So, you want to make a head texture and you have no knowledge of art .
You don't know how to start, but you have to start somewhere,
everyone has a first head, a first try at anything, so start it.
I was asked to do a tutorial of how to do head textures, I hope this tutorial
will open your mind to more to textures and digital painting and texturing.
I have been making textures in the toribash community for 5 years and with I trust my experience,
I can give you a small push to start your own texturing growth
1.Sketching
The start of every drawing, every painting, even animation is sketching.
With sketching you can set up the spaces in the work you are making. which is essential to developing a good drawing.
Experienced artist can draw artworks without sketching or anything,
but this skill requires a lot of practice, and is not the way you should start.
so, keeping the talk to textures, I have some topics I want to explain about.
here I go.
1.1.References
What is a reference? why would I need references?
References are the images, videos, photos, drawings and paintings
you refer to, in order to make a more lifelike drawing or make a piece with a specific style.
Drawing with references makes life easier, you use the reference to copy lines, forms
and colors you see. It is a way to start with some ideas already put while you brainstorm your own
original idea.
References gives fine detail you need to put in your work, You will use it for realistic drawings
and even for cartoon or manga, don't refuse references.
1.2.Mapping
The head is a polygonal 3D sphere that is mapped with a cylinder map.
The way it is mapped the head goes twice wider than the texture you put and
the top get a distortion, shrink and compressing the texture on the top,
look at the picture:
All you need to do is how to use this mapping and sphere with textures.
on this head, I have used the reference and mapped it including proportions
of the face in front and side(almost!).
the mapping is the placement of all face features. If the placements are are in the correct place, the texture will
have a stronger likeness to your reference.
1.3.Proportions
Using correct proportion is the will strengthen the likeness .
It is the base of the a good drawing, if you are drawing human do not forget to measure
the spaces between the eyes, the eyes and the sides, going to vertical, do not forget to
give the forehead the space it needs, the nose the space it deserves. and so the as well as the jaw.
Talking about proportions with all the heads and styles, take a little measurement of the
front look, side look and the back, stretch and shrink to make various parts fits a sphere In the end so all the your aims it to put the sides of your texture to be in the sides of the sphere, and the front and back to their places.
Look at this head I have done last years, the proportions are okay.
1.4.Lines
In sketching you can draw lines, shade or erase what you don't need, but in the final work
good lines is a must, else it will look incomplete and messed up.
To make good lines use the hand where you have more control, make a fast and confident line,
it is the way to ink your sketches, make sure to turn opacity low on sketch before you Ink.
if you want to do Line art, use clean linework and be cautious with the lines you put in the
drawing, it makes a whole difference in the look of your work.
The direction I show is for right handed people, if you are left handed draw towards your body as vertical and hand as horizontal.
2.Coloring
Now I talk about coloring, in this brief explanation I can talk about what colors you must
pick and how to paint/color with Digital process of painting.
2.1.Colors
To start you can pick a color from reference or choose by
yourself,what you have to be aware is that you select colors for many things, some of them are:
-light: the most bright color in the artwork, can be white or any color lighter than anything
else in the head.
-shadows: the shadows color is a color darker than the base color(the real color of
the object, the midtone) and lighter than the cast shadows.
-midtone: the real color of the object, for human we use skin colors, I tend to use it as base color.
-reflections: when the lights bounces, they reflects to many directions, so in this color we have
the color of the lights in the scene, if it is sky, then it is blue, if it is sun, yellow.
-saturation: to make your drawing less boring, you need to add saturation in the midtone when the
colors are blending, that is actually how it looks in real life.
2.2.Forms
In drawing what you draw is with two dimensions, height and width, the third dimension, depth,
is just a impression of what the forms look, like in photos, you don't see shapes, you see forms.
to draw a complete form, you must draw shadow and light.
2.2.1.Light
The light is the brightest area(like I said before in colors chapter), it is where the light reflects
in the surface, some surfaces may reflect more some less, some will refract.
when you are painting a light area, you need to get where the light is coming from and place
the reflections direct when it bounces and the shadows in the opposite direction, of course.
2.2.2.Midtones
It is actually the real color of the object, all the colors that are the surface real colors, like makeup,
mouth color, eyes colors, hair colors, blushes on noses and ears, all of them must be in midtones.
2.2.3.Shadows
They are where the light does not bounce entirely, the shadows with the light are the most important concept
in forms drawing, when you get all that right you can shade everything.
2.2.4.Cast shadows
The cast shadows are were the light isn't hitting at all, they are the darkest tone in your drawing,
they tend to be a black shadow on the surface. I represent it as a low opacity black colored layer.
With this brief explanation I hope to have made you understand a little of the form, This picture
can help you in the future.
2.2.5.Reflected Light
The reflected light is the area where the light bounces and reflects in other bodies,
it is a color that is darker than midtone and lighter than shadows, the color of the reflected light
is the color of the surface it bounces.
2.3.Digital Painting
In this chapter you will see a brief about digital painting basic technique I use, it is the most spread
technique. The process is: blocking, blending, detailing.
2.3.1.Blocking
In this step you have to place the colors you will blend in later, I suggest to set the midtone as base color
(the background color), then you place the shadows, light and saturation.
You can divide it into parts like: mouth, eye, iris, skin, hair, tooth, etc.
Another suggestion, To use the hard brush with low opacity, You can set a good low opacity, I use 15%.
So, do stroke over stroke until you get a satisfying color in the right places.
2.3.2.Blending
In this step,is where you mix colors to make a smooth transition between the colors you placed before.
I suggest to use low opacity brush, hard brush for hard edges and soft brush for a blurry transition, if you use only hard brush
it is not correct, You can use it, in this step You use the color picker to quickly select the color you want and
after you paint with low opacity brush in the edges, after some brush strokes you can get more colors with color picker and
brush gain on color edges. With this you can make smooth transitions of colors and shading.
Lets move into detailing, the last chapter of this tutorial.
2.3.3.Detailing
This is step is what brings you for another level of realism, it is the step where you get a tiny brush, duplicate window
and zoom in the first window, draw some pixels, check the zoomed out window, draw some more and check some more.
I personally don't do this step much, the most hard I had with this was realistic hair.
You can get a 1 pixel brush and zoom in references to get what is really inside of detail, we all know it is just pixels,
but practicing detail makes a whole bump to your artworks.
3.Conclusion
With this simple and quick explanation i hope you can understand the most of making a head texture, I made this tutorial in
three days, and I hope you can get into texture and grow into it or maybe use this explanation to do good designs of real people,
dead nature, landscape or anything. So, Good luck with making your own art.
