‘Me and Louie’s Sister’ - A Step by Step Tutorial

by Daniel Hammonds a.k.a Wade/Haujobb & Fairlight  

This entire picture was painted using Photoshop 6.0 and a generic 3 button mouse. 

Click here to view a key of commonly used Photoshop tools

Please note that many of the techniques demonstrated here in the examples have been RE-PAINTED for the purpose of this tutorial and may therefore differ from the steps and the final picture. This, however, shows that it is possible to reapply the same techniques to achieve a similar (but not identical) result.

Furthermore, as I have tried to group each process under headings, not all of the stages are shown sequentially.

Getting started

To begin this picture I needed a basic outline with the primary features in their correct place. Owing to my difficulties with proportion, the first thing I did was draw a grid over the reference photograph (an A4 sized picture in a glossy magazine) using a pencil and ruler. The grid consisted of 12 squares across and 9 down, each one measuring 1.5cm squared.  

I then created a transparent layer on Photoshop and (after enabling the ruler view) created a relative sized grid – 12 squares across and 9 down. I renamed this to GRID. But as I wanted the resolution of this image to be 640x480, I cropped the full grid down to size.  

Having done this, I opened another page with a white background. I added a layer over this and named it SKETCH, before pasting the GRID layer over the top, like so:

On the SKETCH layer, I began to sketch the basic outline using the line tool on medium pressure, with the grid acting as a proportion guide.  

Behind this sketch, on the white background layer, I began to add some very loose shading with the airbrush until arriving at the following stage:

Step 1

  You can see here how the grid assists proportion. The woman’s face, for example, occupies approx 15 squares, and there is 1 square between the tip of the man’s nose and the woman’s cheek.

Basic Shading 

Still working on the background layer (with the SKETCH and GRID layers in the foreground), I started to shade the image in grey, using the airbrush and smudge tool with various soft brushes varying between 60-80% pressure.

Step 2

For the tighter areas, like the nose, I added small blobs and dashes, which I then smeared into shape with the smudge tool.

Using the same tools, I then started to shade the male face, touch up a few areas and add basic definition to the woman’s arm, until I finished with the following stage:

Step 3  

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