Step: Painting the Character
Brushes Used: Square Chalk, Digital Watercolor Brush, Camelhair brush
 

Now the fun part! Well, actually painting the snow was pretty much the fun part for me, since it's ridiculously hot outside. But this was fun, too.

(Image 2.1) This is where it gets ugly. If I have one piece of advice for any aspiring artist, digital or otherwise, it's that there will be a point in every image you make where it will look horrific. You will look at it and think, 'Oh god, what am I doing??' and there will be a sinking feeling in your stomach. This is completely normal, and as far as I can tell, it never goes away no matter how many paintings you do. It kind of sucks, but the only thing you can do is trust yourself enough to know that you'll be able to pull it out in the end.

So, at this point I have painted in the basic geography of the body and the main planes of the face on a new layer using the chalk brush. When doing this, use a big brush to literally force yourself to ignore the details. You don't want to be painting in her eyes or her nostrils at this early stage... you are only after the big picture.

To help see if you are on the right track, zoom the image way out until it's only thumbnail size on your screen. If the proportions and value looks good from this size, you know you're doing okay. If things look messed up, fix them now. Since you were being very loose with your painting, it won't feel like you're losing a lot of time or effort if you decide you need to redo something.

Also, it's probably not a good idea to paint your character's shadow at this point. If you decide you want to change the pose later, you'll kick yourself if you have to repaint your ground plane to get the shadow to match.

Try to paint with a midtone colour for each surface. Stay away from painting the brightest highlights or the darkest shadows. You will add those later. Also, don't be afraid to add colours that you maybe wouldn't naturally assume should be there. For example, here I've got her in a white jumpsuit-thing under her vest, and I've added some pinks, browns, and even some greens into it. Even if it looks dodgy now, remember that this will be painted over. Having some unusual colours at this point will give you a more interesting result when you have some paint laid down on top of it later.

(Image 2.2) Once you're happy with the basic silhouette and proportion of your character, you can start the actual painting. I do this right overtop of my block-in, on the same layer. This is where I start to really show my bad habits.

You really should be painting the entire body as a whole, bringing everything up to a certain level of detail, then going back and raising the detail level of the whole image again and again until you're satisfied.

Instead of doing that (which is smart), I start by painting the face (which is dumb). I just have a much easier time working on a character when I can see the face.

When painting skin, I usually use the camelhair brush with resaturation turned up to about 15-25%. This way the colours blend on top of one another, so you get a smooth surface without it looking 'airbrush-y'.

(Image 2.3) Once I'm generally happy with the face, I start on the hair. The hair I blocked in was very static, but I decided I wanted a windy, wintry scene, so I chose to add crazy hair.

Again with the bad habits, I actually draw the weird flyaway hairs before the main bulk. This is the opposite of what most people do. Doing the main mass of hair first and then adding the stray hairs is actually a much more intelligent way of going about it, but I got into this habit and it's hard to break. Here you see those flyaway hairs all basically going in one direction. It looks like Nick Nolte mugshot hair at this point, but again... trust yourself that it will end up looking fine.

(Image 2.4) Now, I make a new layer and paint in the mass of the hair. I start with a large chalk brush and make the general shape, then I switch to a thin camelhair to bring out highlights.

Once I'm happy with it, I zoom way out and use an eraser to carefully define the edges, and to tone down the flyaways so they seem to be disappearing into the background. The eraser I use is actually a modified version of my camelhair brush, only with its properties set to remove paint. I like it because it has a sharp edge, but it still has a very precise control of opacity. If I press down hard, it will erase completely, but if I gently brush over an area, the erasing is almost unnoticable. This is particularly great for hair because I can really blur certain areas for a soft-look, while leaving others very crisp-looking.

Next is the body .