Written by Ciro Correia

Hi there, this is my first tutorial ever. I hope it will add to your skill set and help on your journey as an artist. We learn throughout our career as artists;this is, in my opinion, what makes being an artist fantastically fulfilling and never ever boring. So if you have anything to add at any point, message me cause I'm sure I can learn from you too.

First of all I'd like to explain how you can use this tutorial. Either you're going to read through this, if you're like me probably crash through it, and garnish what you want from it. That's cool and I hope you get something from it. The other approach to this tutorial could be that you treat it as an assignment. So for those who would like to take up the assignment challenge I'll give you an assignment brief in this tutorial and you can follow the tutorial through the different stages and at the end of the tutorial post your work on the Lightwyrm community board for constructive crit from the good people who run the site, myself and of course other people that want to contribute to the process.

I would like to thank my clients for allowing me to use this character sketch for this tutorial. The character I'll be illustrating in this tutorial is the undertaker from the town of First light/Last light. The character must have an 'old worldly' feel about him and lean towards a more stylized representation rather than naturalistic. For this tutorial I'll be using only one view of the character though in the actual job I've illustrated the character from more than one viewpoint.

Assignment: Create an imaginary character from an imaginary medieval European country. Do some research before you begin about the countries, styles and customs of that time. Furnish your character with a background and provide him, her or it with an appropriate name. Your character can be the hero or the villain, person or myth. The final image must be in grayscale.

I'd actually like to do a pre-tutorial to this featuring basic drawing skills and the importance of learning how to draw well but for now let me just say that if you're struggling to achieve what you want in a painting or digital artwork then forget the instant gratification of digital media for a while and buy yourself a sketch pad and pencil. Most problems stem from not developing foundational skills and can be easily remedied but you need to put time and effort into learning these skills.

Step 1: After going through some thumbnail sketches I decided on what image I wanted to develop. I took this image and sketched it out to a good level in the basic style it needed to be in. I scanned the image at 800 dpi, opened it up in Photoshop and cropped it down to smaller size. Depending on the finish of the image I will either make sure that the pencil sketch is absolutely perfect or use the pencil to add to the feel of the character.

I'm not going to adjust the image levels or anything at this stage. I'm going to prepare the image so that I can easily work with it and take out blemishes. You'll notice I left some stray lines and an eraser rubbing which I will take out later.

Step 2: So here I start the clean up and initial prep stage of the process. I have to cut out the character from the background and eliminate the messy stuff about the image. I have to create a mask of the character for me to work within the silhouette of the character to eliminate being too messy. The image shows how I've cleaned away the blank paper to a crisp digital white. I try and make the character's edges as crisp as possible but for this image I have problematic hairy outcrops that I want to make sure come across as hair. For now I treat them as chunky shapes.

how to: To clean away the paper around the character you can use an eraser set to 100% which works well when you want crisp lines but I mostly use the dodge tool set to highlights and then select within the 'halo' I've created around the character to delete the remaining unwanted stuff or inversely copy/cut new layer. I usually use the eraser tool much later to clean the unwanted fluff that the dodge tool sometimes leaves.

Once you have a good 'crispish' line and your character is on a new layer above a clean white background select around the character with the magic wand tool and Select – inverse to get a good selection of the character. Zoom in and check that some of the lighter areas haven't been left out by your wand selection. You can adjust the selection via the refine edge option under the select menu. The purpose of this selection though is to make a mask so as to paint within your character's silhouette. There are numerous ways of doing this and the easiest for me at this stage is to make a new layer under the image and above the white background and fill 100% black into the selection on that layer. Now whenever I want the mask back I just click on the black silhouette layer with the magic wand. Presto.

Step 3: Here begins the actual rendering, painting and sketching digitally over the pencil stage. I don't want to eliminate my pencil work but rather enhance what I have already done. That is why I made sure that the pencil work was worked to a good level with few as possible changes required. Since I don't want to paint over my pencil work and the first part of this tutorial is about creating a finished grayscale image (part two will be about creating a color version from the final grayscale) I'm going to paint with the dodge and burn tools. The reason I didn't adjust the levels in the beginning for this picture, though I could have made the image darker if I wanted to, is because painting in this way leans heavily on having something there already.

How to: I select the burn tool, set it to mid-tones, save my file and start painting into the selection on the image level. Do not go in close at first. Start with general shades, areas that will be darker because of local color, etc. Once you've made your initial passes, zoom in and add more detail. Zoom in once gain and add fine details. Make sure you zoom out and check your work. You can go pretty dark just don't eliminate information that helps make the image read well. You can also always lighten an area if you change your mind about how dark it should be but this will probably take out some of the valuable pencil lines and information. Once done with the dark tones. Switch to dodge set to mid-tones as well and paint in lighter areas. It might be best to keep your light source more general rather than from just one major direction though I'm sure dramatic lighting will work depending on the image. Do a general pass with the dodge and the find areas to highlight. You can vary your opacity to make a lighter or darker mark with these cool tools.

These next few images show the process of painting with the burn tool. Work from overall at first and then zoom in.

After Painting in the darker areas, shadows and modeling form, set your dodge tool to mid-tones and lay in lighter areas and highlights.

As the very last thing to do, go in and add your final details for this stage. This image shows how I worked on the hat's band, I went in and worked on areas on the face such as eyebrows and just made sure everything everywhere was worked up to a how I wanted it before taking it to Painter.

It would be wise to save your work regularly and as different files in case you change your mind. This is one of the added benefits of working digitally – use it. Think about the differences of surfaces and materials you are rendering when painting in the image.

Fixing stray lines and other dirt: During my painting phase I suddenly realized that I hadn't taken out the stray lines and eraser rubbing. You can fix lines really anytime but it's easier earlier on. So first I select the clone stamp tool I select an area near by the correction area and press alt to make my stamp I then paint in over the correction area. Creating a new stamp by pressing alt and clicking as I go until I've fixed the area.

Use the clone stamp tool to take out any mistakes you left during the pencil and paper stage.

Step 5: So now I've got my image to a good finish. I'm going to add some texture to the image and then take it into Painter for the final paint process. Again there are many ways to add texture. Here I chose one of my favorite brushes and painted the texture over the area, shadow included. I turned the layer onto overlay and lowered the opacity drastically. I'm not using the texture to hide my paint work. My paint work deserves to be seen and the added texture is just for some extra depth. I use the eraser tool set to 100% to clean up the image. I'm ready now to take it to Painter.

Step 6: In Painter, my favorite program. I am going to finish off the image. Up till now I haven't actually painted over my pencil image. I have just played around with the light and dark values. The very nature of these tools allow me to keep large amounts of my original pencil and at the same time enhance the image and allow me to take it further. I have chosen the chalk and charcoal brushes because these are in line with the final feel of the image. It feels like a charcoal, chalk and acrylic picture to me at this stage. I paint over only some areas of the image. Careful not to eliminate the underlining work but to enhance it or to do final corrections. I make sure the hair is working well by brushing in with the chalk brush from exterior to interior with white paint. This removes the chunky feel to the hair and makes it look more hairy.

The next few images are from Painter. The chalk and charcoal brush strokes are close to the marks I made with my pencil so I use these to paint in over the image. You'll notice that I've brushed in from outside to inside on the beard with the background color to give a softer line to the edge where the beard meets the background whilst I have a stronger edge line on skin and material.

Once finished I paint in some cast shadow from the figure to ground the character. I add in my titles and signature and It is all done.

This tutorial was provided by Ciro Correia

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