Hi everyone. Chiken here.
In the last lesson, we used references
to create a few thumbnail sketches.
In this lesson, we will be using one
thumbnail sketch and prepare it for painting.
Before we start the demo, I'll just quickly give
you an overview of the steps of this stage.
So first we clean up the sketch or make a line art.
Because our initial sketch was just a draft,
this time we want to focus on
getting more accurate proportions, and it will
help us with blocking in the colors.
The next step is blocking in
the subjects in Gray scale.
At this point, we're just going to block in
each different subject and separate them into layers.
After this, we can work on the
next step, which is adjusting the tone.
We will be making use of the gamma
curves to make our tones more accurate.
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And finally we can plan the lighting.
So that was an overview of the steps of this process.
Now let's get back to the real time
demo where I'll explain everything more in depth.
I have here the sketches from the previous lesson,
and I decided to go with this one because
I really like the pose of the character and
how the background is composed around her.
I saved a copy of the other thumbnail sketches
because maybe they can come in useful next time.
I'm first going to make the canvas a lot larger,
maybe to around 2500x3500
1000x2000+ is more than enough, but
I like to work with really big canvases so
that I can get little details in.
Next, I just made my sketch bigger
and cropped the canvas again accordingly.
I'm going to save a picture of this
and open it up in the reference tab.
So I'm just going to start on a new layer, and
I'll just be looking at the reference for a guide.
You can see that I turn the layer below to
really low opacity, but I'm not really tracing over it.
Remember, our sketch is just a composition guide.
I'm just drawing the head guide right now.
Again, just trying to get the angle right.
And I'll create a new layer and draw on the lines.
This is going to be my final line art,
so I'm trying my best to get it proportional.
But because of my painting process later on where
I paint over the line art, I usually don't
try to worry too much about getting everything perfect.
I'm just trying to get a more accurate form.
So over here you can see I started out with
both the upper eyelids first, before moving on to the
bottom eyelids, so that they will be positioned better.
And now we can always still use our liquify tool.
Throughout my painting process, I rely on the
liquify tool quite heavily, to get my things
proportional. But more on that later.
I started on the hair here, starting with
the bangs first, and you can see I
keep things pretty rough, because generally I like
to detail things in the rendering step.
But if you like to work with clean line art, then
now is a good time to do your line art.
You can refer to the previous lessons about hair
to help you with the line art of the hair.
But here I'm just trying to get the overall flow in.
Similarly, I separated the hair into three parts,
our bangs, and now I'm drawing the side hair,
and then I'm moving on to the back hair.
And at this sketching stage, I'm
not putting in too much detail.
I'm just detailing in the big shapes.
And again, I constantly adjust
using the Liquify tool.
Now I can start on the body with the neck.
I use the sketch on the bottom right as a guide.
But if you are struggling with the anatomy at
this point, we can go back and look at
our reference to copy the pose from there.
But because I'm pretty happy with the pose of the
sketch that I did already, I'll just use that as
my reference. And I'll flesh her out using the basic
body shapes that we covered in the anatomy chapter.
Here, because she's leaning forward, there's gonna be
a bit of foreshortening at her waist, so
the two cylinders of her abdomen are gonna
be stacked over each other like this.
And using the waist as a guide, we can
find where our legs start from, and draw it down.
And the arms, drawn with two overlapping cylinders.
Now I'll just outline really
roughly the shape of her dress.
I'm just gonna bring the previous reference back
up, so I know what the basket looks like.
When in doubt, just get a reference.
There's so many things that we don't know how to draw,
and unless we look at a reference, we'll never learn.
And now I'm just gonna draw in the
flowers and the plants, but you can see that
I'm still not detailing it too much.
I just want to get an idea of
where they are and their overall form.
And later in the painting process, I'll detail it then.
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Getting back my composition sketch to guide me
on where to place the other foreground plants.
And that's our first step complete!
So the next step will be blocking in the subject in grey scale.
And I'm just going to make the background gray,
so that we have a midtone to start on.
If we work on a white, the grays will look
very black and we can't see the white colors.
So it always helps to get more accurate tones
when we start on a midtone gray background.
Right now, I'm not worrying about what my tones are.
I'm just blocking in the shapes, because the next step
will be adjusting the tones. So you can see me
use the same gray tone for most of the subjects.
I just use a lighter shade for the things
that I obviously know are lighter, like her white dress,
or the chicken, or the brighter sky.
And that's step two done!
So, for step three, we'll just be adjusting the tones.
You can see how she's very blended into the background.
There's not much contrast between her and the bushes.
And because I want her to stand out, I'll change the
tone of her skin.
And I think that's a lot better.
She stands out more now against the background.
Now, I kind of decided that the whole
painting was a bit too light, so I
wanted to make the leaves a bit darker.
And for that, I'm using the gamma curves.
Remember, the right side affects the lighter tones, and
the left side is for the darker ones.
So I'm just gonna make it darker
by moving the left one more inside.
And now there's more contrast of the foreground.
So again, I still feel that everything is too light.
So I'm adjusting the character with the gamma curves again.
And I think that's a nice base!
So we can move on to step
four, which is planning the lighting.
We will just be highlighting the
parts where we want to illuminate.
I want the sun to be coming down from the
top right, so I'll just illuminate whatever's facing it.
I find it really useful to do this whole process before
we start painting and blocking in the colors, so that we
know what kind of tones we should go for each.
And later on, we can just focus
on choosing the right hue and saturation,
without being too distracted by the tone.
I'll just highlight some parts of the background...
Where I think the sunlight is gonna hit.
I'm gonna brighten the sky a bit...
Cos the sun is really bright, and add some clouds.
Now I think there's a lot more contrast, and we
already have a feel of the space and environment.
Lastly, I'll just highlight the plants a bit, where
they are gonna be shined directly by sunlight.
And I will stop here with this painting because
I'm happy with how it looks, and I'm ready
to introduce some colors.
For the mission, prepare a painting plan from one of your thumbnail
sketches, with a focus on tone.
To recap, last lesson, we started with a reference board, and
from that, we created four different thumbnail sketches.
In this lesson, we took one of those thumbnail sketches,
and we went through the four steps of cleaning up
the sketch and line art, then blocking in the colors,
followed by adjusting the tones, and finally blending the lighting
to get something that is ready for painting.
In the next lesson, we will be starting
our color chapter, and learn to apply
colors to a painting to create impact and mood.
See you there!