Term 2: Photoshop Session 1: Lizard Humanoid Shading

Today's session Had us use techniques to apply form to the lizard image shown below through shading. Our goal was to try and get the image to a point where it did not require lines to distinguish features.

To start I unlocked the base line drawing and set it to Multiply and lowered the opacity of the lines to 60% and locked the layer as I had no more editing use for the layer. Setting the layer to multiply allowed the lines to pass through any painting I did on another layer below the locked layer. Changing the opacity to 60% also meant that the line work passing through would not be so strong so I could focus on the painting.

I then created 2 new layers. On the lowest layer in the hierarchy I set the background to a monotone grey and locked said layer. On the layer selected in the image above I blocked out the colour of the lizard itself.

To create the appropriate lighter shade with the base colour one would use the colour picker tool, highlight the base colour and using the little circle selection tool, move the circle selection in a North East direction. This changes the colour to the lighter shade from the base colour.

I then set the opacity of the brush down to 40% and using the reference I began to build up the shades.

We were then shown how to apply a texture to our paintings; above is the skin texture image I used.

To do this we brought the texture image into Photoshop; from here we used Ctrl A to select the entire image and Ctrl C to copy the image. In the Edit tab > Paste Special > Paste in Place brought the image onto the our lizard paintings. We then scaled the image into the right size just for the head at this stage; we were then shown to use the Warp function of the Transform tool: Edit > Transform > Warp. This allowed us to essentially wrap the texture around the head to create a more realistic skin contour.

At the end of the session this is what I had produced. It's unfinished however I am really happy with how it turned out; I need to apply a different skin texture but in terms of the shading I think it came out rather well.