Evolution of a Digital Portrait
I was recently given the pleasure of drawing a digital portrait for a special lady to give to her daughter for a unique birthday present. As is common practice, I gave visual updates as the drawing progressed. Here are some of the highlights from those updates.
The Eyes
When it comes to the basic outlines for a serious portrait, I first draw the outlines roughly, then play around with them a bit until I'm happy with the initial shapes and overall structure. I then create digital rulers to act like a magnet for the digital pen tip which means I can concentrate on pen pressure and line thickness without having to worry about whether I'm drawing on the correct part of the page or not.
The Eyebrows
This uses the same technique of digital rulers to get the basic outline the way I like it. I can then create a transparent layer underneath the linework to add background colours and shades, in this case black. This is achieved by using the newly drawn lines as a template to create a mask on the new transparent layer in the rough shape required, then using the paint bucket tool to fill in the space in the masked area. I can then muck about with softening the edges and experimenting a bit using an airbrush tool.
Digital Tweaking
In order to help a portrait look like the subject, I like to incorporate a few little tweaks and exaggerations, not to blow everything out of proportion, but to slightly enhance selected curves and angles of the linework, which helps the viewer's brain to identify who the person actually is. In this case you can see the original digital rulers staying in place, showing the initial shape, while I use a mesh transform tool to manipulate the linework a bit.
The Other Eye
Using the same ruler and masking techniques as already shown, the outline of the other eye is created, then the black shading is added, followed by a bit of eye that was prepared earlier. Eventually, later on down the track, the outlines of the eyes will be softened to look more like eyelashes, but that will be after I've gotten the rest of the subject's face in place and semi shaded.
The Hair
Initial shading of the face has already begun, so now is a good time to add some hair, one stroke at a time. Shading and highlights will be added later.
The Clothing
The clothing involved a bit of intricate stripe work, so digital rulers were used again, in conjunction with a zig-zag line tool, which created its own unique patterns as it was drawn over itself multiple times.
Colouring and Shading Fabrics
Shading to the striped material has begun, and various layers are now being added to the coat fabric utilising digital airbrushes, shading, and speckling effects.
More Hair Work
Working on the hair behind the neck area. A bit of extra highlight work was required for this section which involved getting the colours correct, adding shading, and adding highlights until I was happy with the results
Jewelry
The original photo being used as the reference image didn't give a very clear view of the earring, so I had to ask for a better reference image to ensure I got it correct. You can also see the amount of work involved in getting the hair to look like hair in this screenshot as well.
The Second Subject
After I was happy with the progress of the first person, so far, it was time to add the second person. The process was the same, light sketching until I was pleased with the basic shapes and structure, followed by some digital rulers and then some line work using the newly created rulers as guides. This was all created on a fresh new transparent layer so as not to disturb any of the existing elements and layers that were used for the first person.
Digital Cleanup
After both people have been drawn on their separate layers, some of the lines and shades overlap, so a bit of digital erasing needs to take place in order to tidy things up a bit.
More Hair
Again, the hair is made up of lots of fine lines, drawn completely freehand, but because the hair is a light colour this time, extra care needs to be taken with the placement of each individual line so that it shows the layers and tufts when combined with some subtle shading. Here you can see a couple of screenshots, before and after style, to give you a look at how much difference the hair can make to a drawing when care is taken to give each line its own purpose for being drawn in the exact place and position it needs to be.
More Clothing
Line work and shading is required for the t-shirt in order to make it look like it has creases and folds and to help it resemble fabric that's being worn. The shading is done purely with the digital airbrush tool. Shading has also been added to the skin to add a bit of a shadow effect where necessary, which also gives the clothing that little bit of extra depth.
The Background Scenery
The photo that was provided as the reference image for this portrait had other people in the background who were to be excluded from the drawn image. Using the ruler tool, it was a simple enough job to extend the rulers to the areas where the background people were originally covering up the view, thus filling in the missing visual information.
Further Image Tweaking
The best part of working digitally, is that you can make tweaks and corrections on the fly, without disturbing any of the other elements already on the page. Here you can see a before and after images showing how much difference having this much freedom with the image can make.
Completing the Background Scenery
In order to prevent the background scenery from overcrowding the main subjects on the page, it was all created using colours and shades only, with no black outlines. To further make the background less prominent, a blurring filter was added to make it all slightly out of focus, which helped to highlight the sharp focus of the main subjects. The screenshots below show how the background was created in sections before the blurring filter was used on it.
The Test Print
Finally, when the image has been completed, a test print is made to make sure the colours, shading, and lines all work together, and for a final visual inspection to see if any further tweaks, changes, or corrections need to be made. Take no notice of the strange looking grinning thing behind the printed image. That's just the artist, and we try not to encourage him by giving any excessive attention that might feed his pathetically needy ego trips.
And there you have it. In this case a semi realistic cartoon portrait, created from a supplied cherished photo. If you would like your own semi realistic cartoon portrait, full blown caricature portrait, business logo, brand logo, T-Shirt design, or anything else that can be created digitally with some artistic flair, head on over to www.artbyvince.com.au and see what the pathetically needy artist can do for you as well.
