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[h1]Intro to Painting: First Sketch[/h1]
Alright, I will be teaching you a very simple technique I've developed. Since this is painting, I can only show you how to do it. Your results will vary, just keep practicing and you will get better with time. If you get frustrated at first, don't give up, just try it a few more times. If you have experience with drawing then this should be a bit more natural for you and you will most likely have more success with it. That said, lets get to the tutorial.

Here is an example that I painted for this tutorial.



1. Make a new doccument, I used 300x300. You can use whatever you want, just know that brush sizes will vary with the size of your doccument.
 a. Make a new layer, never work on the background layer.
 b. Set your foreground color to a nuetral grey. I used [color=A7A7A7]A7A7A7[/color]
 c. Select the Brush Tool , medium in size. I used a soft 10 pixel brush.

2. Your first stroke.
 a. Try to keep it nice and smooth, not too fast and not too slow. The slower you go, the more wobbley it will come out. The faster you go, the more off target you will be.
 b. Now, for this tutorial we will be sketching an eye. Your strokes do not have to be perfect, thats why theres an Eraser Tool .
 c. Here you can see my first stroke, I started with the upper edge of the eye.
 Screen Shot
 d. Next we will move to the lower end to establish the basic shape of the eye.
 Screen Shot
 e. Now lets move the to iris. For this, we can use the Circular Marquee Tool .
 f. Using the Circular Marquee Tool , make a circle in the center of the eye outline.
 Screen Shot
 g. Edit > Stroke > 5 px - Center (again, this varies by doccument size).
 Screen Shot
 h. Don't worry about how different it looks from the rest, we will fix that in the next step.
 Screen Shot

3. Smudging.
 a. This is the part where we make everything look pretty. Select the Smudge Tool . Use the following settings:
 
 b. Zoom in to 200% or so.
 c. Begin going over your painted area. This is where you will being to add more detail and smooth things out more.
 Screen Shot
 d. Starting from the outsides of the iris, smudge it inward towards the center over and over.
 e. Paint a another dot in the center, and smudge it outward towards the edge.
 Screen Shot
 f. Use a smaller smudge size and raise the strength. Use the following settings:
 
 g. Repeat steps 3d and 3e. Add further details to the eye, like the edges of the eyeball where it meets the side edges.
 Screen Shot

4. File > Save...

That's pretty much it. Good luck with your painting projects.

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Click the link below to download the Photoshop file for this tutorial.
Intro to Painting: First Sketch PSD

It's all done in Photoshop, just read the tutorial. There will be another one soon which will cover coloring and shading.

Well that was fast, it's already on Good-Tutorials.com. Wrote it yesterday... listed today. Hows that for service?

nice one, I'd say that's pretty bloody good for having just started out on PS.

Nice one. 

Thank you so much 

brilliant tutorial, though a little more info oin the bits at the side woulda been nice but you know i figured it out.. please post more brushing tuts... I neeeed them
Date Posted: April 11, 2006, 08:40:30 AM

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oops not meaning to start on a double post... but my results:







just had a play

well, this is my first shot at painting in PS; first post also... great tutorial

Looking good for your first try, with a little practice and a lot of hand cramps you could make something like this