Old Lady Painting in Photoshop

After we handed in our robots for Steve Brown to have a look, we were then going to go into Photoshop for reason unclear for us at the time. It was only till Steve handed round a sheet with an old lady on it that we then realized what our task would be. The aim of the lesson was to focus on our digital drawing, the sheet was an image of an old lady which we had to replicate to our best ability.

The Old Lady which we had to replicate.

I could say that I'm quite experienced in the use of Photoshop, though this was something completely new to me. I used to do Graphics with art so I knew how to alter photos, create 3D picture, etc, but when it came to digital drawing I had no idea. It was a completely new concept to me and I will admit, it takes a lot of time to get used to it.

Steve told us that to start drawing you start on a black background with a white paintbrush tool. This is so its easier to see what your drawing and not get lost in the mass amount of plain background. The way that I tried to draw was to do the outline first then attempt to tackle the detail on the inside. This is a way that I have always drawn and its something that I need to overcome throughout this course. 

I think that the main reason that I do draw the way I do is my childhood, growing up with comics and video games surrounding me has subconsciously branded my mind into sketching big thick black outlines. This is something that does need to stop and I hope throughout this course I will see a dramatic improvement on my ability. 

"Judge Dredd" from 2000 AD comics massively inspired my drawing.

 I had many problems as I tried to replicate this old lady to the best of my abilities. First it started off in the proportion area, such as the eyes being bigger than the nose, or the top of the head being half the size of the chin. Once I finally got to a point which I felt happy about the outline, I had to start adding in the detail, which again, went horribly wrong. I had to combine the colors together in order to make it look more realistic, but then this just made her look sickly.

One thing that did go right for me was the white streaks that came off of her hair, I was surprised with how well it worked. Then a classmate taught me a technique that he uses which creates layering. You can either set the opacity on the brush down to something like 20% or you can do this:

Windows  -  Brushes  -  Set both of the panels on the first on to pen pressure  -  Paint away

What this does, is that it merges the colors that you paint over, unlike the changing of the opacity, there isn't mass amounts the color you selected splattered everywhere.

How i'm getting on so far.