hi, I am starting my journey into the world of creative sharing and this is my first how-to on this forum.

a little of my background :

I am what you would call a media generalist, I kinda know a little about a lot when it comes to the media industry, film making, music videos, visual effect, 3d and 2d animation, graphics design and you get the picture. but recently I picked interest in drawing and painting and it has been really sweet experience so far, I got to realize how interwoven all the knowledge I have acquired from film making and animation and VFX are to something like a simple painting. I want to try and point some general steps to help anyone who wants to learn how to draw and paint even if you have never drawn before if you apply these steps you can at least draw something that can start off your portfolio.


so let's start.

for this sketch I used photoshop and why I like photoshop os because with this software your limit is only your imagination. but other Softwares can be used to follow along all you need is the idea. you just have to make sure it has a layering system. other Softwares you can use are gimp, Autodesk sketchbook, rebelled, art rage, etc.

drawing is not easy some say but to be honest, you can start off by drawing a snowman, or an egg or a ball or something which can allow you to show the form of an object as it reacts to light. we will get there but for now, here is my own sketch which is the first step ...

step one sketch something.... anything.

alright, the hard part out of the way we then go to step two.

I am guessing you must have sketched something you will like to bring to life with color but we are not quite there yet, you can see from the rough sketch, that this work needs some cleaning, this is where step two comes in.

step two: clean line art.

in order to get your lines looking like it was printed from a comic book, you will have to have some clean lines in your drawing, nothing less will do. what you will need to do is in photoshop create another layer over the sketched layer and start to trace clean lines over it...yes I said it, trace that thing! the best artists in the world rely on the good old tracing way... it will always give you a good result. so what I am trying to say is don't just start drawing like James bond, first sketch something even though it is rough like mine in the picture above don't worry, just focus on getting it to look right ... the looking good part comes in the tracing. so back to what I was saying trace your art with clean lines ...note try and use a hard edge brush now a soft one. well after tracing here is what my clean line looked like.

now step 3 flat coloring

you choose what colors your art piece will be... now my character is supposed to be a tout and I want him to be a dark-skinned fellow note: at this stage, you just paint flat colors which means when you select a color, you use that all through without changing for example. the skin I just paint it all one color the eyebrow one color etc .at this stage you avoid any form of shading or light direction.

following... Keep it coming

Franzinni:
now step 3 flat coloring

you choose what colors your art piece will be... now my character is supposed to be a tout and I want him to be a dark-skinned fellow note: at this stage, you just paint flat colors which means when you select a color, you use that all through without changing for example. the skin I just paint it all one color the eyebrow one color etc .at this stage you avoid any form of shading or light direction.

You did not tell us whether WE NEED TO CREATE ANOTHER LAYER for this...

now the next stage: is simple, there is just one rule you will need to stick to.


choose a direction where your light is coming from and stick to it guys... if you follow this one rule your art will look a whole lot better...

now, whatever side your light is coming form you should know that naturally, your shadow will fall the opposite side and with this handy tip let me show you what I got with the shading stage.

another tip for the shading stage is creating a new layer for it and put it under the clean lines but over there flat color layer then using a soft brush and a darker color start to create your shadows first and then if you make any mistakes you can just use the eraser tool to clean out the bit you don't like . this stage is basically your moving between the paintbrush tool and the eraser tool till you can carve out the shadow and give your art some form.

FreeTHINKER98:


You did not tell us whether WE NEED TO CREATE ANOTHER LAYER for this...

so sorry my bad... yeah please once you have the clean line and want do flat coloring, try and create a new layer and put it under the clean line... that will make life sooooooooo much easier ... then paint away.

well, we have made it to the final stage of this basic how-to. and this stage is called

polish: the name says it all this is where you add any other thing you feel your art piece needs as for me I just needed to add some other colors and also the light in the eyes if not the guy looks dead. now I could have taken it a bit further but for this basic how-to. I feed this can get your moving in the right direction. I will prepare an in-depth tutorial pretty soon but try and see what you think about it... now if you have any question feel free to ask.

Did you draw it on paper first then scanned it into your computer

Edopesin:
Did you draw it on paper first then scanned it into your computer

you can do that ... But I used a graphics tablet ... But to be honest you can do same with your mouse too.

Yeah

But to be honest you can do same with your mouse too.


pls how can i use the mouse in making this beautiful art work

Reckyjr18:
But to be honest you can do same with your mouse too.


pls how can i use the mouse in making this beautiful art work

now to use the mouse for this is simple ... In Photoshop reduce your brush size to maybe 3 or 5 and then start to sketch and follow the steps above

This is good.

Oh God... amazing
Can I do this with PicsArt

Franzinni:
you can do that ... But I used a graphics tablet ... But to be honest you can do same with your mouse too.

Fantastic design.

The graphics tablet how much is it?

Ugonwaeze14:

Fantastic design.

The graphics tablet how much is it?

thanks you can buy a ugee.for like 20k I guess


I got the Microsoft surface Go 8gig..and it is a darling ..

Reckyjr18:
But to be honest you can do same with your mouse too.


pls how can i use the mouse in making this beautiful art work

to use the mouse you will need to use the pen tool in Photoshop but a better way is to draw in blender

The mouse you can use there with the line tool ( just off my head I mean the name ) I think I would do a tutorial using both softwares and copy you on it ...

Wow

This is Amazing