This is a video of me sketching a random portrait in photoshop using a wacom tablet, I’ve included the video and also some screen shoots.

Here is the video of the sketching process, you can read below for details.

I start with a grayish background for mid tone and just start sketching the shape of the face.

I didn’t really sketch everything in detail because I will leave that for later, but for now I blocked in some of the shadow areas to make the shape more three dimensional.

Next I blocked in some highlights and the basic shape of the hair. At this point I have a better view of what the final picture will look like, so it is good to start make some major changes before its too late such as the shape of the head, position of the eyes and so on.

Than I added some streaks of hair to show the direction of the hair flow.

After you are done blocking in the basic shapes and final positioning of the facial features you can start defining the detail on the face.

In the final picture I brighten up the drawing and even out the tone and added fine streaks of hair.

Here is a video of me painting Iron Man in Photoshop. Again its probably pretty fast but you get the idea, comments and critiques are welcome!!

I sketched it out with plain black line than shade it in to get a feel of the volume. After I am satisfied with the volume I went in and painted the details including the reflections. Once in awhile I will tone down everything using the level tool so I can add more darker shades and brighter highlights because I often get carry away with using too much highlights and shadows. You will notice that I did not really color it, instead, I changed the color using gradient adjustment, I colored one layer to red and a second layer to gold because thats pretty much all the colors he has, than cut it out so I get two different colors. Than I use dodge and burn to bring out some of the back lights. So as you can see, you do not need to paint everythin, Photoshop can help you get to where you want faster.

Here is a time lapsed painting of Storm, the costume in this painting is from X-men the movie, I know its a little bit fast, I was trying to stay within the limitation of the video sites, but you get the idea. Please feel free to make comment and critique, thanks!!!

Storm