Painting “She is walking on the Snow”

Here I am going to explain the process of painting which I have called “ She is walking on the Snow” . The following tutorial will walk you step-by-step through digitally coloring in Adobe Phosotop CS3. I’ll just show you my working process and what tools I prefer to use. In this easy-to-follow tutorial, I’ll show you how to paint 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

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

Note: I’m using Adobe Photoshop. But if you wish…you can use the other tools like..Corel Draw etc.

Preview of Final Results

Step 1: First of all Let‘s open a new document (approximately 900wide and 1386 high, around 300 dpi) and make a preliminary sketch. (Ctrl+N or File > New). You can able to print it on A3 format in pretty good quality

- Width: 900px

-Height: 1386px

-Resolution: 300.

Step 2: Now lets create a new layer (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+N). You can create empty layer for your painting. I‘ll show you how I open a new layer. To create empty layer, click on the create a new layer button.

Step 3: And the first thing to do after you created the layer is give the layer a describing name. To give the layer a name, you double-click on the layer label, the label will then turn into text box for you to enter a new name. Ok, as you see my layer name is Agnes_sketch. Name your layer with a different name.

Step 4: Now after you have name the new layer draw your own sketch. Here, this is my character sketch for this illustration. First I make a character sketch. I use a dark brown because it stands out..but you can use whatever you want ofcourse Well, as you see these lines don’t need to be perfect. This is just a rough sketch. Now feel free to use reference sketchwork if you don’t feel comfortable with your sketches. Make a new layer and name it with your character name. My character name is Agnes as you see on the image below.

Step 5: Now you may amazed at first but I only used the some standard type of brushes, I not use much brushes I just fell that this gives me the most control. The only adjustments I make to these settings are to the opacity and flow and in my own case I change the, flow, opacity and size jitters respectively to ‘pen pressure’ only because I’m using a Wacom tablet.

Step 6: For the detailed parts, for example the lashes, hair, lips strokes or other fine lines, you can use the helpful setting: Shape Dynamics, Other Dynamics.

Step 7: For the background I used a hard round brush; to get a smooth transition between the colors, the setting Other Dynamics and Pen Pressure were used.

Step 8: Well, sketch looks nice, I can start coloring it…A quick and important reminding: Before drawing the sketches..figure out the story, this is very important..You bet, it will let you to obtain more time! After figuring out what the story is..and knowing about colors…we can start the main coloring and paint process.. you see my color palette too…And however, my tutorial won’t show you how to draw the sketch..but will teach you how to paint the SKETCH OF A COOL CARTOON GIRL!

Step 9: 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. For my painting I am going to use only standard brushes with some different pen pressure settings.

Step 10: I created a layer behind the sketch layer and filled it with my chosen basic colors. Pick the base of your skin and clothing color and paint with a new layer onto the sketch layer. Decide where the shadows/whater will be… no need to go into minor details. Try to see the image as a whole in this step.. 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. Shading clothing is really easy if you know where the lines go.

Step 11: 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, drawings.

Step 12: 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. As you know keyboard shortcut is very important to speed up and facilitate your work. Bellow, is the useful Photoshop shortcut, which frequently used by me, when painting.

B- Select brush. There also is a keyboard shortcut for choosing brushes. You can go forward and backwards in the brush list. I usually paint with the default brushes.

O-Burn Tool/Dodge Tool/Sponge Tool

CTRL+-Shortcut for zooming in on the painting. Zooming is useful for adding details. When zoomed you can navigate on the canvas using the hand tool. A shortcut for this when your are painting is to hold down the SPACEBAR.

CTRL- -Shortcut for zooming out on the painting.. It can be practical to paint in 25%, or 50% on a 5000 pixel big painting. When working in zoomed out mode the painting looks best in 12.5%, 25% and 50%.

CTRL+X- Shortcut for Undo on the painting. You just need a little practicle for that, though. “CTRL+Z” will only undo latest change. Pressing undo again directly after undoing will undo the undoing

CTRL+T- This Shortcut mostly useful when editing. If you have selected a part of a painting this will let you freely transform the selection.

Step 13: Here are some more Photoshop shortcuts that I’ve learned from years of experience. You will find how these shortcuts can speed up your productivity.

B = Brush tool

D = Default color

E = Eraser tool

H = Hand tool

I = Eyedropper tool

L = Lasso tool

V = Move tool

Ctrl+J = Copy current layer

Ctrl+N = New document

Ctrl+S = Save document

Ctrl+Z = Undo

Ctrl+Alt+Z = Step backward history

Ctrl+Shift+Z = Step forward history

Ctrl+Shift+S = Save as

Ctrl+Shift+N = New layer

Ctrl+shift+Alt+N = New layer with no dialog

F5 = Brushes palette

Space = Hand tool (toggle)

Tab = Hide/show toolbar & palette

(Alt+scroll up)/(Ctrl+space) = Zoom in

(Alt+scroll down)/(Ctrl+Alt+space) = Zoom out

G=Gradient Tool. Also as you see you can change the gradient shape from that little window. And you can change the color as you wish.

Step 14: And now choose the sketch layer. When you select the sketch layer it will be look like this. To select the sketch layer hold down the Ctrl (Win) / Command (Mac) key and and at the same time click on the Agnes_sketch Layer icon on the Layers palette.

Step 15: Click on the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette, and after that open a new layer. And now choose the (#8a422d) color. This is a new color for the character outline.

Step 16: And now choose the Paint Bucket Tool (G) fill the new layer with this new color.

Step 17: When beginning the painting process, there are two very important pieces of information I would like to inform you. There are absolutely no tricks in my coloring hair. To make it easier you can look at your hair in the mirror and try to remember where the shades and hair should be. The sketch layer property is “multiply”. The white parts become transparent and only black parts are visible. I used 4 layers for the character.

1) The character’s clothing

2) The hair of the character

3) The face of the character

4) The eyes of the character

Step 18: Once you are done filling in your base color layer for the hand you should create a new layer on top for shadows. Finish adding light color as desired and then create an new layer for details…like nails. Take your time with the coloring process.

Step 19: Here is a screenshot of my clothing painting to understand how the strokes look. Now it is time to clean it up! Taking ereaser tool erase all the access 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 color. it can be other colors too. Start by the darker colors,then, little by little add the light.

Step 20: At this step I would like to detail the eyes. I’ll now begin to detailing her eyes to bring her to life . Firstly color the entire eyeballs white, or select my color with Eyedropper tool (I) Use a base color for the iris. it could be green, blue or brown. Use a darker hue for the pupils. 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 gradient effect we are trying to archieve.

Step 21: At this point, I would like to add some hair details on my character. I enhanced the lighter and darker shades of black in her hair using single wisps. I want my character have some detailed hair and so for this reason I painted some new hairs with my brush.As you see I startes with a mid-tone, then start shading. I fixed the clothing pose because she had lots of hair and it looked weird. I made another layer for the new part of the clothing and now hair looks good…

Step 22: At this stage I decided to work on the lips. I’ll add some bright areas with the Dodge Tool and you will see the difference on the lips. So Here I choose the Dodge Tool and add some bright areas and some new brush strokes. Here I used the Burn Tool for the darky areas. And I used the Dodge Tool for her cheeks too.

Step 23: And as you see I just painted some little freckles on her face too. it looks better now….ok now it is time to clean it up! Taking the eraser tool enrease all the access skin that will be touching to the background.

Step 24: Shading clothing is difficult for most people. The same soft solid brush strokes apply. Keep in mind the folding of the clothes and how it is resting on the body. Clothing is pretty much the same idea that skin has. Lightes shade goes down first,marking the folds and creases. it is also the one that will cover the most ground. Then working your way up with the different shades you get something that looks like this one.

Step 25: First you need to decide which parts you want to look softer than the other parts. Now pick a thin soft brush and start adding the highlight like in the picture below. Remember always pay attention to the lighting. it’ll look funny if you don’t. As you see my character has a fantastic light. She is walking on a darky wood but there is a light on the front and also there is another light from the left and this is a fantastic environment. That is we’ve got so far. Does it look complete? I personally don’t think so…lets continue adding details to her face and her clothing.

Step 26: Here now I’ll paint the background…I don’t know why I decided to paint trees on the background..it could be a dark wood without green trees..but I thought it would be scary without green trees. … I do think some fancy green trees would be very good for the background and some snowing J remember this is a fantastic painting so we have snowing on the green trees..So I open one of my old fancy trees painting and I copy the flattened image on my character background…

Step 27: Here take a look at the character painting. I open a new layer for the snow and I paint some snow particles…

Step 28: Ok now let’s forget about the background and start to add new layers for adding a little yellow shadows for the character. The shadows doesn’t have to be always the darker version of the basic color. Here you see my yellow shadows for her face. Now you can see where I have added basic shades where the natural lightining would be…. Her face and eyes still don’t stisfy me, Ill fix it later.. and I’ll be changing the eye movement if I want too.

Step 29: 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 separated so you don’t have to erase when you go over a line. it took me a lot of time working on the details of the girl’s face.

Conclusion!!!

Ok…that’s all for today. Note that every artwork is different. These are just the steps I used in creating this specific artwork. Use these techniques as you see and have fun if you have any questions, feel free to send a commend on this page. I hope this has been helpful in some ways. .Always keep practicing…Always use your imagination and your own style.. Happy drawings! Good Luck to all of you! I hope you enjoyed my tutorial!