In recent times, when every third digital artist you come across, flaunts a snazzy Wacom tablet and comes up with extraordinary pieces of art, our very dear humble “Mr. Mouse” has little part to play. Owning a smart pen tablet is a dream for almost all digital artists, but you cannot put a ban on creativity while you are saving the last penny of your pocket money for the day when you can treat yourself to that one instrument you’ve pined for, you’re Wacom! Creating a proper piece of digital work often poses challenges when you aren’t using a tablet. However, this tutorial will walk you through the many steps taken in creating a piece of digital art that’s completely rendered with our very own “Mr. Mouse”- that small thingy by the side of your keyboard with just two buttons and sometimes a scroll wheel in the middle. By skilfully using the mouse, months of practice and hours of work and patience, you are sure to achieve considerable success.
A rough sketch of the final image is the foundation. Start with grabbing a sketchpad and draw out the basic lines of the image to get the proportions right. After you have the sketch ready, scan it to your computer and trace out the lines with the pen tool. Make the lineart the base layer- the building block of the main image.
The second and most important step is to decide the final look and feel of the image - the colour palette! For this particular image I have chosen shades of green and blue and a little pink or red here and there. You can of course choose a different shade, but whatever you choose now will decide the final outcome, so choose wisely. Another important aspect is to decide the background colour of the image. Choose a neutral colour as of now, like a lighter shade of grey. The neutral background colour helps to decide the colour scheme of the main image better.
Put the background in a ‘layer set’ and turn it off clicking the ‘eye’ on the layer window while working on the main image.
Once the predominant colour scheme is decided, you can start painting the main image. Start painting from top to bottom, beginning with the hair. Make an new set in your ‘layers’ window, name it “Hair”, put all the layers containing the hair strands in this set.
For creating the hair, first make a background tracing the outline of the hair with the pen tool and fill it with a very dark brown colour. Then add a new layer and draw the strands of hair. Use the pen tool to trace paths close to each other and stroke the paths with a very small hard round brush, 4px approximately. Use the blending option in the layer property to render gradient to the traced paths. This will give you the first set of hair strands.
To stroke a traced path, right click on the path and select ‘stroke path’ from the menu, then select ‘brush’ in the Tools field from the drop down menu. Do not forget to check the ‘simulate pressure’ option. Hit ok.
Once the hair is complete, trace the outline of the body and fill it with a flesh tint. Then paint the eyes and the lips. Put the layers containing the body base colour and the face elements (eye and lips) in different layer sets.
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