How to Draw Neytiri from Avatar

Posted on 09. Jan, 2010 by DAS Team in Face, Tutorials

In this tutorial, you will learn how to draw Neytiri from the movie ‘Avatar’. You should have a bit of digital painting experience in Photoshop before trying to follow this tutorial. Enjoy

Required Tools/Software:

1) A Graphic Tablet

2) Photoshop (Photoshop CS2 was used for this tutorial).

Hello, i’m Ashraf here from DigitalArtSecrets.com and i am going to guide you guys on how to draw Neytiri as realistic as possible. Neytiri has a very unique face and for those who actually saw the movie, i think it would be way easier to draw her. I think that knowing a person’s personality really helps a lot when drawing portraits because personality has some kind of ora that connects strongly with facial features. Now lets get down to business. You will first start by creating an outline of your figure on a new layer (leave the background layer). It is very important that you have a good idea of how the proportions will be. You don’t have to be very detailed when drawing an outline, it is JUST an outline and most probably you will find that as you add more details the proportions will change later on.

After you have created the outline for the whole figure, it’s time to add a more detailed outline for the face. When i draw outlines, what i care about the is getting the proportions right and when i say proportions i mean the relation each facial feature has with the other. You might end up with a big mouth or may be the eyes are too small, the reason that happens is because the artist didn’t think much about the relation each feature has with the one next to it when doing the outline. Try always to train your eyes to look at the face as a whole, as something that is about connections rather than individual things. I then added a base color to the face. Why is it important to add a base color to the face? Well, it acts as a datum plane where if you blend any colors later on, blue is the color that will blend in (which would be alright). So choose a base color that is close to the general face of Neytiri herself, the base color code i used was #5694bc.

Now it’s time to really get down to the detail and bring life to each and every part of the face. In most cases, i usually find it easier to being with the side of the face where it’s looking to, in this case from the left. Start adding base colors to the eyes (again for blending later on). Remember that you are not drawing the face of an average human, Neytiri has HUGE eyes so they will be a bit big than what you usually draw. The iris is massive and it kinda blends in with the black edges of the eye. Use a very small brush size for the eyelashes.

Now, slowly start adding patches of color creating more detail from left to right. In the same way we made the left eye we will do the right one too. Please note that the right eye is much more darker than the left. When adding colors to the face, it is VERY important to realize that we have a green source of light coming from the right bottom corner of our artwork so the right side of the face will be glowing a little bit green. This will be emphasized in areas that seem to be leaning downwards or generally protruding out of the face, such as the eyebrow area of the right eye for example. Don’t be afraid to add this green light even in the eye itself. You will realize that i added some green smoke-like effect in the eye to give it this realistic feel. The nose in the center is WAYYYY easier than any nose you can draw for a normal human being. When drawing the nose for Neytiri, its simply wide and has very few detail (similar to the nose of a cat).

What really started to give the face this natural glow is the green light on the left side of the face. I can’t stress how important it is to add these green shadows. You will realize that i added some stripes to the forehead and the sides of the face. Emphasize the stripes even more towards the right side of the face because this is where this green light is hitting it.

Now it’s time for the mouth. The mouth is pretty close to the nose. First draw a slanted dark line which will define the axis of your mouth. After you have done that, add a neutral grey color that starts from blueish (from the left) and gradually becomes more green towards the right. At the bottom left corner we have a white shine on the lips (please remember that when you smudge it, smudge it VERTICAL because lips are vertically aligned. Adding two or three white stripes to the right adds some realism to the lips that make it truly natural.

The ears are very similar to a cat’s ear, lean and elongated. The key for making the ears realistic is to add strong contrasts. Choose very dark purple with light blue and follow the base color pattern presented below. After you have applied the colors, just smudge them together. The edges of the ears are light blue.

At the end of the hair, there are wooden beads. First, apply the shape for all six beads with the same color then add towards the right bottom corner of each bead, apply dark brown. Towards the top left corner of each bead apply a circular white spot for a shine effect. Finally, add a different central color to differentiate each bead from the other and then smudge. This is what you should have:

Dont’ forget to draw the necklace! It is signature Neytiri. It is important to realize the angle of which this drawing is being directed from. You are drawing Neytiri looking down a bit so we will see the necklace in 3D. So when you draw the pearls in the necklace, add some dark thickness to them from the top to give them some real weight.

Neytiri has some turquoise glows mainly on her forehead and scattered a little bit all over her face. You will create these shapes using the circular shape  tool but you must first create a third layer (you don’t want to draw this directly on your face layer or else it would be harder to erase later if wanted to). First create a sample of two to three different sizes of circles that you will use and then apply for each one the outer glow. The outer glow will be edited from the layer properties. Check ‘Outer Glow’ and adjust the specifications as follows.

After you have applied the Outer glow and you are satisfied with it, hold down the Alt key and create copies of the samples you have created and scatter them around the face. The most scattering should be located mainly on the forehead and some under each eye.

Of course we are not going to leave our background white. We will select our background layer and add a diagonal ‘Gradient Overlay’ with color range from green to black. This is what you should end up with. Hope you found this tutorial helpful. Enjoy…

Tags: avatar, movie, neytiri