Character artwork tutorial
I
thought I'd present a tutorial on some character artwork I did
recently. This is not really a tutorial showing off any particular
effect or trick (in fact, I use very few "tricks" at all), but rather a
way for you to get an insight in how I go about creating a moderately
complex image in GIMP. There are also some layout, sketching and
composition ideas to be had along the way. I myself love to see how
others work and think, because it's usually very different from person
to person. Hopefully this will help you too -- or at least give you
some ideas.
The character is a rather humorous character from
a fantasy RPG known only as "The Jester". She is human except her arms
split below her elbows leaving her with four hands. And that's about
all the info you need on her for the sake of this tutorial.

All thumbnails below are clickable. Enjoy!
My GIMP setup.
I
run GIMP 2.2.13 (i.e. stable) under Linux Debian on a 3GHz machine,
using an (aging) Radeon 9800Pro graphics card. The reason the screen is
so wide is because I have it stretched over two monitors, one Sony
Trinitron 20" (superior colour depth) to the left, and a flatscreen
Viewsonic 19" to the right. GIMP works nicely with the control windows
on the right Viewsonic monitor whereas the image resides alone on the
Sony.
I use a Wacom tablet for input. Works like a charm in GIMP
and if you don't have one I can not recommend it enough. No scanning
was used at any time during the making of this image. Total work time
about six hours.
Anyway. Onto the tutorial.
In GIMP I've
found it it's useful to leave the canvas ("background") alone and do
all sketching on a layer above it. (Ignore the "new layer" thing in
this image, I just created it because I forgot to snapshot the very
first sketch I did. I work on "Sketch" all the time).
The
initial sketch is seen on the left . The canvas is an A4 at 300dpi.
It's done, as is most work in this image, with the airbrush tool and an
opacity set to 50%. I set my brush to be adaptable, so it will it'll
resize gradually upwards and downwards at the press of a button. This
is a very useful setup, allowing swift changes of brush work.
Note
that the sketch is done at a large zoom-out, to allow large sweeping
strokes across the image. I really do most of the work at this zoom, to
get the overall composition right. Not until much later do I zoom in.
This
is not really a tutorial on anatomy, but for the character sketch, the
most important line is the spinal line, since it establishes the form
of the entire figure. Once the spine is in place, the legs and arms
follows. I lay out most of the pose with only this stick-figure. Much
easier to erase only one line if things look weird.
There
is no point to go close when drawing large things covering the entire
image, so I keep working at zoom-out mode. Now I start "tubing" the
stick-figure, placing cylinders over the lines and connecting them with
ball-joints. Then I flesh out those cyliners to sculpt the actual form.
Tricky stuff like shoulders and hips in perspective is much easier to
get right this way.
The Jester has a slim, well-trained body
with a narrow chest, so I tried to accomodate that. I also wanted to
show that she's rather short, so her legs are "realistically" long,
rather than the super-hero length of legs which are usually drawn
atlmost a foot longer than most realistic humans could ever hope for.
The head, which is about the same size regardless of your overall
length, is therefore proportionally larger to the body.
Arms
would have been a nightmare if I hadn't alredy tried out the
stick-figure, but nevertheless the right arm changed because I didn't
want her to block her own body with her arms. Also note the protruding
rib-cage under her right breast, this is an effect of her pose and slim
form.
Cleaned
up the sketch. Note that this sketch is done on the original size of
the image, so the lines are really thick! This is of little importance,
since we will remove all sketch layers before the image is done.
Finally, I rescale the layer to better place the Jester on the page and have less empty room at the edges.
I
created a new layer (background #1) behind the Jester where I sketched
the wooden pole she sits on. On this layer I also put the stuff she's
doing with her hands (note: The wrong layer is selected in this image.
Sorry about that). The initial sketching is now done. Note that I wait
with the face until later, simply because of how it's done (we'll get
back to that).
Before
we do anything more, we have to establish the background and colouring.
So behind the sketch layers we create a new one. This "background #2"
layer is the first one we have created that will remain in the final
image.
Lower the opacity of the sketch layers so the new background can be clearly seen through them.
I
want dynamics in the image and one way to create dynamics is by
diagonals. Diagonals give the eye things to do, makes an image less
static. So with the select lasso tool I sweep out a diagonal bottom
half of the image. This is the horizon of the image. I fill it with a
standard shade roughly with the same colour scheme and structure I
want.
An important thing to think about is not to create
unnessecary parallel surfaces. If I wasn't careful, the horizon might
have been placed lower and could have melded with the top line of her
legs for example. Instead I take care to have it cross perpendicular to
her midriff. Avoiding blending parallel surfaces is very important in
all forms of image composition, this is only one example.
I
invert the selection and fill the other half of the image. This is the
first time I decide that this will be a twilight/evening scene. That
choice will influence the entire image from now on.

I
hide the Jester now, concentrating on the background only. I only look
at the Jester image to make sure I place the tents where there are no
critical parallel lines blending with her. I also decide to use the
shade created by the stock gradient as a basis for the forest edge. It
also creates a natural perspective.
I kept the gradients
untouched on its own layer, doing the details on a new llayer (I'll
show the layer structure later). The reason for this is that I could
theorethically want to change the colour of the image, and then
changing the gradients will affect the colours much more subtly than if
I changed the colour of the entire background.
The tree outlines are not really sketches, they are to be the first lines of colouring the forest.
Borrowing
from the gradient colour, I give volume to the trees and have light
shine past them into the glade with the tents. The sky of course has to
influence them as well, so I add yellow to them, of exactly the same
colour as the sky.
The
forest looked kinda bland, so I also put some other types of trees in
there, I also broke up the straight tree-line to make it look less
synthetic.
I
love contrasts in an image, so the tents must of course stand apart
from the trees by being red (also a classical tent colour).
The
sky. This must be done on a separate layer from the gradient, or you'll
be in pain when you want to erase something -- you'll never be able to
replicate the smooth transition of that yellow gradient! A trick for
making easy clouds is to draw them in the same colour as one part ofthe
sky. Here I picked the orange in the middle part of the sky. So all
clouds are actually done with exactly the same colour -- contrast does
the rest.
This is a very simplistic sky -- all clouds are on
the same level and they don't overlap at all. I felt it best not to
make the sky too messy, with the ground having so many details already.
The only thing to think of is to make the clouds thinner near the
horizon, to create the illusion of them being more distant.
Working
over the image with smaller brushes, I created more structure to the
trees and added more details. I added some highlights in the clouds,
but kept it to a minimum for said reasons. I also blurred the horizon a
bit, adding some white. This simulates the distance-haze you see when
looking through a lot of air.
The background is done. Now for the foreground!
This
is the current structure.( "Background #1" was the sketch of the wooden
pole if you forgot.), including the clouds and tree layers on top of
the gradients called "Bkg colour base".
We want to fade the
background so we can work on the foreground wthout being disturbed by
it. One shortcoming of GIMP is that there is no easy way to reduce
opacity on a bunch of layers at a time, nor can you "nest" layers (not
that I've found anyway). An easy way to solve this is to put a "white
fader plate" between the foreground and background. This is just a
layer I've filled with a solid white. Settting opacity will then fade
all "below" it.
This intermediate layer is coincidentally
useful for many other things too, since sitting where it is, it
controls the relationship between foreground and background. So we will
get back to this "plate" later.
This
is the result of the white plate layer. Now we can begin with colouring
the foreground. Remember that the sketch layers will be thrown away
later, so all colouring is done on layers above the sketch.
Notice
how the pole she sits on has been angled? I had to do this to fit the
horizon -- would be strange to have her sitting upright on a pole
angled 45 degrees to the ground after all ...

So I lay down the colours of the pole and the lanterns. I chose bright colours to differentiate the elements of the picture.
The lanterns are simply yellow spheres that has been clothed with wires to make them look 3-dimensional.
So
this is how the system is set up right now. I have two foreground
colouring layers, one for the Jester and one for the pole. Below lies
the fader plate and the background.
I pulled out an older image I've done of the Jester at this point, for reference. Must make sure she's the same person!
On
the colour layer, I lay down the basic colours of the Jester. This is
plain blocking it in inside the black lines of the sketch.
The
sketch is still there, but I've reduced the opacity of it so the thick
black lines won't disturb the image. At this point I replicate the
lines of the sketch again -- but with colour. Using alternatively dark
and bright shades of red and purple I try to convey the shinyness of
her dress. Since the dress is so tight, there is some muscular
structure that has to be taken into account. Sometime after this, I
just delete the sketch layers alltogether.
It's
time for the face. First I colour the oval into the basic greyish
colour of the Jester (she's supposed to have very pale skin.)
The
Jester is an adult woman, so her face must have adult proportions. I've
found it helps sketching a lot to lay down a shadow structure like this
first, before sketching the face itself. Especially the postiion of the
eyes relative the nose and mouth is much easier to see if first seeing
the rough shadows like this.
On
top of the shadows I sketch the eyes, nose and mouth. The Jester has a
high-contrast face with mascara, lip-stick and all. She's also glad and
happy most of the time, making it fitting to give her an open mouth.
Some
tweaking later, the main structure of the face is done. I experimented
with various ways of incoorporating her teeth before choosing this one.
Teeth are always a problem since it's easy to make it look like she's
either a snarling animal or someone with a tooth prostheis. Added ears
too, since well ... they should be there.

Jumping
ahead of myself here. This is actually the final image, after a lot of
changes in the colouring. But I felt it fit better here, to compare
with the previous image. This shows what effect self-shadowing has on a
face. It's a bit scary to start putting shadows on something like a
face -- something you've put a lot of time into. But it's nessecary for
blending it into the image-- and the end result reflects that.
Back
to the current status of the image, still with the first version of the
completed face. Here I've put in the juggling balls and the flag she
waves around. Note the choice of colours ; the greens create a rough
diagonal (or maybe a curve) from the flag to the pole and up to the
balls, broken by the other idiagonal which is made out of the Jester
herself, in red an purple. As said, diagonals are useful, bot
geometrically and in colours like this.
Also did the golden details on her outit, leaving highlights until later.
And that concludes the main colouring of the Jester.
Now
it's time to actually start matching the background to the foreground;
make this into one single image. That white "plate" we put in earlier
now comes to use. In the same way as the forest fades to white in the
distance, so do
all tjhings
in the background. So we set the plate to a low but non-zero opacity.
This will neatly bring forth the background with a slightly different
"tint" than the foreground (actually, I also changed the colour ot the
plate to a bright white-yellow before being satistfied)).
...
and this is the result. The background can be seen, but it's subtly
tinted to set it apart from the foreground. It's seen best in the
closest tent.
The
problem is that the Jester don't fit with the colour scheme of the
background. The highlights on her dress are white for example. Why
should then be white if most light hitting her is yellowish? She
clearly needs to be matched to the background.
This is easily done in GIMP's "Adjust hue" dialogue, where base colours can be
tweaked.
I use this to change white into a warmer yellowish hue. This affects
the entire foreground and makes it look like she's lit up by the sky.

From here on, this tutorial turns a little more sketchy, since I didn't want to focus on shading techniques.
Working
on yet another layer I add heavy shadowing to the figure at this point.
She is after all seen against a bright background. As said, I won't go
into detail on how I do shadowing in this tutorial, but it's very
important for the final result.

Eventually
we arrive at the final result, where the character has been shaded and
highlighted to fit into the background. Of note, there is a vast
difference in the quality of this image depending on what monitor I
look at. On my 20" Trinitron (much better colour depth), the picure
takes place in twilight, with warm colours, whereas on the flatscreen
it looks much brighter and less moody.
Well, that concludes
the tutorial. I know myself that it's useful to see how others work.
Hopefully you got some ideas from how I go about things ...
UPDATE: I revisited this image much later and polished it a bit. Here is the new version for comparison:

.
Griatch