# JohnIce's Portrait Tutorial



## JohnIce (May 25, 2010)

Alright, this is just for fun to see if anyone likes it, and because I'm bored  I figured I'd make a more extensive tutorial on how I go about making portraits, mainly to show that it really isn't that hard.

I won't go too much into the actual drawing process, as that part is really up to how much experience you have and how much eye for detail you have. This is all about practice, that's pretty much all I can say.

Alright, let's begin! 

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STEP 1:

Find a good reference photo. I usually google for images by choosing "large" in the search options. The larger the reference photo is, the more detail you get to work from and that helps a LOT. I also try to find a photo that pretty clearly shows who it is, as some photos make people look like someone else, and so even if your portrait is perfect people might still not see the resemblance  In this case, I'm going to draw Christina Aguilera. As an example, here's a bad photo:







It's small, and it doesn't fully show her defining facial features. This could very well be some random girl.

Instead, I went with this one:






Much better! Large, detailed and there is no doubt that it is in fact Christina. So let's continue!

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STEP 2:

Now that we've printed the photo, the hard part begins. Like I said, there aren't a lot of tips I can give on how to replicate a person's face onto paper, just practice a lot and concentrate. Try to acknowledge the defining features: in Christina's case I'd say it's the eyes and the bottom lip. Get those right, and the rest of the drawing will have a better chance of looking like you want it to.

Anyway, fast forward, the drawing is done and ready for scanning!

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STEP 3:






Wohoo it's scanned! However, as you can see, it's not very smooth, it's got a blueish tint and the "white" area around her looks quite messy. Uncool!

The first thing I do is to set the colour to Grey Scale. This way we get rid of the blue. Then I also tend to increase the Contrast a bit, to make the white whiter and the dark darker, making it look more like the original drawing. After that, I use the Smudge Tool to painstakingly smooth out all the pixely shit that comes from having a bad scanner (if your scanner doesn't create this issue, good on you ). I opted to leave the hair un-smoothed though, because hair is in reality not that smooth. Leaving it unedited makes it look more realistic in my opinion.

We should get something like this:






Much better! Now, onto the next step...

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STEP 3:

Now we mask off the grey. Another word for this method is "lineart", although now we're not just using lines but a fully shaded picture.

I'm not sure how you do this in Photoshop as I don't have it (someone on here may be able to tell you), but in Paint Shop Pro 6 which is what I use, you go to Masks > New > From image... > Create mask from source luminance and tick the box that says "invert mask data".

The picture should now look like this:






The checkered background simply means it's transparent, i.e. there is no background  First of all go to the background layer and fill it with white, so you can see what you're doing. You'll also notice that your drawing looks very bright after you masked it.






This is no problem, in fact there's a problem if it doesn't happen  Just select the masked layer and fill the whole thing with black. And don't worry about colouring outside the lines, as it's impossible to colour anything _but _the lines  Now your mask should look like normal again!






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STEP 4:

Now that you have your mask, create a new layer underneath it. This should be on top of the background layer though, in case you want to change the background at a later date. So you should now have three layers.

Pick a skin colour you like, but make it brighter than you'd normally want. This is because the mask (or lineart), contains a lot of grey which will make all the colours a lot darker once you get them under there. I picked a pretty light brown colour for the skin, and a grey/blue one for the hair, and with a pretty large brush I just slabbed paint all over the thing. At this point, don't (I repeat: DON'T) try to do any shading. You will make things a lot more difficult for yourself later on. Just use solid colours at the moment. Btw, I put the hair on its own layer on top of the skin, so we now have 4 layers (background>skin>hair>lineart). 

After that, I added another layer and just did a little bit of shine in the hair, blue in the eyes etc. Nothing fancy as of yet. Here's the result:






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STEP 5:

I decided I didn't want to bother with a background anyway, so in order to get those colours brighter and more life-like, I merged all the layers into one. Bye-bye, lineart! After that, I added a ton of saturation to the image, aswell as changed the hue a little bit, to get this result:






Now we're getting places!

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STEP 6 (FINAL STEP!):

The final step is most likely the longest step also. This is where you'll really hone in on your picture and add all the final details, which can be a lot more work than you'd initially thought when you were drawing it on a paper. This is the point where I add all the lighting, extra shading, makeup, finish the hair etc.

This is a point where, again, it's mostly up to your experience and eye for detail to make it look like you want it. My advice though is: don't be afraid to add more layers! There is NO need whatsoever to save in on layers, unless of course your computer is shit and you're afraid it might get overloaded. But for example, here's my list of layers from top to bottom:

-Final hair shading
-Extra hair editing
-Piercing highlights
-Piercing
-Eyeliner/mascara (black)
-Eye highlights
-Eyeshadow (low opacity dark purple)
-Lip highlights
-Lip makeup (super low opacity pink)
-Skin highlights
-Skin shadows
-Cheekbone makeup
-Original picture

... and that's all top of what was already there in the last picture. Then I merge all those layers, do some final smudging according to the reference picture, and here's the final result:







WOHOO FINISHED 

I hope you all enjoyed this tutorial, I had fun making it anyway  Hope to see what you guys come up with!

Here's a quick sum-up of the whole process. Cheers!


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## ralphy1976 (May 25, 2010)

sweet man, my prolem is that :

1 - i keep at staring at her boobs, so i would have never gone passed the google search

2 - i can't do step 2 : the drawing...

So i thank thee for the days you are bored!!!!


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## JohnIce (May 25, 2010)

Haha thanks man 

I did a video version of the same thing:


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## ralphy1976 (May 25, 2010)

i checked your myspace..on one pic it looks like it is pretty cold, cause you have a scarf and your nipples are erected.....or maybe that's the way you guys do it in Sweden!!!

groovy tunes too, hope it gets you guys everywhere you need to go!!! \m/\m/


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## JohnIce (May 25, 2010)

ralphy1976 said:


> i checked your myspace..on one pic it looks like it is pretty cold, cause you have a scarf and your nipples are erected.....or maybe that's the way you guys do it in Sweden!!!
> 
> groovy tunes too, hope it gets you guys everywhere you need to go!!! \m/\m/


 
Thanks man! About the nipple issue, I really have no idea  I blame the lighting


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