Step 1: Today I am going to show you how to digitally paint a sketch of any kind. I have made my own sketch of a face which you can also use if you would like but do not have to.
Step 2: We will start by opening this sketch in photoshop. Once you have it opened go to layer/ new layer. Once you have a new layer created you will go windows/layers. The layer menu will pop up. You will change the settings of this layer to multiply.
When the layer is at multiply you can color it and do what ever you want to it but the layer under it will still show. So we are going to start coloring in the face now. I am going to use a 17px brush and the main color of the face will be, "FFBA00" and thats excluding the hair, lips, etc.. Thats just the face its self. So start coloring in and dont worry if you go over the lines. This is what you should have so far.
Now color the eyebrows brown, and the hair brown, color the lips in pink, and the eyes could be blue.
Step 3: Now this is where the cool part comes in. We will use brighter and darker colors in order to shade in correctly, so it gives it that realistic look. Look it the image to see where your gonna use darker shades and lighter shades.
So now when you put in the shadings you should come up with something like this. Once again it dosent have to be perfect right away.
Step 4: Now what you have to do is select the first sketch layer again. We are going to have to make it a little bit darker. So go to image/adjustments/brightness and contrast. Leave the brightness the same but change the contrast to about 50.
Now that the sketch is darker we are going to use the smudge tool to smudge it out and make it part of the painting. The sketch will mostly be smudge so it looks like it is part of the shading. The smudge tool can be found right under your eraser. Make sure you have the 17px brush, and that your strength is at about 50%. I will start with the hair and will go down. This is the hair finished.
Now you can move on through the rest of the head. Use smaller brushes where needed and zooming in helps alot.
Step 5: This is the last step to our great project. Once you have everything smudged out you will want to merge all the layers. So go to layer/merge visible. Now we will use the burn and dodge tool for the finishing touches. The dodge tool should be on highlights and the burn tool should be on shadows. They should both have an exposure in the 20-30 range and the brush size is up to you but around a 35 would be fine.
So now we get to the burning and dodging part. The burn tool will make areas darker, the dodge tool will make the areas lighter. once again you can use the diagram I made from the earlier steps where it says where to go dark and where to go light. So do the same thing as we did before with the smudge just go over the areas you need to. I will first do the burning part.
Then the dodging part.
Step 6: The only thing left to do now is to use the smudge tool to make everything smooth again. So just use your smudge tool to go over any rough parts that were left by the burning and dodging. Once you do that you have your finished product.
You can download the finished version psd here.
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