Using colored pencils is one technique that looks like painting. In this tutorial, I will show my own technique of drawing a portrait with colored pencils.
Each of us comes up with our own way of drawing, pieced together from various lessons like this, books, master classes and, most importantly, practice. It's not necessarily the right way, but it's not the wrong way either. It's just the process that I feel most comfortable with and gives me what I'm after. In art, there are no concepts of “right or wrong”, there are simply certain guidelines that help us find different directions and create our own rules. Choose what is useful from this lesson and discard what does not suit your methods and techniques.
I'll be using Faber Castel Polychromos, but don't feel like you have to buy the same portrait pencils. Yes, they are of very good quality, definitely one of the best, but they are absolutely not necessary to create this effect. You are free to choose any brand you like or already own. In this post, I will be mentioning the names of some of the Faber Castell colors that I have used. You can look them up online and find similar shades of your favorite brands.
Let's start drawing with colored pencils!
First, we need to sketch out the base of our portrait. I won't even mention how important this step is. It determines the entire result of your drawing, so you must take your time and carefully draw a close resemblance to the face you are drawing. This takes some time and a lot of practice, so don't be discouraged if you think something is wrong at first glance.
To familiarize yourself with the face you are drawing, create preliminary sketches on another sheet of paper. This will allow your mind to focus and focus on the particular face you are drawing. Recognizing its lines, curves and shadows will certainly help achieve a closer resemblance.
Draw the main lines with a pencil of medium flesh color (medium flesh). I don't recommend using graphite pencils because the lines drawn with them will show through when you add other colors on top. Drawing with colored pencils, you can combine these lines with other shades.
Draw eyes
When the main contour of the face is ready, we can start applying the first layers of color. Keep in mind that these layers will be pale, and we will continue to overlay colors. The colors I use here are medium flesh, Van Dyck brown and burnt sienna.
After the first light layer, we continue to layer colors to increase their intensity. Here I add shadows, refine the eyes by adding saturation to their deep blue color and start painting her reddish shadows.
I draw the upper and lower eyelashes with black and brown pencils. Sharpen your pencils very well to get thin and narrow lashes.
Draw the skin
Slowly start moving away from the eyes, coloring the area under the eye and some dark shadows around the nose. I stick with the colors above and start adding red for the cheek and burnt ocher all over the skin to balance the pinks of the medium flesh and cinnamon pencils.
Once a certain color is achieved throughout the face, you can add shades of sky blue (sky blue) and cream (cream) (yellow pencil that you see above) colors to emphasize the effects of lighting. Add cream to the lightest areas and mix it with light flesh (light flesh) and medium flesh (medium flesh). Apply some sky blue in the light shadow areas, such as under the lower lip and on the right side of the nose of the portrait below.
At this stage, you have managed to determine the main lines and colors of the face. For the rest of the skin tones, it's practically just smoothing the colors. You only need to continue layering in the darkest areas and finish by pressing harder on the light flesh pencil to blend each layer of color together.
Draw eyebrows
Using light yellow ocher I paint in the brows, and using Van Dyck brown I highlight some of the darker hairs, adding depth to the color.
We draw ears
Here you can see the step by step layering process mentioned above when drawing the skin. First we will start drawing the dark part of the ear with a dark brown pencil. As always, apply this color with soft strokes and do not press too hard on the pencil. We want him to stay weak. Follow this up in the future.
Now decide on a semitone - in this case, medium-corporeal (medium flesh). Paint over the areas we've shaded, as well as the lighter areas, without applying too much pressure to the pencil.
Highlight some tones with shades like yellow ocher (yellow ocher) and orange glaze (orange glaze). Depending on the lighting and skin tone, they can be blue, green or, as you can see above, orange. Then take the shadow color again and go over the darkest areas a second time, emphasizing some of the shadows.
And finally, go over the entire area with your lightest color, in my case light flesh (light flesh). Blend all the layers by painting in a circular motion and pressing harder than last time.
Draw hair
We will start drawing the hair by outlining the flesh color (flesh) with a darker shade - brown Van Dyck (Van Dyck brown).
Use the same shades for shadows.
At this stage, I mixed the following colors to paint the blond hair: nougat (nougat), caput mortuum purple (caput mortuum violet), light yellow ocher (light yellow ocher) and cream (cream). Here, instead of drawing in circular motions as we did earlier, I suggest drawing with straight and curvy lines, following the natural direction of the hair to give it some realism.
Continue painting the hair, adding color in layers. Here I'm using cold gray IV (cold gray IV) to draw the midtones and shadows on the hair. But it all depends on what shade of hair you draw.
A little later I painted the lips. I used the skin color pencils I used earlier along with madder and fuchsia to give the pink tint.
What would you draw using this technique?
It would seem, why is it difficult to draw skin? A couple of wrinkles, some shadows, paint - and you're done! Wait, how do you color?
You need to paint the face with extreme care, moreover, it is often the smallest detail of the picture. But in this article, I will look at ways to achieve skin color itself in three of the most widely used techniques.
I'll probably start with the simplest technique - pencil drawing.
Hardly anyone has seen a skin-colored pencil. If you have, then you are in luck. I will talk about color combinations to achieve skin tone. Usually for these purposes, I take pink as a basis and add yellow, orange or brown on top in the right proportions (most often yellow in a 1: 1 ratio). You can also take yellow as a base and add red or brown. Combinations depend on the desired result. To express shadows, tan and blush, you can use basic combinations, just thickening the colors.
Particular attention should be paid to the fact that if you applied too much of one color, you should not "mask" it with a thick layer of another. It is better to gently (!) Wipe the pencil with an elastic band. But, even if a thick, saturated color is needed, then it is not necessary to first apply a bold layer of one color, then a bold layer of another. It's best to apply thin layers of each color (it's kind of like a layer cake: pink-yellow-red-pink-yellow-red...) until you get the thickness you want.
Next I will consider painting with gouache.
There is nothing complicated here. It is enough to dilute the desired color in the palette and apply it to the drawing.
Typically, red, white, yellow and brown (2:1:1:1) are used to obtain skin color. However, ocher (2:1:2) is often used instead of yellow and brown. To achieve the desired color, tan or blush, parts of a particular color increase or decrease. It should also be noted that it is undesirable to use pink instead of a combination of red and white.
To achieve a pale complexion, do not apply paint in a thin layer so that the paper shines through. You just need to add more white or yellow paint.
You can also add a small amount of blue and green colors (both when drawing with gouache and with pencil coloring), however, you should only do this if you know exactly what you want and what you should get (for example, a sickly look or a shadow).
And finally, watercolor.
Watercolor is the most capricious of paints. Therefore, I would advise you to look for the color you need in the sets. If you combine colors, you will get either a daub in the drawing or a daub in the paints. However, if you practice enough, take good paper, paints and a brush, you can get the desired color again by applying the base and adding the right colors.
By the way, if you have watercolor pencils at your disposal, the task is noticeably simplified. In this case, it is necessary to color the drawing as with ordinary pencils (in no case less carefully) and draw a wet brush over the drawing.
Well, in general, that's all.
Skin drawing- this is one of the most difficult tasks facing every photorealist artist. To achieve a truly realistic effect, a combination of many factors is important - color choice, blending methods, specially tuned brushes and created textures. It is also important to remember that each skin type needs a different approach. The most delicate porcelain skin requires a similar technique to the transparent skin of children, but it is fundamentally different from the methods used when painting dark skin.
In this tutorial, I will explain the main differences in drawing the main types of skin, and draw your attention to important anatomical features. I will reveal the secrets and subtleties of using customized brushes to achieve the desired effect. I will also talk about certain skin tones, share a color palette so you can learn how to use it in your own work. This lesson does not contain the basics of drawing a face, it is designed for those who are already familiar with the basic knowledge and skills in drawing faces, and also know the general rules for applying color and mixing it. However, where possible, I will remind you of the most important issues at this stage of drawing.
To get the most out of the lesson, you should have any version of Photoshop or Painter at least version 6, as well as a tablet.
Author's secret: Saturated colors
When you create a face palette, choose really saturated colors, avoiding mildtones. This is important because the colors are always applied with reduced transparency and therefore lose some of their brightness. Desaturated colors will look gray and uninteresting right from the start. Also, do not forget that if you are unhappy with the color you have chosen, you can always change it using the settings. color balance(Color balance). Colors tend to look more brown, move the red slider to correct this. Highlights(Light) to the left, and the blue slider Shadows(Shadows) to the right.
porcelain
1. Color is very important
porcelain is a special and specific type of skin, where the choice of color plays a major role. It's a well-known fact that highlights, shadows, and mildtones of skin should all be different colors, no matter what type of skin you're drawing. This rule is the most important in drawing porcelain type. Usually this effect is achieved by choosing slightly saturated midtones (mildtones) and bluish shadows (shadows).
However, I think highlights are the key here. There are many options, but a slightly turquoise/green highlight immediately creates the effect of porcelain skin - fragile with a fresh glow.
Choose a palette and sketch out the main features of the face. It really doesn't matter what tools you use, just try to avoid the Airbrush for now.
2. Smooth skin!
Smoothness- this is the second important point in drawing the effect of porcelain skin. Usually, rough transitions combined with additional textures are enough for a good result, but now we need a perfect smooth surface. In order to get such an effect, first draw rough transitions (Hard Round Brush in Photoshop or Blender in Painter), defining the main shapes, then proceed to work out soft transitions (only Add Water in Painter or any brush with option airbrush (Airbrush) with a small value of opacity (opacity) in Photoshop) to soften the transitions.
3. Forget about textures
I always emphasize the need to use textures to achieve realism, porcelain skin is the exception to the rule. Although I usually advise to draw tiny pores for skin texture, in this case it is better to skip this step. Instead, choose a color for highlights (highlights) and airbrush (Airbrush) the most protruding parts of the face, such as the forehead, chin, cheekbones and nose tip. Make the highlights really stand out, use a high opacity value to create the glowing skin effect we've already talked about.
4. Final retouch
When you're mostly done, you can use some extra tricks to further emphasize the softness of the skin. The first is to choose a medium shade (mildtones) and using an airbrush (Airbrush) soften the outer edge of the lower lip, creating a soft transition from the lips to the face. After, without changing the brush, select the highlight shade (highlights) and draw a slight bulge above the upper lip, and also emphasize the lower lip, as in the figure below. At the end, slightly soften the contour of the face, using the tool (Tool “Blur”) or an airbrush brush (Airbrush).
transparent
1. Children and vampires
Transparent skin type, at first glance, is very similar to porcelain. However, there are some differences that are worth considering in more detail. In combination with existing rules in choosing color transitions from shadows (shadows) to midtones (mildtones), it is impossible to determine the only correct color, since it depends heavily on the character being drawn. The palette for children should look more natural, it can be described as "typical" shades, but the skin of vampires is more pale and sickly, based on existing legends. When creating a transparent skin type, the most important thing is to understand its structure and make the appropriate textures.
2. Anatomy. Be careful!
Keep in mind that the anatomical bulges of a child's face are slightly different from those of an adult. This one is especially noticeable on the cheeks. As you can see in the image below, I've marked the bulge area with a red line, and along the way I've drawn blue shadows and white highlights.
Also, if you have not already done so, you need to decorate the areas of the nose and cheeks with slightly pink hues.
3. Texture time
It's time to create the illusion of transparent skin - let's draw the veins. Since the skin is very thin, the veins are more visible on the baby's forehead and above the eyes. And it should also be remembered that the older the children, the less visible the veins will be.
If you are drawing a vampire, do as your heart tells you. I use a combination of expressive, close to black, veins around the eyes and lips, gradually disappearing, it looks interesting and gives a convincing look to the vampire.
Choose a purple or blue brush color (hard round (Hard Round) or airbrush (Airbrush)), create a thin web of lines that should look like veins (1 in the image below). Slightly smooth the layer and experiment with blending modes until we get the result we are interested in. Now emphasize the thickness of the veins with a dark red airbrush (Airbrush), paying special attention to the junctions of the veins (2), add some dark strokes (3). If necessary, to enhance the effect, slightly darken the area with medium tones with an airbrush.
4. No pores
At the final stage of texturing, I will again refrain from drawing pores. If you are painting a newborn, you can try adding a small rash that is common with young children. We do this, we place dots of different sizes of a reddish color on top of each other - we will start with large spots that are very transparent, gradually moving on to small ones with little transparency. Special concentration on the cheek and chin areas. You can also add tiny highlights to the nose and lips - these little touches add extra cuteness!
If you're drawing a vampire, go over the face with a huge Airbrush. So you add a mysterious glow to the painful skin.
Dark skin
1. Anatomical features
At first, choosing a color for a given skin type may seem like a very difficult task, but you can create a palette based on the average tones of the European skin type and then darken with the tool Brightness/Contrast(Brightness/Contrast). However, the key to creating truly realistic dark skin is knowing the anatomy and textures. Slightly generalized, the nose is usually steep and wide, and the lips are full. We emphasize volume, add a glow to the upper contour of the lip (1) and a small shadow cast by volume lips on the face (2).
2. Mixing rules
The mixing rules are the same as for light skin. We start by selecting and blending the mid and dark tones from the palette with any tool, except for the airbrush (Airbrush). The finger and blur tools should be avoided, we do not need the same neat transitions as when painting porcelain skin. To smooth out rough transitions, use the Blender tool in the painter or a hard round brush (Hard Round brush) in Photoshop.
3. Draw pores!
After drawing the base of the face, we move on to texturing. There will be plenty of texture to add oily pores that are typical for this type of skin. Start by choosing a very light skin color and use a hard round brush to paint the pores, overlapping each other. Add the greatest concentration of pores in the area of the nose and cheeks. Pores are also important for diagonal areas and areas with light color (1). Don't forget to constantly change the transparency, increase it in the most glaring places.
After the basic texturing, Photoshop users can add a little trick: create a new layer and paint on the desired areas with small diagonal strokes of almost white color. Then right-click on the current layer and select from the drop-down menu (Overlay Options) - (Inner Shadow). Adjust the distance and size, and take the color of the shadow from the midtones (2). If everything worked out correctly, then when reduced, the skin will look incredibly realistic.
4. Perfect lips
And now a few words about drawing lips. The main color is already drawn, now we will add small light dots with the Airbrush tool (Airbrush) and blend them later with a large brush. To emphasize the size and volume of the lips, add large vertical lines of light color, connecting them with separate points.
Author's secret
Switching between programs!
Many artists have difficulty learning Photoshop or painter and therefore limit themselves to one thing. Figuring out how to draw something that you already know how to draw perfectly in another program seems like a waste of time. But both programs have a number of unique characteristics. Photoshop is amazing at adjusting colors and creating your own fantastic brushes. Whereas Painter has fabulous blends that speed up the painting process and many brushes that faithfully simulate living materials.
Pale redheads
1. Free technique
I find this skin type to be one of the most interesting, but it is very rare to see it in digital painting. First, we choose the colors that we like, the main thing is that they remain pale. I prefer orange shades, they go well with hair. Apply colors and select brushes as usual. What makes this skin type so special? These are small, insignificant individually, details that together give a stunning effect. Let's start by drawing the base of the face with the tools that you are most comfortable working with.
2. Contrast
The face should be almost colorless. Therefore, we choose non-contrasting shades for drawing the face, as well as desaturated yellow and light orange colors for drawing eyebrows and eyelashes. Eyebrows should be barely visible, use a transparent airbrush (Airbrush) to apply the bulk of the hair. Eyelashes, first draw thin brown strokes, and then light with high transparency. If your eyes lack expression due to the lack of dark lash framing, you can try adding transparent dark blotches at the base of the lashes.
2. The charm of freckles
There are several types of freckles, depending on the type of skin: temporary, which depend on exposure to the sun, characteristic of Europeans and permanent, characteristic of people with a very pale skin type.
The first ones are easier to draw, just add a small amount of dots to the usual skin type. The second is a more complex process. Their shape looks like a patch and covers a large area of the face.
Let's start applying the texture of realistic freckles, create a spot brush (Sparkled). If you're working in a painter, use a jittered Airbrush.
Now choose a color a little darker than the midtones and with a low opacity (opacity) work on most of the face. Gradually move from matte to dark orange shades. And at the very end, we draw freckles one above the other to give a natural look. If they don't go well with the face, try changing it.
4. Complementary colors
After you finish with all the previous steps, there will be very little left. If you feel that the face is too colorless, which happens very often, try adding reddish tints or additional derived colors.
Translator's note: unfortunately, I did not find the original palette from Marta Dahlig. Therefore, I will attach to the lesson, a table of colors. I hope it will be of use to you.
INTRODUCTION
There are tons of tutorials on how to draw skin on the net, so I did my best to make my contribution a little different from the rest of the tutorials. First, we will talk about several skin tones. Most of the existing tutorials teach how to draw light or dark skin, and only a few of them teach variations in shades. In this tutorial, I will talk about several shades of light, natural and dark skin, as well as how to give it a fantasy or terrifying look.
I will also talk about how color combinations and the position of the light will affect the colors you choose, how to mix paints, and what painting technique I use when working.
For digital processing I use programs Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. Theoretically, all programs are equal in their capabilities and functions.
Ready? Go.
I:: BASIC SKIN DRAWING
In many drawing lessons, several skin tones are distinguished: medium tone, shadows, light zones, and sometimes “warm” colors. This is, of course, the right approach, but far from simple. Skin is not a flat, uniform surface; its complexity lies in the fact that it contains several shades. I will expand on the concepts of skin tones by adding a few notes of my own. Trust me, it's not as hard as it seems.
The colors and shades will change depending on the skin type you have chosen. I will talk more about this in the second part of this lesson. But all skin tones come down to one general pattern:
(1) MIDDLE TONE: This includes the colors that form the actual color of the skin. There should be several of them, with the same saturation, but in different tones. The saturation of tones should be low, in relation to skin tone.
(2) BASIC TONE: We can say that this is the average value of the main (middle) tone. The main tone is remarkable in that it is pale and does not stand out much. All other shades will be built on its basis.
(3) SHADOW: The darkest portions of an object that are shaded by the angle of the light. There are two things to remember here: first, that they are usually very rich, and second, that they are not thick. And the colors and depth of the shadows should vary on the surface of the entire body.
(4) LIGHT SPOT: The lightest areas of an object that are hit by light. This includes any areas of the body that are lighter than the average tone. Like shadows, highlights should vary in color and brightness throughout the body.
(5) GLARE: Highlights appear where light is most intensely reflected off the surface of the skin, usually in oily areas. They are most often found on the nose and lips. The highlights should be brighter than the highlights, but don't go overboard with them.
(6) WARM COLORS: Warm colors are those that give the skin a vibrant healthy look - a blush on the cheeks, redness on the knees and legs. They have increased saturation and shades of pink, orange and red. Do not apply them to the entire surface of the skin and do not create bright spots.
Medium, base tone and shadows are applied evenly with high color saturation. Light spots and warm colors, on the other hand, are applied with low color saturation over the base. This helps to achieve the effect of transparency and naturalness of the skin. Warm colors are very bright on their own, but when used correctly, they only brighten the picture and enliven the skin tone.
When applying light spots, use several shades, with low color saturation. Cool tones (light turquoise, blue or lavender) are great for natural skin tones, but don't forget pinks and yellows; The combination of cold and warm shades will give the skin a natural look.
The background will also greatly affect the color of the skin, but I will talk more about this later. Suffice it to say that the color chosen from the background can add zest to your drawing.
If all this sounds too complicated for you, relax. Let's visualize all this on a black and white sphere, and then see how this sphere will be played with color ... on the sphere on the right, a "warm" color is added. I just put a bright spot on a section of the sphere, and look how it has changed, it has become more lively, radiating freshness and beauty.
+ Use of a limited number of colors. This is perhaps the biggest mistake. Some take one color as a base, and use a dark and light variation of the same color to apply shadows and highlights. NEVER DO THIS! You will get lifeless flat skin. The secret is to use different shades. Be bold, mix colors, change saturation, experiment.
+Using shadows with low contrast. This robs the skin of its vitality. This approach also leaves the skin flat and lifeless. One of the secrets of beautiful shadows is the use of rich shades. Shadows are neither gray nor black; they are colored, and the more colors you use, the more realistic they will look.
Take a look at this portrait I painted a few years ago. Pay attention to how flat and lifeless the skin looks on the original - the error is not only in the low saturation of the shadows, but the colors themselves are too pale - the skin is almost gray. In the second drawing, the skin takes on a vital luster and shape. Here, not only the colors have become better, but with the change in these colors, the shape has changed, the body has gained volume.
When drawing a portrait, it is very important to accurately convey the expression of the eyes. It is not enough to correctly build an eyeball, eyelids and eyelashes, you also need to decorate them correctly.
Since we have already touched on the topic more than once when creating a portrait, today we will tell and show you some simple tips that will help not only draw, but also decorate the human eye.
Let's start with a sketch. It is important to emphasize the line of the eye from the very beginning. The iris should be made on the basis of a circle. Due to lack of experience, many draw an eye in the shape of an ellipse - "egg", and this is a fundamental mistake of beginning artists. Similarly, people often draw the wrong corner of the eye, which should also be part of the whole drawing. Do not draw it too narrow or wider than the eyeball.
The eyeball is never perfectly white! In all people, it has a slight grayish tinge. And in the corners, the shadow from the upper eyelid is often clearly visible.
Angular and inner lines are best emphasized with a pink pencil (you can replace it with red) and a skin-colored pencil.
Draw the pupil. First, set the first layer of the iris color. The more shades of the same color we have, the better. Let's start, of course, with bright colors making gradual transitions to more dense and dark places. In the place where we draw the reflected light - the highlight, the eyelashes are also reflected. We show them too.
With dark black, we correct and emphasize the lines along the iris, except for those places where light reflection is visible; they should remain slightly blue. Draw a brown circle around the pupil.
Add the rest of the shades of blue. It is best to paint with short strokes on top of the previous layer that we added earlier. In general (with the exception of the reflection of light), the eye should be painted over with a bright color. Draw the pupil in black, and lightly press the area around the eyes with a skin-colored pencil.
We work out the shades of the lower eyelids in more detail with flesh, pink and brown pencils. It must be remembered that the line of contact between the eyelid and the eye should be different in color from the rest of the skin. You can set a slightly pink tint here. In dark places we use bronze. It is better to use coloring in a few words: first dark dark and at the end cover it with a layer of cream.
The upper eyelid never gathers in just one crease. It has many curves. We outline the folds in dark brown, lightly rub the bright brown pencil and cover it with flesh color. If we draw an eye that has been applied makeup, we must also emphasize the eyeliner that is applied to the upper eyelid. For this, I suggest you use black and dark brown.
We draw eyelashes with a neatly sharpened pencil and constantly check if it is too dull. Eyelashes should be beautiful: bright, long and lush. They should not be drawn with too simple lines, we should curve them a bit. Slightly crossed and stuck together eyelashes will look more realistic. The lower lashes are sparse and much shorter than those at the top.
Finishing touches (eg add white to light the corner of the eye, highlights) and you're done!
It is worth remembering that the eyes for each person are individual. . And like fingerprints, you will never find two people with the same eyes. Moreover, the left and right eyes of one person are also strikingly different from each other. There are times when the difference is not only in the pattern of the iris, but also in its color! Therefore, it is very important to correctly convey the expression of the eyes, their color and size.
