This is my first tutorial. It's not about how to draw, because I don't know enough about traditional techniques of art (anatomy, perspective and so on). I just draw what I see, the only difference is that what I see is usually in my head. I don't have fond memories of being taught art at school (I very nearly failed), though looking back it does seem odd that my teacher spent her time telling me I was rubbish, and that I couldn't draw, rather than actually, you know teaching me.

Part One: Proper Drawing

This tutorial assumes that you've either got a scanner, a graphics tablet or you're okay with drawing on the computer. I find it fairly easy to do broad shading strokes on a PC, but I can't draw fine lines. So I use a scanner to scan my pencil drafts in. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, and I'm pretty sure mine is the cheapest scanner on the market.

1. Background. So. Take one piece of paper, and a pencil. Draw something. The amount of shading you use is up to you. I tend to shade softly and leave lots of white spaces in my drawings. I use a 6H pencil (medium hard) to lightly sketch the outline, before going over the lines and shading in darker areas ridiculously heavily with a 6B (medium soft).

I scan the image in at 100% size and then resize crop it to the appropriate size, which tends to be around 900x700, but on a smaller monitor it's better to work with more managable sizes. I then run the image through Highlight/Midtone/Shadow adjustment (Colors > Adjust), with the Dynamicadjustment reducing Shadow by -50 and Midtone by -50. This helps to blacken the image up a bit, without harming the more delicate pencil shading. Save your image as a Paint Shop Pro .psp file.

The end result should be something like the above; pretty plain looking, but with some shading detail to give the image roughtness.

2. Basic Shading. The next part is the first layer of shading. Create a new Raster Layer called 'basic shaing' or something similar with the Blend Mode of Hard Light (Layer > Properties). What this does is blend the shading with the background layer (the scanned pencil), so the pencil shows through but you don't lose any of the colour. The main thing this alters in your shading is that if you put a colour down on 'basic shading' it will appear lighter on the picture, because it's blending with the white of the background layer. So when you chose your colour, make it about 20% darker than you normally would do.

Colour your image in with a basic colour for each area, something would be the mid range of the palette; not dark, but not light. I find it helpful to think of each colour area of the image separately. You don't have to pay much attention to light effects in this layer, but just make sure the foreground is nice and vibrant. For this shading I use the Paint Brush tool, with opacity set to 100%, hardness set to 50% (too avoid any hard edges) and size of 15, 20 or 30.

Colour selection is important here. If you look at the final image, you'd probably say it looked pretty virbrant, over the top even. But in fact the colours I've used are rarely very strong. Almost never use pure colours, always dilute them with some grey. The martian's skin looks green, but in fact it's in the greyer half of the selection palette. If what you're painting isn't something unreal like a martian scene, then always use quite dull colours. The overall effect will be to make your picture look a lot more realistic.

3. Shading 1. Make another layer, with the Hard Light Blend Mode (Layer > Properties). This layer will be the next bit of shading. Call it something like 'shading 1'. Usually it's a mixture of dark shadow and medium bright areas. In this image, I've just added more light areas with only a slight touching up of the dark. Pay close attention to the direction the light is coming from, and alter your shading to match. In this image the light is coming from the sun over the mountains.

You'll notice that the Hard Light Blend Modemakes the colours different again. You'll have to select colours which are more accurate to the colour you intend than before; but remember to keep them fairly dull. The colour I'm using in the image to the right is the colour I used for the brighter shading. For this type of shading I use opacity 20% and hardness 0%, with a brush size of between 8 and 15. This creates a smooth feel, and helps the colour to blend nicely with the previous layer. In places on the image, such as around the blue-grey mountains, I've used a paint brush of lower opacity (about 5%). Don't be afraid to make lots of small strokes which gradually build up.

As you can see, I've made some swirly cloud effects on this layer. All I've done is applied a few blotches of colour, then mixed them around with the Retouch tool, using the Smudge mode. At the moment the sun is just a blob of off-white.

4. Shading 2. Because I didn't feel the martian figure was sharp enough in the previous layer, I've added another layer ('shading 2') which is just some brighter colour applied to the alien's face, using brush of 20% opacity and 0% hardness, also using the same Hard Light Blend Mode. I usually use this layer to add extra light areas to my images. Don't be afraid of being bold with your colouring; the only way to make an image look three-dimensional is to have strong contrasts.

You find what you have now is a fairly good computer painting, something along the lines of the below pic. However it lacks what I call sparkliness. Usually by this I mean effects like coloured light, reflections, mist, etc; things which are very hard to produce on canvas, but pretty damn easy on a computer. This is where you picture is removed from being just a painting on a computer, to being something which (were it done with oil paint) would be a minor masterpiece.

Proceed to Part Two: Things to Make it Look Good and Cover Up Your Mistakes
 
 

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