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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jürgen Hubert" data-source="post: 3244315" data-attributes="member: 7177">Well, I've uploaded them to my brother's server...This time, let's work on a portrait in color! Since I am not entirely comfortable with posting the images of complete strangers, let's use an old picture of me instead:<img src="http://juergen.the-huberts.net/art/tutorial/Juergen_Hubert.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Now you need to do a sketch of the image like you practiced. This time, you don't need to rush quite as much, though you shouldn't spend too much time on it, either.But before you start on the sketch, you should create a new layer in your image. Layers are one of the most important tools in the arsenal of any decent graphics program, since they allow you to work on different aspects of a picture independently and without having to fear that you will affect other parts of it.After you have created a new image, you only have a single, completely white layer. Click on Dialogs->Layers to open up the Layers Dialog (appropriately enough). Click on the "New Layer" on the lower right corner, name the new layer "Sketch", and choose "Transparency" as the Layer Fill Type. You can now switch between editing different layers by clicking on them in the layer dialog. You can also switch the visibility of the different layers on and off by clicking on the "eye" icon, and you can also "fix" individual layers (making them unchangeable) by clicking on the empty space right to the eyes - a stylized chain will appear then. Finally, you can move individual layers around by left-clicking on them and moving them around in the layer dialog (though the original white layer that you started with cannot be moved for some reason - but if it comes up, you can just delete it and create a new white layer instead, or if you want to keep the original layer for some reason, you can create a copy of it with the "Duplicate Layer" icon in the dialog before deleting it, and the copy is fully moveable).Switch to the Sketch layer and create the usual sketch on it. You won't really notice any differences at this stage - you can draw on it and erase parts of it like usual - but it will become very important later on.Now, if you have practiced sketching dilligently like I told you, you should be able to create a sketch of similar quality to this one:<img src="http://juergen.the-huberts.net/art/tutorial/Draft.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Now the coloring fun begins! Create a new, transparent layer titled "Skin" and move it below the Sketch layer in the layer dialog!Pick a new brush color by clicking on the "Foreground Color" box on the Tools window. In the color dialog you can see a big square in which you can choose both the brightness of the color and the "saturation" of the color (at the bottom of the square, the current color will be a grey tone of some kind, while at the top of the square you will have a "pure" primary color). To the right of the square you can choose the "primary color" your current color is based upon - this square cycles through the three elementary colors red, blue, and green from which all other colors are dervied (yes, that's green and not yellow. Color theory works a bit differently if you work with pure light than it does with ordinary painting. I'm not in the mood to go into the color theory of light at the moment, so let's just leave it at that yellow is created through a mixture of red and green...).To the right you see all sorts of slides that allows you to fine-tune your color until you get precisely the tone you want. Experiment a bit with them to get familiar with how they work, and then pick a nice flesh tone for the brush. It doesn't matter if that tone precisely matches that of the original - the color of objects is enormously affected by the local lighting conditions anyway. In the lower right portion of the dialog you will also see twelve fields with different colors. This is the "color history", where you can store older colors you used previously. To add the current color to the color history, simply click on the "Add current color" field to the left of it. You can retrieve the older color simply by clicking on it.You will also see a field called "HTML" notation, which generates a code for the color you have chosen in the hexadecimal system (which means that each digit does not only go from "0-9" but also has the letters "a-f" on top of them. So "0f" would be 15, and "10" would be 16 in the decimal writing system). Each color gets two digits in the order "Red"-"Green"-"Blue" (or "RGB" for short). This is not only useful for website coders, but also if you want to remember colors you used in older pictures which aren't displayed in the color history any more - simply add the HTML code of that color into the field, and you have the color again (for the record, I used "ffd6cb" as my flesh tone).Back to the practice. After you have chosen the flesh tone, pick a medium-size brush ("Circle (7)" and "Circle (9)" are both appropriate). Choose the "fuzzy brush" tool, pick an Opacity of 100, and switch Pressure Sensitivity to "Size" (switching off Pressure Sensitivity for Opacity in the process). This means that the size of your brush will vary depending on how hard you press the pen against the tablet, allowing you to either fill out large areas rapidly with your brush or creating fine details at the borders of an area.Now fill out all "skin" areas with that color, resulting in something like this:<img src="http://juergen.the-huberts.net/art/tutorial/Skin-1.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Here we see for the first time just how useful the layers are - they allow us to paint areas below the sketch without affecting the sketch in the slightest! This is one of the biggest advantages digital painting has over traditional art, and one that we are going to exploit to the fullest.Well, unfortunately my Internet time is up (I'm using a modem connection to access the internet from my parents' house during the Christmas vacation, and they don't like it if I block the phone line during normal daylight hours...), so my explanations on how to do shading will have to wait for later...</blockquote>

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