Queen of the Night – Wacom tab Digital painting Tutorial

QUEEN OF THE NIGHT CONCEPT

There’s nothing complex about the concept actually. I wanted to create a dark and sexy digital painting wallpaper for my desktop. That’s what made me create this. Moonlight has always helped artist create a scene of romance or horror. I’m not sure what actually applies here, but I wanted to keep the moon as the source of light.

TECHNICALITIES

Ok, here I’m going to assume that you have a basic knowledge of getting around Photoshop and Daz studio. I know, I know I’ve never talked about Daz studio before. But I’ve been dabbling with daz for quite some time now. If you’ve been checking out my earlier work flow and tutorial posts, you will be able to understand this workflow easily.

TOOLS YOU NEED

• Adobe Photoshop: I’m still using CS5, but you should be able to do what I’m going to show you with any other version.
• DAZ Studio: I have version 4.0
• Wacom Tab: I don’t know how well can one execute this kind of digital art with a mouse. If you can, then I salute you. You’re a genius. I used the Wacom tab for the pen pressure features. It really helps in bringing the right texture to the image. I have Bamboo create. CTH670.
• Basic Drawing Skills: It’s a must. If you are good at making pencil sketches on paper, you will have an upper hand in executing this with ease.

RESOURCES YOU NEED

• Photoshop paint brushes: Just google for it and you will find a gazzillion links taking you to a bazzillion types of paint brushes. I used the paint brushes by Dianae for this one. It’s one of the best photoshop brush presets I’ve found so far.
• Stock Image: I used this stock image by wyldraven to create the back ground.

TUTORIAL

1. CREATING THE 3D MODEL: DAZ 3d is a pretty easy software to create 3D models. There is still a lot for me to learn with DAZ Studio. At the moment I Just use it to create poses for my art. I had to twiddle around with the posing controls to get this exact pose. Once you are done with it, render the 3d model model as an image in .dsi format.
   
2. IMPORT IN PHOTOSHOP: Hit ctrl+n (cmd+n for mac) to create a new file I’m going to set the resolution to 4392 X 2466 completely filled with white colour. It’s advisable to begin with a huge canvas because it’s easier to zoom in and work on minute details like eyes. Import the image and position it on the canvas.
   
3. BASIC SKETCH: Create a new layer and trace the out line and other details using the wacom tablet. I’m going to use the hard brush with these brush settings to make the trace.
   
   I’m going to trace the body structure at this point. Once you are done making the trace, hide the 3d model layer and you will have a sketch like this.
   
4. MORE DETAILS: Over this I’m going to add one more blank layer and draw the other details like the facial features, the hair, the cloth and other minor details here and there. I create a new layer so that the previous details remain intact and any change done affects only the current layer.
   It’s also a good practice to complete the sketch digitally so that you can focus on the minute details like the facial features, hair detail, eyes detail by zoming in close to the image.
   
5. CREATING SHADOWS: Set the foreground colour in the colour palette to black. Remember the brushes link that I gave earlier in the resource section? Play around with different presets in it. Also manipulate the opacity of the brush from time to time. Using your wacom tab, paint on the different areas to create shadows.
   

   While creating shadows, visualization of a light source is very important. Once you focus on a light source, creating shadows based on that positioning should be easy. Order a Limited Edition Print of this image.

6. COLOURING: Create a new layer. Name it as cloth colour. Move it below the sketches and the shadows layer. Select a shade of red. The shade selection depends on the ambient light in the image. Since I’m trying to create a dark feel to this art I’m going to select a darker shade of red. Paint this colour on the cloth colour layer. Because we place the colour layer below the shadows layer, you can see that the shadows appear automatically as you colour.
   
7.  ADDING THE BACKGROUND IMAGE: Import the stock image that I told you about earlier. Make adjustments to the stock image by creating duplicates of the layer and bring the moon to the top right position. This can be done using the free transform tool. Make sure you place it below the sketch, shading and the colouring layer.
   
8. FINAL SHADOWS: It’s evident that the brightness of the model is not at all matching the background. They look like two different images just placed on top of each other. So I’m going to add a new blank layer on top of all the existing layers called final shadows. Using the wacom tab, I’m going to paint on this layer with black colour where ever necessary. Remember to experiment with the brush presets that I gave earlier in the resources column. You can also play around with the opacity of the brushes but that Should not be a problem as using a wacom tab allows you to control this based on the pen pressure.
   

THAT’S ABOUT IT

One final touch that will add to the image is to paint the pupils of the subject eyes white. Just because a) it highlights the eyes b) anything is possible in digital art. So that’s about it. This is the completed final image. It’s my current desktop wallpaper. And I think it’s going to be for a while. Feel free to download it for yourself. Just leave me a comment with your critiques or appreciation. Either way, it’ll make me happy.