Depth And Facial Illumination

[Impious 0]

All right, the beginning is a simple step: to choose the lineal... this may be not so easy because a lot of linearts are small or of bad quality, so choose carefully and pay attention because there will be some tip here to help you select the perfect lineart.

I quickly found the perfect one... detailed and well drawn, so I’m going to use it as a base in this tutorial. Always reminding that lineart was made by ~minties.

Let’s go the tips:

 

 

Select the face’s colors (normal skin, darkness skin, highlights skin). I’ve got my tree colors so I can paint the face’s base with that.

Now, to be well done, pick the pen tool up and then select the girl’s face. Typing fill and read (:

Mine is like this:

 

 

Now we need to define where the light will come from, I choose from the side (it’s like we are the light). What should I do to start painting? Firstly I pick a brush up with hardness 100% and opacity at about 50%-75% (as smaller the brush, smaller the opacity). With the brush configured in such a way, we are going to have the result of a brushstroke exposed on the left side of the skin.

 

WHERE SHOULD I PUT THE SHADOWS?

 

Shadows must be at the following places: under objects, under the eyes, under nose’s hole, under eye shadows, under the chin and under the lips. But why? Before painting we need to pay attention at the image, we need to try to see a person, and what a person has in the face? Relief! Knowing that eye’s are is darker because it is sunk in the face, knowing that cheeks are lighter because it is “jumped” on the face and so one, we should already know how ii must be.

 

 

Select by red the mainly places where shadows must be put. See how I use my brushes.

 

 

Apply the brush with hardness 100% and leave similar to that. After that, at shadows layer, put a smug to dissolve a little bit and then use Glassium Blur 1.8 or more, depending on the case.

 

 

Remember: in case of doubts look at your own face to see where the relief is. If you look carefully, I changed the nose. There is a small relief between it and cheeks. To do that, I used the Glassing Blur 2.1.

 

 

Ok, now pick up a brush in the wanted size with hardness 0% and opacity and flow at about 10-15%. The color can be the same already used before or a dark one. I prefer use the same color at first. Give a touch in the drawn with that brush. Go fixing the shadows that you already done. Don’t leave it remaining as in above case.

 

 

 

Now we have the base, so we can start adding lighter or darker colors (tones*** não sei se pode usasr nesse contexto) depending on the area. I’m going to improve the shadows with this tools: brushes (same opacity used before), burn tool and smug.

Go practicing!!!

(I added a little bit of gray, took off some extra shadows of the nose using brushes and dodge tool.

 

 

In case your job has been more detailed, we will have something like this:

 

So folks, I hope you had enjoyed this tutorial. It took me a long time and I don’t know a lot yet but I found interesting share with you the knowledge that I had acquired. This might help those one who are starting in this interesting area!!

 

Yours, Impious

Edited October 10, 2007 by Impious (see edit history)