Preview of Final Results
Concept: This image actually started as a random sketch. Photoshop File size of the initial sketch work is 700x839. Resolution must be 72 for now. Later you need to make it bigger to add painting details. But not now. For this artwork, I only use Adobe Photoshop and a Wacom Tablet. If you are a painter, and you are trying to transfer to the computer, it will be necessary for you to get a tablet. It's the best way to translate your traditional skills to the digital world. A mouse will simply not do it for you. A new user says: Just got the tablet this week, but can't figure out how to get the pen to draw. It's fine and as easy as working with a mouse, but can't get it to do anything else. What am I doing wrong? I say you really just need to open a painting program like Adobe Photoshop or CorelDRAW Premium Suite X5 or maybe CorelPainter. This is the world's most powerful Natural-Media software. Select a brush and just try to write! Write your name and draw a circle or a square. Get a feel for it. Try different brushes with different sizes, hardness, and angles. The idea of a tablet is that you draw on it and the drawing appears in whatever art program you have running. You could use your tablet also as a mouse. My tablet is a Wacom Graphire4 4x5 USB (Blue) It is amazing. Wacom makes the best tablets!)
Step 1: After a quick search of my idea in sketches, I created a simple main sketch. As I said before, the idea was to picture a cute cartoon girl with a sun in her hand. My tutorial represents a fantasy girl character who wants a sun. I decided to paint a fantastic illustration of a cartoon girl who was trying to take the sun in her hands. Here as you see on the final image, there are lots of little stars around her. She want a big sun in her hand not a star. She thinks: "I want a sun. A sun so bright like this one" Once I'd defined the shape of the girl I spent some time on the colors, things like the main colors and the background color. Main sketch is very important, because in the process of drawing you can fix things simply and painlessly, and get a clear vision of the image.
Step 2: I began this image with a plain background in Photoshop onto which I splashed on some colors. Well,if you ask why? it was because I don't like working on plain-looking backgrounds. Adding a some varying colour keeps me interested in an image and also helps me to achieve the desired mood with a bit more ease. I then created a new layer and started the sketch.
Step 3: On the next steps I'm going to create some more layers. The reason for painting on such new layers is that you need to make corrections later in the painting. It is much easier to fix errors if the main elements of your painting are separate entities. I blocked in the colors with a large hard round brush and then roughly added detail with a smaller size of the same blocking brush. I also created a new layer for the hair, and roughly painted it in. It was at this point that I decided to leave it alone and forgot about it for a while.
Step 4: Coming back to it later, I decided to improve upon it, as I liked the direction it was taking. I further detailed her face and the cloth , using a small hard round brush and soft round brush to smooth it out as I went along. I also worked a little more on her lips and eye, added some colors to her hair, and decided that I wanted the background must have some little stars, yellow star or green... but I can change it later. It maybe be white-blue or it could be green. Well, I do think now the green stars really would be very proper for my painting.
Step 5: Here now I decided to change the girl's cloth color. I am thinking now the red color would be very proper for my cartoon girl character. Also I spent some more time smoothing out the skin and features. The cloth was refined by first blocking in the strands with a medium soft round brush and then adding in the details with a smaller hard round brush with shape dynamics turned on. I decided that the background was too light to depict the mood I was aiming for, so I duplicated the colored background layer and set the layer mode to overlay. I also want to modify the movement of head to make her look more lively. She must turn her head a little up to sky.
Step 6: By now it was time to start detailing the sun . For the sun, I painted its shape in deep yellow on a separate layer, and set the layer to overlay in order to achieve the effect that is seen in the image. And I have used only two layers for the sun. One for the main colours and the other one is for the brightness at the background. As you see, I started this piece with several sketches which don't look anything like the final image.
Step 7: Now it is time for details. Here I have decided to change the background totally. It was easy to change because I have separate layers for all the objects in my illustration. I used a Hard Edge brush and started adding as much details as I could, just using lighter and darker tones of blues for the background . As you can see, the image now has color. I started experimenting with different color schemes. Greens are commonly my first option. Everything depends on your style. I got to detail the hair.
Step 8: (I always like to save my layers in case I need to edit the image later) and then reopened it in Photoshop for post-production (For me, my images are never really complete until I have done a bit of post-production on them).. I kept experimenting with colors. I added some dark green to the background and then I noticed the picture was getting too darky so I changed that on the other step. I also modified the hair color a little (to make it look more realistic).
Step 9: I also want some bright sun lights and a details like a streak of lightning.. After running through a few possibilities, I decided on the one shown below. It was quite rough at this stage but that would be taken care of later. And I must say each element went into a separate layer, which allowed me to quickly select its contents and make changes in the coloring easily. Command+Click (mac) or Control+Click (windows) on a layer's image in the 'Layers' palette to load its opacity as a selection.
Step 10: The next step was adding details to her hair and painting some light colors. I then spent 5 minutes on drawing details on her hair . Those little details must look like that they are flying out from the sun.
Step 11: Now this was where things got fun. Everything was on a separate layer, I could make all sorts of changes to the various color layers to create different moods. Here I used Control+U (windows), (Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation) on pretty much every layer to tweak it for effect. If I wanted a warmer light, I would shift the hue of just the Highlights layer. I then duplicated the image. Flattening the layer, I adjusted the image using the Brightness/Contrast tool (located under Adjustments in the Image tool list) until I achieved the desired effect.
Conclusion
Well, now it is time to shut down the Photoshop. The original image was done completely in Photoshop CS3, and its resolution is roughly 4000 by 5800 pixels. As a final touch I like to add a Smart Sharpen filter on the flattened result, to get a slightly crispier look. It really helps to make small details, like highlight spots. I learned this cheating in an another 2d painting tutorial from internet. Heyyyy I must say I had a lot of fun with this painting. I hope you enjoyed reading this tutorial.
