Painting “The Happy Smile” in Adobe Photoshop

Hello everyone! Here I am going to explain the process of painting which I have called “The Happy Smile” This tutorial will lead you through the steps of creating a Story book illustration. I will not go into every single detail, I’ll just show you my working process and what tools and shortcuts I prefer. My tutorial will walk you step-by-step through digitally coloring in Adobe Photoshop CS3. Beginners and advanced artist can come to this tutorial for help. In this easy-to-follow tutorial, I’ll show you how to create a cute cartoon character. The great thing is that you can easily apply these techniques to your other projects. Though I’ll be coloring with a character sketch, you can apply skills from this tutorial to any digital coloring projects that you want There are also other detailed step-by-step Adobe Photoshop tutorials, tips and tricks for technical illustration students, professional technical illustrators and digital artists….especially for students in this Tutorial Website. Once you have finished reading this tutorial you will know how to paint a cartoon character for your own projects. This picture represents a personal sketch work as the beginning of a very detailed painting work with PSD.

Tools used
• Photoshop CS3
• Wacom Graphire4 4×5 USB (Blue)

Preview of Final Results

Step 1: First of all Let‘s open a new document (approximately 700wide and 826 high, around 72 dpi) and make a preliminary sketch. (Ctrl+N or File > New). For now it is in 72dpi, but after changing the resolution to 300dpi (without re-sampling image) you can able to print it on A3 format in pretty good quality

* Width: 700px

* Height: 826px

* Resolution: 72.

I often draw a lot of simple sketches to represent the story but when I go back to look at it I realize that I would only use one of the sketches….. in the end, I got a sketch I was happy with, then I started coloring…. now, here is the main sketch work which I draw. I started with the sketch directly in Photoshop, In this tutorial I will try to describe the method that I followed from the sketch till the fully detailed phase. I used simple brushes, nothing unusual. I hope these steps will help you a lot. And here is the simple sketch about my character. I’m sure the one who know not drawings can manage draw some little quick sketches like this. Start with basic shapes, keep your lines fairly light. And I say, don’t expect to sit down with one piece of paper and draw exactly what you have in your mind the very first time around. Because this is nearly impossible. So get yourself a paper and draw lots and don’t be concerned about “bad” sketches so just try to draw different pose And I’m sure one of your sketching will be fine for your idea. Here as you see my sketching is not the best Draw your sketch…. it doesn’t have to be perfect, as you see in my sketch too… you will go over it later.

Step 2: My color palette. … here, finally I decided the main colors and here are my colors for this artwork. My colors are: orange, green, yellow, brown, I am using lots of autumn colors for my illustration. I always like autumn colors, they are very proper for my illustrations Here as you see background color could be change and her clothing color change too.

Step 3: Then I click on the Brush Tool (B) and choose a very thin, hard brush. As you know, soft brushes are the blurry ones and hard brushes are more solid. Note that you can have any color selected as your brush color because we’ll go over it with a layer style shortly. Pick the base of your skin color and paint with a new layer onto the sketch layer. Decide where the shadows/whater will be… Now we’re ready to paint. There’s no need to go into minor details. Try to see the image as a whole in this step. Make sure the color layer selected not the sketch. I set the sketch layer to “multiply”. Use the large brush to do some general shading for the overall shape of the head and the neck. As you see nothing detailed at this point.

Step 4: And here let me show you my layer order. When beginning the painting process, there are two very important pieces of information I would like to inform you. There are the light source and location, if your character or object is inside, the lights tends to be warmer but if it is outside then it is tends to be cooler unless at sunrise or sunset…

Step 4: Here now we arranged everything to start painting process… it is tme to clean it up! Taking ereaser tool erase all the acces skin that will be touching to the background. Taking a small soft brush and setting is about 40% -30%. I go around with my brush tool that are going to be highly shaded. Start to add a new layers to add shades and shadows. And shadows doesn’t have to be always be darker versions of the color used for the base ccolor. it can be other colors too.

Step 5: I’ll now begin to detail the character. You don’t have too over detail everything for now. I just add some basic detail for my character at this step. And now choose the sketch layer. When you select the sketch layer it will be look like this.

Step 6: Hey and I would like to give you a list of all the hotkeys that I use often and I am sure will be very helpful to you. Of course, there are a lot more other shortcut keys in Adobe Photoshop, but these are the essential ones that you might find useful to know when doing digital paintings. To find them out, you can do what I did and experiment with the keys of the keyboard or search up Photoshop shortcut keys online.Here are some useful short-keys I often use.

Step 7: Now, at this step….after I have show you the necessary shortcuts that I used in this painting we can continue on our painting project….Open a new layer. We are going to fill this layer with a dark brown color.

Step 8: And now choose the Paint Bucket Tool (G) fill the new layer with this new colour. Now I must deselect the selected area. For this click on the Select and choose Deselect (Ctrl+D) option.

Step 9: Here take a look at the character painting. After deselection it must look like this. Now this new colour is on the sketch colour. I’m going to make blur this new layer. Choose (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur).

Step 10: While worked on the colors, I tried to figure out the main light first. Where the light came from? What color is it?. There is a yellow light at the background and there is another color on the front…..Now that the general details are almost fixed. I’ll began a very detailed painting process and I’ll use a standart brush but I’ll change some settings when I was using the brush. And at this step I would like to change the size of my file because I’ll begin to add more details so I’ll need a bigger file size. I do wish my file is to be more bigger size because at this stage I do think I can’t make so much detailed painting. So I open Image/Image Size. And make the settings as you see 3000×3540. And at this step, as you see I decided to change the clothing color. And changed the background color too.

Step 11: Now at this step, I would like to detail the eyes first…..I’ll work more on the eyes to bring her to life. Having trouble coloring your character’s eyes? Well, now at the next steps will teach you the cartoon eye painting. Firstly color the entire eyeballs white, or select my color with Eyedropper tool (I).

Step 12: Use a base color for the iris. it could be green, blue or brown. Use a darker hue for the pupile. And use the same color but 50% for a shadow . Try not to lift your pen too much. Too many stroke will destroy the smooth gradinet effect we are tryin to archieve. if you wanted to start a using a different color you can attach another layer and do more shading.

Step 13: And now use the burn tool a few times to darken the top of the eyes. Brush settings must be but 50%, soft round brush. And use the dodge tool to add shine along the bottom of the eyes. Finish adding light green as desires and create a new layer for shadow.

Step 14: It’s only details now. We are going to detail character’s hair. Remember, start a new layer for details. Always pay attention to lighting. Keep in mind the direction of the hair is falling. And add a little coloring to the lips eyebrows and her face. I am adding some more color on her face and hairs and try to make some shadowy area on the face. When I do want to add some more light on the painting I am going to chose color dodge from here. After running through a few possibilities, I decided on the one shown. A little more work was done on the cloth, overlaying a texture to make its appearance a bit more interesting.

Step 15: I’ll now begin to detail the face, adding more pink to her cheeks, and a little bit of contrast to the sides of her face. Pay attention to your layers… Make sure they dont clash with the skin or the hair. You can lock or hide all the layers except the hair layer. I use different layers for each part of the body it is easier that way to keep them seperated so you don’t have to erase when you go over a line. Now select all layers except the background layer and merge them all in one layer. So now you can change the background colour. For the background, it is really important, find the good color, the best atmosphere… now it is time polishing up the details in one layer… it took me a lot of time working on the details of the girl’s face.

Step 16: Now, after some final touch-ups had been done to her face and her hair, and after changing background color, I flattened the image, and created a new layer, which I filled with a suitable colour for the atmosphere…….

Step 17: . ..and then I set the layer to soft light. Flattening the layer again, I adjusted the image using the Brightness/Contrast tool (located under Adjustments in the Image tool list) until I achieved the desired effect. I finished things off by adding some more details, smudging some edges and painting more on the highlights to make them stand out more.

Conclusion

This is the final product of the “Painting the Happy Smile”. I wish I could spend more time on it. I hope this basic steps helped give you a better understanding of my process and how you can apply it to your own technique and illustrations. Always keep practicing, be creative and enjoy my tutorials. If you have any questions, please let me know and I am going to try my best to answer to your questions. Thanks for reading. Well, if you use this tutorial, it would be very nice to write comments