No one person looks the same and so it is important to decide on a rough color scheme early on. I decided as a starting point, to begin with a rough drawing I had already done on paper in one of my sketchbooks. Use this file in photoshop to follow along.

Step 1

The first stage, as always, was to make a quick copy of the drawing on a new layer using a small standard airbrush set to about 8 pixels wide and set to Multiply. This will act as our guide for the painting, which you can see in Fig.1.

Step 2

Quite often I place the predominant color down across the entire canvas, which in this case is a light brown (R157, G103, B76), but here I wanted to keep a white backdrop, so I made a mask around the drawing and then filled in the body only (Fig.2)

Step 3

This will form the base color, over which I shall now start to paint in some general highlights and shadow areas. I usually paint these on two separate layers, but in this instance I am putting them on the same layer and leaving it at the standard Normal blending mode in order to make quicker changes (Fig.3) At this stage, we are just trying to establish the basic forms and where the light source is situated. You can see the type of brush used in the top right, along with the flow setting (50%). Try to keep the light and dark areas as derivatives of the base color. You can see the two shades I have used in the top left of the image.

Step 4

Now that the body has begun to take form, and I know roughly where the light is falling, it is time to create a new Shadow layer which will be set to Multiply. This will define the key shadows and will be done using a soft airbrush and will help to further define the forms. The colour used can be seen in the top left (Fig. 4).

Step 5

You will notice that, so far, the detail has been defined tonally, with various sizes of the soft airbrush. Certain areas, such as the lips and around the deltoids muscle at the top of the left arm, have used a hard round brush which creates a more clearly defined edge, as demonstrated by the two brush strokes in Fig 4.

Step 6

Now that a shadow layer has been established, it is time to create one for the highlights, which will be set to Soft light as a blending mode. In Fig. 5, you can see the color used in the top left. I have also gone back to the original lighting layer and also added in some highlights across the face and neck to improve the head area.

Step 7

There are essentially two further layers that I will use before flattening the image and making colour adjustments. One shall be reserved for detail only, namely the nipples and veins, and the other will be called ‘refinements’ which shall be another highlights layer in essence. In Fig. 6, you can see this layer isolated over the base layer. It is set to Normal blending mode and uses the same color as the highlights layer. The purpose of the layer is to enhance what is already there by using finer strokes, as well as paint in the brightest areas. Keeping this as a separate layer just means more control when making final adjustments to the tonal ranges.

Step 8

With this layer complete, and the small details painted in, it is just a question of making some minor color changes, which in this case means a color balance adjustment layer which I tweaked towards a more yellow hue. One last layer, which is set to Soft Light, is used to add some color to the ears and lips, as well as some of the random areas, to add a little color variation.

Step 9

One could now add some blemishes and marks, along with some subtle colour variation, to help reduce the consistency of the skin tones.

1. 
   chinaman Says:

   Hi
   Where did you get words for this paper? Is it from your head???

2. 
   frank berko Says:

   i will like you to send me much tutorials on how to use photoshop in drawing and painting.