Making of Be My Valentine by Omar Díaz, Spain

- Detail brush. Same as the hard edged brush, with shape dynamics at 0% minimum diameter for detailing the piece, used at very high opacity (80-90%), opacity & flow settled to pressure.

- Texture brush. My favorite brush ever! Used for skin and for blending at medium flow (50-60%) (For blending around 20% opacity).Mix of a textured chalk with softer edges, opacity & flow settled to pressure.

- Hair brush. Used with moderation for painting hair strands. A sparkled brush with 10% spacing, opacity & flow settled at pressure, shape dynamics settled to pressure too at 50% diameter.

My way of work on Photoshop is a little different. Here I used a glazing method that mainly involves working on transparent brushstrokes and building low opacity layers on top of each other. I merged the layers from time to time, and kept the same way on new layers. Even so the various elements of the image (background, character, hair…) are kept separated in their own layer.

From here, the methodology is maintained until the end, so I will focus on the most important or tricky parts.

SKIN

1 - Firstly, I created a rich skin palette instead of using only a mid-tone, a shadow tone and a light tone. I used the HSB indicators to made variations of each, and a couple of warmth tones for brush over the transitions that gives contrast and a SSS (sub surface skin) effect. On pale skin the transition from the midtone and light should be extra smooth, being the shadows rougher in the transition (in dark skin vice versa).

2 - I started defining key features of the face basing on the convexity, directional light or bolder lights will came later. If you had any problems to find the most convex and concaves parts of the face it could be easier creating a base mesh or wireframe in another new layer.

3. Blending is tricky, I usually blend with a textured brush combined with a soft brush for extra smooth zones, picking up surrounding colors with the eye dropper tool and then being applied with very low opacity & flow strokes. For a natural result first I blended the transitions and then smoothed overall following the structure of face, rounded parts like cheeks, chin etc would benefit of circular brushstrokes.

HAIR

The hair is one of my favorite parts, but the truth is it can be a really tedious task. It´s a common mistake to start adding single strands and texture too early. It´s especially important in curly hair to firstly shaping the structure of hair, from back to front planes, taking care of the values and colors. If the structure is correct, I will begin to add texture, single hairs, and one layer on top of each other. Here more than ever I used the glazing technique, with semi-transparent layers, with more and more individual hair without losing the original structure below. In order to not cover the texture work I used less destructive layers like luminance, color and soft light. A good trick is duplicating layers and flipping them for adding more texture in soft light mode at very low opacity. It’s a matter of patience and test new things.

Once I was happy with the result, I merged the layers and made some adjustment of levels and color balance, then created a new layer and with a 1-3px brush start to paint more individual hairs. For the rear light effect, I painted more single hairs in a saturated cyan, and then stump them with the blur tool.

First I detailed the eyelids and the shadow cast of eyebrows bones ,working in the eyes as a unit and complex piece, I used grayish tones and some desaturated blue sampled from the background and reds for the corners(avoid yourself of using white).Then I detailed the iris and made the eyelashes. Don’t use pure black at eyelashes and don’t make then too furry, keep them long but separated. Remember that eyelashes and top eyelid already cast a shadow.