In my first tutorial I’d like to share some of the techniques I use when creating a basic digital illustration in Photoshop. I hope what follows gives you a glimpse of my process and although quite straightforward you may find something useful. “You should be doing this in Illustrator!”, I hear you moan… I know, I know, but for me this process is more free and less fiddly for something so quick. I do a lot of digital based work and the software can open up unlimited avenues to explore but I prefer to keep it simple, so let’s start at the beginning.
I use OS X, Photoshop CS4 and a Wacom Bamboo drawing tablet.
Go Big:
Whatever the purpose for your illustration I recommend always setting up your canvas at a larger than needed size- this gives you maximum flexibility and control in refining your work and secures a higher quality finish to your final piece.
As the purpose for this is simply a demonstration- converted to a free desktop and iPhone/iPad wallpaper (Links at the end), I will set up my canvas at landscape A3 dimensions to begin with. I stick with 300dpi resolution as it’s the standard for print and will retain that quality.
Sketch:
On a new layer, I begin by sketching out the basic shapes of the composition. I use a basic round brush, Hardness 100%, Spacing 1%, with Pen Pressure control, Other Dynamics>Opacity Control>Pen Pressure selected and quickly sketch up the bird pose. This brush is a very simple set up and will essentially be what I use throughout, the Spacing and Hardness setting will give me smooth, clean and crisp lines to work with.
Once I have the basic pose laid out, I drop the Opacity of the sketch down to 30%, this acts like tracing paper and will give me enough information to then draw over more refined lines to better shape up the bird on a new layer (Shortcut Shift + Apple + N). This stage shows what is and what’s not working for the pose and you can begin to easily tweak the composition- I went through several to nail the ideal one!
Cut Backs:
I find drawing like this with the Wacom still gives me problems in executing very precise lines. My drawing surface is between A5/A6 in size and so traditional techniques like moving your pen across the page from the momentum of the elbow rather than the wrist still applies but can be awkward. Here I find cut backs useful, particularly in finding that ideal line and refining sharp edges as below.
Brush setup used again is a basic round brush, Hardness 100%, Spacing 1%, with Pen Pressure control and Other Dynamics deselected. I skip between the Brush (Shortcut B) and Eraser (Shortcut E) and draw then cut back (erase) to achieve the ideal line weight and finish- (this is where Adobe Illustrator is ideal and reduces this hassle, see next tutorial.)
I add detail by decreasing the brush size and rotating the canvas (Shortcut R) so I can find a better angle to work into.
Set up a Palette:
On a new layer, dropped behind the refined line work (Shortcut Apple + [ ), I select several greyscale tones from dark to light and paint them away from my work area. On another new layer, I begin to roughly add in the light values to give the character consistent tone values, using ALT as a shortcut for the Eyedropper tool whilst working with the brush selected, to pick the tones from the palette.
Colour:
I pick a blue colour for the bird and change the layer style to Overlay and begin to block in the bird.
Here I can just focus on getting the colour I want and not have to worry about tonal values as the work has already been done.
I switch the layer mode to Normal once completed and zoom in to tidy and check for any missing chunks or mistakes I have made before switching it back to Overlay.
I copy this layer (Shortcut Apple + J) and tweak the Opacity of the copied layer to give the right amount of impact I want the colour to have. Duplicating this Overlay layer adds vividness to your chosen colour.
I decide the linework is too dark for the piece and so by holding Apple and clicking on the layer icon of the Linework layer, I select all the information on that layer and it will only allow me to work within the line work area. I choose a dark blue and quickly paint over the entire area selected.
Final Touches:
I increase the Canvas Size (Image > Canvas Size) and tweak the composition.
Every element drawn in the piece is on a separate Layer and it helps so much in giving you the maximum flexibility in changing and tweaking your composition. I also have a habit of duplicating layers and hiding them in case I want to revert back to it later.
I add a block yellow background and then a gradient on a new layer. I also add some type which I’ve then Rasterized, warped the Perspective and then drawn and cut back into as previously shown to rough it up a bit.
I duplicate the linework layer and fill in to make it a block silhouette shape and through the FX menu on the Layers window I select a stroke at 32px and apply a similar stroke to the fly, giving them a white outline.
Again for the fly trail I draw and then cut back into it with the eraser to give it the appearance of a dotted line. At any stage you can freely select layers and work back into any aspect of your piece and what I tend to use a lot is hitting (Shortcut D), this reverts your brush colours to Black and White at anytime and (Shortcut X) switches between the two colours selected. The Lasso tool (Shortcut L) is also a neat way of selecting areas of your drawing that you need to move or rescale without having to redraw them again from scratch. Isolating every element of the drawing in it’s own individual layer allows you to easily tweak and change every aspect and detail of the piece with much less hassle than piling it all on one layer.
I add a couple of extra highlights and expressions on another final layer and there you have it.
Free Wallpaper Download: 1400×900 1280×800 iPhone iPad
(Right Click > Save As)
Rich.
p.s I’ll be sharing some of my work processes in Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects over the coming months so if you found this useful let us know by posting a comment below.
