Spring is in the air! Can you already feel it? Join me and get in a warm and sunny mood while drawing this vivid floral illustration of a girl surrounded with gentle flowers and fresh green foliage. Follow through a calming process of digital painting, using the Lasso Tool and standard Adobe Photoshop brushes, creating a textured effect. Let’s start!
1. Start From a Sketch and Define the Basic
Shapes for Coloring
Step 1
I usually start by scribbling a rough
sketch on paper or directly in Photoshop, making up the overall idea of my
future painting and depicting some minor yet important details. This helps me to keep in mind the plot of the artwork and prevents me from forgetting some essential
details.
This time I want to personify an image of spring, turning it into a
portrait of a young girl. The spring season and the sense of nature—pure,
refreshed and peaceful, slowly waking up from its deep sleep—will serve us as sources of inspiration.
I don’t want my painting to be too
overloaded with background elements. Let’s stick to a simple and clean portrait,
representing a silhouette of a girl, wearing a wreath.
Step 2
Let’s prepare the basic parts of our picture, which we’ll be enlivening in
the process of coloring. Start by taking the Lasso Tool (L) and trace our girl’s face, following
the sketch. Keeping the “marching ants” selection, create a New Layer for the
skin and fill the shape with a gentle pale-rose skin color using the Paint Bucket Tool (G).
Step 3
Move on and draw out the
body shape, filling it with the same skin tone color.
2. Use Photoshop Brushes to Create Grungy
Coloring
Step 1
Now that we already have some parts
filled with solid color, let’s make them more realistic and three-dimensional by adding texture and color blends. But firstly, let’s prepare the necessary brushes. Take the Brush Tool (B) and click your right
mouse button on the canvas. Find a small gear icon and reveal the dropdown options
menu. Select Dry Media Brushes and
either replace or append them to your brushes set.
Step 2
Now select our “Skin” layer, hold down the Alt key and click the New Layer icon in the bottom of the Layers panel. Tick the following checkbox: Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask. Then hit the OK button. You will have
the new layer, linked to your “skin” layer with a tiny arrow icon. Now you can
draw inside the boundaries of the created skin shapes, without making a mess
while crossing the edges of the face or body.
Select the Soft Oil Pastel from the brushes that we’ve added and try making a
few strokes, creating a subtle shadow on the girl’s neck with a darker rose
color.
Step 3
Add more shadows, gradually sculpting the
body. Don’t be afraid to use other colors. For example, cool shades such as
pale-blue or lilac are best for shadows, while warm hues are suitable for
highlights. Put a gentle shadow spot on the neck, using a soft lilac color.
Depict the shoulder by separating it from the chest with a stroke of similar
lilac color and emphasize its smoothness with a bright highlight.
Like any
other object, the human body reflects light and colors from the environment and surrounding objects, creating overtones. Adding colored spots helps us to
make the image more intricate and true to life.
Continue by adding a gentle blush to the
girl’s face. Darken the eyelid and underline the cheekbone with a soft lilac
stroke.
Step 4
Move on to the main facial
details. Start by forming thick eyelashes with the Pen Tool (P). Place the starting point at the inner corner of the
eye and make a curved line. Click and hold the Alt key
to change the position of the anchor handle as shown in the screenshot below.
Continue drawing a curved line, moving to the outer corner of the eye.
Finish up by returning to the initial point
and closing the path. Click your right
mouse button and find Make Selection
in the dropdown menu. Set the Feather
Radius to 0 px and create the
“marching ants” selection from the path that we’ve formed.
Finally, take the Paint Bucket Tool (G) and fill the created selection with chocolate-brown color.
Step 5
Switch to the Brush Tool (B) and select Hard
Round brush from the default Photoshop Round Brushes with Size set. Add a smooth, slightly curved
line, depicting the closed eyelid. Make it thicker by tracing the created line a few more
times. Place some additional strokes, making the eye
more detailed.
Step 6
Use the Lasso Tool (L) to style an elegant eyebrow.
Step 7
Continue with the next significant facial
feature and use the Pen Tool (P) to create the lips, using the same technique as for the eyelashes.
Fill the created shapes with gentle shades of pink—darker for the upper lip
and light-pink for the lower one.
Step 8
Add a few
thin lines with the Brush Tool (B)
to shape the girl’s ear, depicting its inner part.
Here is how
our Spring Lady looks at this stage.
3. Style a
Hairdo and Decorate It With a Tender Floral Wreath
Step 1
To start
with, create a New Layer for the hair and draw out the shape with the Lasso Tool (L), following the lines of
our sketch. Fill the created selection with soft yellow color, creating a
wheat-blond bun of hair.
Step 2
Add a few
more hair locks. According to the initial image, one of the locks is partially
hidden behind the girl’s face. Let’s make a New Layer, beneath the “Skin” layer, and draw a darker curly lock.
Step 3
Switch to
the Soft Oil Pastel brush again and
create another Clipping Mask Layer,
linked to the “Hair” layer. Make the fill color slightly darker than the basic
hair tone and start forming a gentle shadow on the back of the girl’s head, making it
more rounded and three-dimensional.
Continue
painting the hair, adding darker shadows and bright overtones. Decrease the
brush size, making it very small in order to add the thinnest strokes, styling
separate locks.
Step 4
Let’s move to the wreath and start forming our first flowers. Create a New Layer
for the flower, take the Lasso Tool (L)
and form a simple flower silhouette with several petals. There is no need to make it symmetrical or too complicated—just draw a freehand curved shape. Fill the
created path with light-blue color. Add a few more flowers, creating a New Layer for each of them and varying color saturation and brightness.
Step 5
Add a
bright-pink tulip, and let’s recolor the very first flower in order to alternate
colors, making the wreath bushier. Select the flower layer and find a checkered
Lock icon in the Layers panel, which allows us to Lock transparent pixels. This is
another way of coloring inside the shape without crossing its boundaries.
Switch the color to bright-pink and paint above the flower, changing its color.
Form more
flowers, making the wreath more detailed and intricate.
Make copies
of the created flowers by selecting the relevant layers and pressing Control-J. Move the
copies and make them overlap each other, adding more elements to the wreath, so
that it entirely encircles the head. You can select all the created flower
layers and Group (Control-G) them to keep our Layers panel tidy.
Step 6
Let’s add
some foliage. Create a New Layer for the leaves and place it beneath the
flowers. Use the Lasso Tool (L) to
form simple elliptical silhouettes of the leaves. Hold down the Shift key to add several separate
selected areas at once. Fill the created silhouettes with fresh green color.
Let’s shade
our leaves, making them lusher. Create another layer for the leaves beneath the
previous one and add more foliage with the help of the Lasso Tool (L). Fill the created shapes
with darker green color, thus visually separating the leaves layers from each
other.
Step 7
Start
coloring the leaves and the blooms the same way as we did with the hair. Lock
transparent pixels, pick a lighter tone, and use the Soft Oil Pastel brush to highlight the edge of the selected
element. For example, I’ve added a light touch of yellowish-green to the upper
part of the leaves and painted the petals of the red tulips with lighter orange
color, thus creating a nice glow.
The brush
gives a nice grainy effect, making the elements look matted. Add a
subtle shadow under the wreath to detach it from the hair.
Step 8
Move on to
the hairdo and make it more detailed by adding thin light-yellow strokes along
the locks that we formed earlier. Increase the highlights by adding brighter strokes.
Now her
hairdo looks more complete.
Step 9
I decide to
put aside the concept with roses from the initial sketch in order
to make the image more gentle and airy, leaving only the spring blossoms (the
same as we have on the wreath). Such flowers also create a younger look. Copy the wreath group and turn the flowers
upside down, so that the drawing looks more
dynamic. Cover the body with an elegant flower framing, rotating and
rearranging separate flowers.
Step 10
Duplicate
the leaves layers from the head wreath, select the leaves with the Lasso Tool (L) one by one and hit Control-T to enable Free Transform. Move the leaves to the
proper places, putting them behind the flower framing on the girl’s chest. Add
more leaves, dotted around as if they’ve been blown by the wind.
Draw out
smaller leaves, filling them with darker green color.
Add similar
leaves speckled around the girl’s head, making the picture festive.
Step 11
Let’s move
on to the next detail that we’ve depicted in our sketch: an elegant
flower hair accessory. Start by forming a blue petal with the Lasso Tool (L). Then duplicate the petal and change its position.
Keeping the new petal layer selected, open the Levels (Control-L) options window and move the right (white) slider to the left a bit, making the petal color
lighter.
Step 12
Duplicate
the initial petal and go to Edit >
Transform > Flip Horizontal to reflect the copy over the vertical axis.
Move the mirrored petal to the other side of the hair bun.
Step 13
Add a few
more petals, creating a symmetrical lotus flower. Arm yourself with the Brush Tool (B), selecting the Soft Oil Pastel brush, and start adding
lighter grainy spots to the petals, moving from the upper side. Add several
groups of tiny petals, scattering from the lotus. Shade the light elements by
adding darker petals beneath, making the flower pop out more.
Step 14
Use the Elliptical Marquee Tool (M) and hold
the Shift key to add a group of
circle-shaped selections in the bottom of our picture. Fill the created areas
with bright pink color and add bright spots of lighter pink and vivid orange,
forming ripe shiny berries. Add some more berries around the girl’s head, using
the same method.
Step 15
Finally,
let’s work on the background. We won’t be adding any extra details to it, because we don’t want to distract the viewer from the center of our composition.
Let’s just edit the color a bit, adding a warm touch of spring.
As you may have noticed in my previous screenshots, I’ve already added a blurred color spot
to the background layer in order to emphasize the girl’s silhouette. You can add
a bright spot in the center of the background with the help of the Brush Tool (B) or darken the corners,
creating a subtle vignette.
Use the Hue/Saturation feature (Image > Adjustment > Hue/Saturation
or simply Control-U) to play with
the colors of your background by moving the sliders for more brightness or
deeper contrast. Tick the Colorize checkbox if you want the colors to be more
monochromatic and uniform. You can discover some nice color combinations, which
change your artwork completely.
As for this image, let’s make the background
vivid green, like those fresh leaves we meet at the beginning of spring.
Voila! Our
Spring Lady Portrait Is Finished!
A few
finishing touches, and here you have it: a gentle portrait of your girl,
depicting one of the best seasons of the year, which we have all been impatiently waiting for. I hope
you enjoyed painting with a fancy oil pastel brush and discovered
some new tips and tricks, helping you to speed up the process. Good luck, and
let the inspiration guide you!
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