Drawing Black & White Portraits

Posted on 26. Jun, 2010 by DAS Team in Face, Tutorials

My name is Jessica Matteliano, and I have been digitally painting for five years. I learned how to draw with pencil in my spare time from young, dabbled in pastels and acrylics, and now mostly work in digital mediums. My main work tools are Adobe Photoshop CS3 and a Wacom Bamboo tablet.

Step 1: the Curry Brush & Layer Setup

Before you begin painting, I must introduce you to the brush in which I paint with in Photoshop!

1. To create a custom brush: I use CS3 (left circle), and here it is in CS2 (right circle). Click this and a box will pop up.
2. In the default selection of “Brush Tip Shape,” select any hard round brush and adjust the spacing as shown.
3. Check “Shape Dynamics” “Airbrush” and “Smoothing.” In the “Other Dynamics” selection, adjust the Flow Jitter to 10% as shown.

Here are the default four layers I create. I utilize the Lock Layers (circled) a lot, which is the whole point of creating different layers for the different parts of painting. I won’t turn on lock layers until I have the basic shapes established (step 2). Depending on the portrait, there will probably be more layers used (such as for jewelry, background elements, accessories, etc.).

Step 2: Establishing the Layers

Keeping in mind the layer scheme, paint the major shapes (including highlights and shadows) with a hard flat brush. I start off with the mid-tones, then paint the shadows and then the highlighted areas.

Step 3: Eyes

I begin every portrait with the eyes. From the eyes, I can establish the proportions and tones for the rest of the face. For detail work, the brush is usually set at 50% opacity and 80% hardness.
1. From this point on, switch over to the custom brush as shown in Step 1. I typically paint the pupil first, then the eye shape and fill in the rest.
2. Change the brush opacity to about 50% and start working around the eye area, establishing the eyelids. I don’t worry about the blending too much at this point, I just need to get a good idea of the folds of skin and highlights.
3. Now begin to work on the eye shape and pupil grains.
4. Darken the shadows and with a light opacity (around 30%), create the finer details.
5. In the “Hair Eyelashes and Highlights” layer, complete the eye with eyelashes and light reflection. I place these on a separate layer so I can go back and adjust the darkness beneath the eyelids without having the redo the lashes, or readjust the highlight without redoing the entire pupil.

Step 4: Skin

After completing the eyes, make sure the edges are correct, change the brush to about 10% opacity and 0-5% hardness, lock the layers (so the airbrush doesn’t go off the face) and begin painting the face. Get as close to the final product as you can. After finishing the face and the body, merge the two layers (Ctrl+E). I keep this on different layers to this point because then I can establish the neck shadows without upsetting the jawline. Use this at your discretion though, depending upon the subject, because doing this in two layers might not make as much sense in other poses! Once you’re reasonably satisfied, move on. You’ll come back to finishing up the skin later.

Step 6: Mouth

Revert your brush to 50% opacity and 80-85% hardness and finish the rest of the details of the face, namely the nose and mouth.
1. Here’s a step by step of how I painted the mouth. Don’t worry too much about shadows yet at this point, just make sure you have the basic shape correct.
2. Now paint in the area outside of the mouth, establish the roundness of the lips, accentuated by shadows, and begin a rough base for the textures of the lips.
3. Add the highlights and darken the darks (depending on the lip color and amount of gloss). The darker the lipstick, the brighter the highlight. Don’t forget to lighten the brush opacity. The last step here is the change to a small brush size (about 3 or 4 pixels) and lightly trace reflective highlights around the tops and bottom of the lips.

Step 7: Hair Details

I’m painting dark hair here, but the steps are basically the same for lighter hair tones as well. Brush opacity is always dark (80% or more) and hardness 80% or more. Don’t forget about the eyebrows! Do this now if you haven’t already—you will probably have to adjust the skin shading after this step. Don’t forget to work in the set specific layers!
Lighter hair will require more work since you will have to work on the shadows as much as you will the highlights, but like the skin, begin with the mid tones, and work dark to light to highlights.
The steps described below are for dark hair.
1. With a thicker brush setting, establish the general midtones. In the same hair layer, paint the hairline.
2. Change the brush size to about 6-9 pixels, and with the dark color, brush inwards to the highlighted areas, as shown by the arrows.
3. With a slightly smaller brush size, paint the lighter tones from the inner to outward, as shown by the arrows. This part will generally rid of any blotchy highlighted sections.
4. Change to a small brush size (about 3 pixels) and with a very light tone, paint the highlights and fly-aways. You can also take a dark brush and fix the edges of the hairstyle, creating a more natural look and ridding of the plastic look!

Step 8: Cleaning up the Details

After completing the hair and once satisfied with the eye area, nose, mouth, ears, and any other spot on the body that requires detailed work (like fingers, etc.) finish up airbrushing the skin. Above, I’ve shown how locked layers can sometimes not work out so well, especially if you didn’t get the edges smooth and correct from the beginning (which is totally okay!). Here’s a quick way to fix those ragged edges. Click the Masking Tool (circled) and paint in the edges (keep the brush at about 80% hardness), then deselect the Masking Tool. Photoshop will have made a selection of the area you just painted in. Inverse the selection (Ctrl+Shift+I) and refinish the edges with your airbrush. After you’ve painted up to the reworked edge, deselect (Ctrl+D). Relock the layers and finish up!
If you are painting clothing, make sure the clothing layer is above the skin layer. You’ll switch between the clothing (or jewelry, etc.) layer and skin layer to establish any shadows. Feel free to also run a Dodge or Burn brush over the piece to give it a more dramatic look.

Final Image:

Feel free to ask me if you have any further questions!

For more information, visit:

http://ellastasia.deviantart.com/

E-mail: ellastasia@gmail.com

Tags: black and white, eyes, Face, hair, jessica matteliano, mouth, photoshop cs3