P01LastFirst – Digital Painting from a scan | Twenty-First Century Art and Design

For starters you need to draw something…it needs to be only line art with no shading or details. Bring me the line art to be scanned.

Notice how the drawing is made only of lines.

You may draw from a photo, from your imagination, or use the grid to copy (not trace!) any image you choose of a person.

Once you have drawn your line art, clean it up so that all that remains are the lines you want. Erase any stray marks or lines before we scan the drawing. Once it is ready to be opened in Photoshop it may still be messy and need to be cleaned up or drawn on, like this:

See the blue lines underneath? Then the black lines drawn over the sketch? This is how you draw…

Now choose Image – Adjustments – Brightness/Contrast and slide the slider to the right first on the Brightness levels, then on the Contrast so that the white of the background gets bright and clean, and your lines get darker and stronger.

Once your drawing is cleaned up it should look something like this:

Now that your drawing is cleaner, click on the back ground layer to unlock it- call it Line Art and change the Layer Mode to Multiply. Create a new layer underneath this Line Art layer, name it background and fill it with white by choosing Edit- Fill – White or choosing the Paint Bucket Tool (G), selecting the color white and clicking anywhere on the new background layer.

Switch to the Brush tool (B) and begin experimenting with all of the brushes that are available to you.

Once the Brush menu is open, click on the small triangle in the upper right hand corner to add to your list of available brushes. When choosing a new brush list, click on “append” to your list so that you do not lose the existing brushes.

After all your selections are saved, all your new layers have been painted, paint your background. That original white layer will now be used to create some kind of environment for your subject to live in.