Drawing a character from a photo/digital art processes

Hay there. I thought I’d do a super quick review of the way I approach portraiture/capturing a character from a photo from the drawing of my friend’s dog Pearl I just did. I’ll also go over the most basic of digital coloring processes that I use.



So! This is my friend Jane’s Italian Greyhound Pearl!

Usually small dogs are not that appealing to me, but Pearl just seems to ooze character. And when I see something with a lot of character I geek out a bit and want to have a go at drawing it.

I love her head shape, and her dainty paws and slight frame. I can just hear the “dinkle dinkle dink” sound effects she’d make if she were a cartoon character while she was walking around. I’ve wanted to draw her for awhile and since she recently made a most excellent veterinary recovery I thought I’d give it a shot!



Tools used: Wacom Bamboo, Paint Tool Sai. Adjustment/color postprocessing in Photoshop CS5.

When I start with portraits, or actually any sort of character design or illustration or painting or whatever it is, I always try to have this top question in mind:

“What do I like about this thing, and how am I going to show people how cool this thing is?”



(that premise is what I’ve gleaned from some of my favorite artists like Frazetta or Wendling, who always know how to show off the COOL of whatever their subject is) (stolen from my friend Paul Richards) (actually I steal a lot of things from that guy. sempaaaaii~ (っ✿◕‿◕)っ)



I feel like I should also mention, my art process is very often sorted into the same blocks of time: 80% of effort and time is spent sketching/concepting until it’s JUST right, then 5% inking (low effort, also the funnest part because you get to enjoy all the hard work you just did by going over those delicious lines you put down and knowing it’s just how you wanted it to be), then 10% coloring, and 5% polish/color postprocessing. (quite obviously this ratio is different for painters vs. draftspeople like me)



1. I started with that basic premise, and did a super quick sketch to arrange the proportions how I wanted them to be. Dainty, on a pillow with her paws crossed like some sort of royalty. But not prissy royalty, I wanted her to seem like something sweet, something gentle that you’d want to protect. Sort of a Perdita-esque feel.

2. I started to sort out some of the musculature and anatomy here, and put down some interesting shapes I thought would look good with this. I exaggerated the curve of the pillow, the sharpness of her hind legs, the elongated nose that comes together at a sharp point.

3. I thought I had what I wanted so I inked the whole thing, thinking this would be a quick drawing after all. But at this point I had been drawing all day on some freelance stuff and I was kinda weary, so I wasn’t giving it the cognition it deserved and it was degrading into something sorta shakey and blah. I took a nap after declaring this and myself a complete failure, resolving never again to pick up a tablet pen. Standard artist fare etc.

4. I woke up and remembered I’d started this thing and thought since I already spent hours on sketching it I may as well learn something new by bringing it to completion. I started again, thinking I could just re-ink the whole thing and it would be fine, but I realized that I was actually slipping into giving her a “standard-issue” Don Bluth dog face, which was totally not what I wanted from the beginning!

5. I wanted to show her round, sorta bug-eyed head cause it’s cute and an opportunity for originality. I re-sketched with this in mind.

6. I re-inked the whole thing and yay! It looks how I wanted it to! I think the other key here was elongating her neck and showing less jaw definition. And, of course, the obvious: when I loosen up and don’t press the pen down so hard, I end up with nicer lines, nicer shapes, and a nicer drawing.

7. Base colors. The most boring of boring, mechanically-wise. I chose colors that would give me a princessy/pastelly bright lovey dovey feel. As you can see, I’m not great at doing this on my own, so I usually have to bring it into Photoshop to Adjust > brightness/contrast/hue/saturation.

8. I played with the colors a bit and came up with this, which gives me more of the atmosphere I’m looking for. I also put a multiply layer on top of it to figure out what color I’m going to use for the basic shading.

9. Basic shading, making sure to accentuate the muscles/shape of the lines I have already put down, and giving a bit of pop to the lip of the pillow. (I really love “mundane” details like this on simple objects recently, I think it brings another level of Cool to the illustration.)

10. I used the watercolor brush to soften the shading in the areas where the shadows should be less sharp, to bring out the shapes more and make them more believable. I like it more than the airbrush for this cause it gives more texture. I try to do this as quickly and as gesturally as possible, otherwise I get too laser-focused on brush strokes or whatever and it ends up looking muddy and overworked.

11. I locked transparency on the multiply shading layer and put in some more saturated colors (in this case I decided to go with a light blue) for where the light first hits the shadow. Also made the shade color on the face warmer to bring more attention to it. (decided to do hot pink for that) and some saturated yellower green for the pillow to separate it from the main subject.



(Basically just read this and you’ll know all you need to know about coloring 5ever.)

12. (here’s what it looks like without the Multiply effect applied, just on normal, in case you were wondering.)

13. Slapped on an overlay layer and put on some light blue/pink to bring out the shapes’ dimensions some more.

14. Put a normal layer on top of everything, the “polish” layer. Again it’s important to do this gesturally, so you don’t get caught up in every little brush stroke and end up in Sad Muddy Land.

15. Adjusted the colors in Photoshop to make the shadows warmer and highlights cooler (Adjust > Color Balance). Usually the rule is to do it opposite, cool shadows and warm highlights, but it’s good to mix it up now and then and since her head was already pinkish it wouldn’t have looked good if I made the darks cooler because it would draw attention away from her face. This last step brings an overall pleasantness to the image. All done! Yay!

Things I could have done better for next time: Body shape is a bit standard-issue, “pulled dogshape.jpg from my internal memory”. I try to be mindful of that because I like to always learn and expand and push designs, sameness is boring. I tried to get the big curve of her ribcage in there but I think I could have pushed the design a bit further if I had the knowledge to do so.

I hope this was helpful for you at all. Feel free to askbox me with any questions you have. I’ll probably do another one of these in the future with a human subject, I just thought this one would be a good opportunity to show my process cause of how I flubbed it in the beginning steps.

