One of my many faults is that I change my mind often. This is one of those instances. Instead of continuing the tutorial series about the various vector tools we are going to have some fun.

Time to put those skills you’ve already learned to use.

Download the picture of my nephew Nathan and open it in Photoshop.
Nathan.jpg link at bottom of the page.

Meet Nathan, you are going to become very well acquainted by the time this tutorial is finished.

This is an example of what we will be doing today. It’s very rough just to give you an idea. We will go into detail on how it was constructed.

Begin by selecting the pen tool

you feel most comfortable with and also select Paths from the top palette.

We will fill the shapes we make because the Shape Layers tool obscures what you are doing making it impossible to see where you are going.

Outline Nathan’s face, ears and neck. You don’t have to be exact when it comes to the hairline or neckline because we can shuffle layers later if necessary to cover over these areas.

You should have something that looks similar to this

From bottom of the paths window select Fill

The fill tool uses the foreground colour unless you change it. Pick shade of pink.

This creates a shape layer in PS - name your layer.

Repeat the process for the shirt and the hair. Put each element on a separate layer.

Click on the eye icon to turn off the layers you are not using so you can see what you are doing. To begin a new layer click on any other layer or use the New Layer Icon in the Layers Palette.

You should have something not unlike this

To change the fill colour choose the layer thumbnail and click on the colour indicator (circled in red) when the colour palette pops up – choose a colour and press okay.

Next, on separate layers, block in the eyes, brows, and mouth shapes. Zoom in to get the shapes as accurately as you can.

If. When you zoom in, the handle you are controlling forces the page to scroll, just let go of the handle and select the magnifying glass. Zoom out till you can see what you are doing again, reselect the pen and keep working. You may have to step backward.

Sometimes if the picture is not large you can easily move the handles to bring you back to your starting point. On a large picture though it can get a bit tricky scrolling back and forth, but as long as you don’t let go, and with a little perseverance you should be right.

You should now have something that looks a bit like this.

Give Nathan irises, pupils and eyelashes. You can add more detail around the eyes too.

For the pupils I created a new blank layer and used the elipse tool from the shape palette.

Add nostrils, make the colour a little darker than the other features

Nathan is really starting to take shape.

Next we’ll work on the chin and face shape.

I duplicated the background layer and multiplied it to emphasis the detail, you might like to try this too.

Add some more detail around the mouth, nose, upper lip and ears

Give him some teeth

Add shadows to the face using the gradient tool rather than solid colour. You may have to fiddle with the setting to get it just the way you want it, but that’s part of the fun.

I drew the shapes with the freehand tool for the shadows on the face in the original version (at the top of the page).

Add a background and some detail to the hair if you like.

The more you practice these skills the better you will get and I’m sure your results will reflect this.

Nathan finished.

I’ve also uploaded the completed PSD file with all the layers so that you can see how the layers all fit together.

What colours you use is entirely up to you but here are a couple of links to skin tone colour charts that you may find helpful.
Retouch Pro
Jimiyo.com

The next tutorial will be about building complex shapes, turning paths into selections and selections into paths.

Back to drawing with pencil and paper for a while.
Until next week - Logging off,
Jools