “Layer Mask” I will generally fill an area with the mask, then erase out a certain unwanted percentage of it. Because of the fog effect, I approach most of this painting in that manner.

Removing the Flowers?

• Playing It Safe

  Now rather than painting out the flowers, I simply try to turn them more greenish and yellow in flavor by using a “Selective Color” layer mask to help me do that. This way I can determine whether I really want to get rid of the flowers or not. After doing this, I decided to leave the flower colors to maintain a certain color balance to the picture. But I keep them toned down (or desaturate in color) by the foggy effect.

• Visual Balance

  Without the tree branches, the picture falls visually heavy to the right side to me. Because of this I felt it was important to put the tree branches back in to give it balance. I played around with it to push it more towards the left, not quite as far into the picture as I had it before, and kept it tone down as well. I copied and pasted branches from the original image, which means I had to erase out the old sky color around the branches in order for the new sky color to show through. Then did similar digital art alterations to shift the color to fit the new environment.

• Finalizing The Look

  I continue to play back and forth with various “Photo Filter” layer masks both warm and cool filters, to help me determine what range of color I wanted in this picture.

  
  Once I finalize me decision, I cleaned up my Chinese name stamp to fit the new environment.

Here’s a comparison of the old and the new. Send me a note, tell me what you think, and happy painting.

You might find “The Painting Advantages of Digital vs Traditional”, “How To Paint Digitally With Photoshop”, or “How To Paint Digitally With Photoshop”