Illustration snow family - part 1

First step is the sketch. Sometimes i might bodge some photos together and sort of trace over them in PS, but this was easier for me, and i think it turned out well. If you don't want to draw something, for this 'tut' - a digital scan or photo of a colouring book page will work fine!

In this case, i want to work on a medium grey background. This will let me add shadow and highlight and suggest an evening or night scene. I want the light from the window to show an emotional warmth. All i've done here is to create a Solid Color Fill Layer clicking at the bottom of the layers palette as in this image:




I select a medium grey, just a tiny bit of blue in it.



Next i select the sketch layer, and drag it above the new fill layer.



Then with the sketch layer selected, i type [v] for the Selection Tool (i tend to think the tool i use to moVe things around...). Because with that tool selected there is a lovely shortcut i learned here at PSTcom: just type [Shift+the PLUS sign] or [Shift+the MINUS sign]. This runs through all the possible Blend Modes! Love it!



I know to use the SHIFT&PLUS 3 times to go from Normal to Multiply. This lets me see the lines from the sketch i photographed.

Ok. Pretty much all of my "tricks" require items to be on different layers. In the Corel Photopaint world i once happily inhabited, these are objects, and it is just incredibly handy to have them seperate. (Think of all the work you put in to pulling apart various photos for a chop. Since we are building this from scratch, we should do so in such a way to avoid all that work later!)



So. For a new layer: i type [Ctrl+SHIFT+N]. I double-click the unhelpful name PS assigns it and name it. In this case "Baby Snow".



With about a 15 pixel hard round paintbrush ([B] brings it to your hand like a lazy Jedi get's his light-saber or toothbrush)... i start painting the feet and head for the Baby.



I do this with a grey "paint" that so light it is almost white, but not quite. Easier to add highlights later than to select everything but the highlighted area and darken that!




The pants and face items will overlap later, so i needn't and in fact shouldn't leave them out.

Now i simply [Ctrl+click] the Baby Snow layer in the layer palette. This gives me "Marching Ants" around the shapes i painted. This way i can start "airbrushing" without needing to clean up later!



Gratuitous (brief!) Digression: i subscribed to Airbrush magazines for a couple of years back in the middle 70s. But about that time my Dad had some computers and began to see a world where you could basically airbrush with the power of undo! My airbrush only came out of its box about 4 times.



Now i want to go ahead and shade these 3 snowballs. I'll need a warm grey.







Not very dark, i know. No worries. Snow is white, after all, and i have tricks in store!. Details next step! (c=

Now it gets a little fun. Always keeping in mind where the source of light is, i start shading. With the Brush selected, i use that same great shortcut to change the mode to Multiply. [Shift+PLUS sign] 5 times. (Your results may vary on the number of times.)



Now i want to "soften" the brush. All the way. I can [Right-Click] anywhere on the image and change the Hardness:






That's not bad, but having that dialogue in my way, having to click off somewhere CAREFULLY (so as not to add a stray paint blob or erase something when you have the eraser) gets on my nerves. The safest place to click for that - by the way - is the very top-most bar of your programme. You do have that window maximised, don't you? We need all the eyeball room we can get! (I have dual monitors and i drag ALL my palettes to the smaller monitor so i can see my image all the time!)



Anyway, there is an easier way to soften a brush (or brush-like tool, e.g. eraser).
Hold [Shift] and type the left or right-square bracket: "[" / "]" which - if you think about it is the same as typing [ { ] or [ } ]. Anyway, the left softens, the right hardens. You can go from solid 100% Hardness to 0% dead fast this way.



Now with the brush's mode set to Multiply, the more you paint the darker it gets. That's why i got a fairly light, warm grey paint. But that means we also need the brush to be "weak": we need the Opacity to be low. For this i think about 20% will work nicely. We'll only be using the softest edge of the brush... and sometimes we want it to get quite dark after several strokes. The "mask" acts like magic "frisket" film that airbrush artists use, but invisibly! Ah what and age we live in!







Similar to softening/hardening the brush, just typing [ or ] shrinks and enlarges the brush size, respectively. So [ a few times so i can darken the shadow of the legs.