A photoshop shading exercise
 

Just a little exercise in photoshop, to experience a shading technique.
[list=1][*]Let me know what you think[*]Give her a name[/list=1]

Forgot the pic...

damn thats sweet, all ps??

Cool!

Kate:)

very cool

Pretty cool, kinda has a pencil/ink drawn look.

How bout Sarah.

how did you do it? Ias it many a layers or just a simple Filter?

Thanks guys,

Of course i had a photo for reference, and yes it was all done in photoshop (8 hours) with a f*****g graphic tablet that worked half the time ...

I made a custom brush for the hair ('t was very handful for the glossiness of the hair)

For the method, if you understand french :

http://forum2d.free.fr/concours/tut_beart/beart.html

That's ok for Sarah

Veronica :cool:

The difficulty for me was to get the right tones blending together well.
Many times i had to reevaluate the tone scale to match the photo.

This is a great effort, and especially if this is you first time doing it.

I'm not for sure if you would like a more indepth critique, but if you do, I'd be more than happy to help you out with a few things.

Good job though!

Critiques are always welcome, so tell me if there's something going wrong or something i should get better...

First things first then. I don't want you to think that what I'm about to say or show you is the only way to do things. Mainly, all I'm about to show is to loosen up your art a little. Also, realise I didn't spend a whole lot of time with my additions, so please don't think that this is how your final piece should look. :D

Now, on to the critique. This piece looks unfinished to me. You have some great tones layed down, but now you need to clean them up a little. I won't go into detail about the facial structure looking a little loopsided, but I think you need to look at her eye placement just a bit. They are either to far apart or not big enough. But that's a small issue because she might actually look like that. :D

Now on to the actual things I can help you with. First things first. You need more contrast on the face. I don't know if you are trying to do a dry brush look, which is fine, but I think you need to keep you piece's consistent throughout. The fingers are blended together well, and you have a good sense of contrast there. So that's why I circled them in the blue. Now the cheeks, and chin could use more highlights. Which I show you here:

http://homepage.mac.com/chadtheartis...lightstest.jpg http://homepage.mac.com/chadtheartis...highlights.jpg

The next thing is the hair. Great value so far, and lends nicely as a base to work from. One thing to note about hair is that it flows, like water, and has a sense of volume, ie, highlights, mid tones, and shadow. One thing you are missing, besides the flow, is mid tones and strong highlights. This is actually pretty easy to do.

1. Create your shapes and form of your hair in one layer. (For example, I used your hair that you have so far as this layer)
2. Make another layer, just on top of it. Select the brush tool, and set it to change size and opacity according to the stylus pressure. Also select the brightest highlight of your hair.
3. Begin drawing your hair, and be sure to follow the forms you've already layed out, and you can make a stray hair or two for added effect.
4. Once you are satisfied with how you have layed out your hair, it will look stringy, believe me. But now, duplicate that layer. On the duplicate hair layer, go to guassion blur and soften the hair a bit. With the other hair layer underneath, you will see that it gets an amazing amount of form from so easy a task.
5. Next, lock the transparency of the layer, and select a large fuzzy brush. Pick a medium color, and set the brush to multiply. In the unblurred hair layer, begin lightly brushing the shadows of the hair to make it a little darker.http://homepage.mac.com/chadtheartis...W/hairtest.jpg http://homepage.mac.com/chadtheartis...hairsample.jpg

Next I would suggest softer highlights on the clothes. I don't know what your reference looks like, but your highlights just look to strong.

http://homepage.mac.com/chadtheartis...lothestest.jpg http://homepage.mac.com/chadtheartis.../finaltest.jpg

Overall though I like what you have so far. But like I said earlier, it just looks unfinished. I hope this helps a little.

Remember a face is never perfect, that's why i care about how the tones blur. (I don't want to loose the grain of the skin). However, the chin needs some cleanup.

As for the hair highlights, they need to be tuned like you did, but i won't go as far as you did just because she has dark hair, and too much highlights would mean she's blond.

In its context (the photograph), the subject is placed in front of a foliage background, and sunbeams are coming from the top and i guess from the front, that's why there's that large area of light on her cloth, and there you're right : it needs to be blurred a little up (especially the sleeve)

Thank you guy, the critique is interesting

You're welcome, I just hope I helped you out some. :D

I removed my updates, because this is your thread. If you do update your illustration any, I'd really like to see it.

Have fun.

little update...

I darkened the hair, added grain on the skin, ...:)