Tutorial

The Wooden Man

In this tutorial I'll explain how I produce my images. It's not that hard, just plan what you are going to do. In this case I'll show how I work on this yet unfinished work of Wooden Man.
First, I make a sketch on markerpaper, using a sharp 2b pencil and this kind of gum you can squeeze. (I dont know the English name, but in Dutch its "'kneedgum"). I don't like sketching that much, so I spend as little time possible doing that. But, if you got your sketch wrong, for example the perspective, or you make grave anatomical mistakes (watch the hands!) it'll show up in your final work. So make sure your sketch is perfect. Then scan it in, using any cheap scanner. in this case, a grayscale scan was made, at 300 dpi. Clean up your scan, using "levels" (The shortcut is ctrl-l). Make sure all the debris around your sketch and the grain of the paper dissapears, and darken your lines. It'll take a minute to find a nice balance. Don't loose too much of your tender sketch lines. Bringing the handles on the far left and far right to the middle will usually do. Your result should now look something like this here on the left.

To make my sketch a little more lively, I used the "twirl" filter, to make my sketch a little bit more dynamic. But apply it carefully! It's so easy to overdo it. In general, be very careful using filters. They are very recognisable for anyone with a basic understanding of photoshop, and if applied carelessly, it just shows, and mostly it's very ugly. So: Handle with care. The twirl filter is found under: filter - distort - twirl. You see immediately it's subtle effects on the wooden man. ;)

Now we're going a little deeper in photoshop. And we have to make some decisions. I chose to work on a brown background. After all, it's a wooden man, and I want him in a kind of forest-scene. Choose your background-colour not too dark or to light. Something medium will do. First: make your background into a layer. You can do this by copying it, and paste it. Now you should have two identical pictures on top of each other. Make sure the top one is selected, and click on the pull-down menu next to "normal" in the layers-box. Select "multiply". Now your sketch should appear twice as dark. Select the "background" layer, and fill it completely with your background-colour.
Now your sketch is imposed over this nice, brown colour. It should look something like this here on the left.
Now the next step. I like to keep my background separated (at least in this stage of the painting) from the foreground. so: I'll make a new layer above the background, still under the sketch.
I'll turn off the background-layer, and start painting with a normal, round brush under the sketch. The idea is to block in the sketch with the same colour as the background. Stay within the edges, as much as possible. Use a 100% opacity-brush.

It's time to bring the background to life. I use a few shades of green, all easy to be found in photoshop's swatches. I set the opacity-jitter of the brush to pressure sensitive, so it resembles more or less a real brush. The harder you press, the less transparent your colour will be.
Use it very lightly at the beginning. Make sure the edges of the brush are not too hard, and not too soft. You notice that all you do dissapears under the layer with the wooden man, so you don't touch him yet. This will be a huge advantage later.
If you have a nice, vague green blob over your brown background, apply the "Gaussian Blur filter". It should make your brushwork a little vague.
Then take a lighter green colour, and repeat the previous process. Don't cover everyting up! Leave a lot of space. Blur it again, and choose again a lighter green. Maybe a bit more yellow.
Now you should have a background that looks more or less like this one here on the left. It allready gives a sence of depth, which is very nice. At least, I like it.

And now is the moment to do something with wooden man himself. The background is not finished, but it's clear where it's heading. Click in the layer-menu on the wooden man layer. Check the "protect opacity-box". Your layer menu should look something like this:

Now you are able to paint on the foreground without touching the background. Use a simple, round brush, with hard edges and the opacity-jitter put to pen-pressure. Take a light, brown colour, and slowly build up the highlights. Follow the lines and bumps of your initial sketch, and think about where your lightsource is. here, I placed it on the top left.

Choose a darker brown for the shadows. And apply shadow much the same way as the light parts. Also, in real life there is some reflection from the environment, and not just your main light source. It's visible on the shadows. I used my colour-picker to get a sample from the background-colour, and very carefully I use it along the edges in the dark, shadowy parts.
Also I chose a slightly different brown to work on wooden man's clothing. In this stage it's important to use a limited colour pallette, so everything you do will be connected. later on we're gonna bring in some more colour. But: I haven't finished this drawing yet, so it'll be for next time.