Digital Painting Step-by-Step

A step-by-step of how I painted my puppy!

Step 1: Basic background. I just plopped down some basic colours and didn't worry about detail.

Step 2: Puppy outline. Using a reference photo I put in a really simple set of lines to serve as guides.

Step 3: Block in the basic colours with a hard round brush. You can see that I put up a small colour palette to refer to if I needed.

Step 4: Start refining the colours, adding more if necessary. I added the extra colours to the palette in the corner. This will probably save you time later on in the painting.

Step 5: Using a multi-tipped, pressure sensitive brush, I feathered in the fur. I started at the back of the head and worked my way toward the nose. This kept the hairs overlapping in a natural fashion.

Step 6: I finished all of the fur using the name multi-tipped brush I used in Step 5. I only adjusted the size if necessary (some hairs on a dog's head are shorter and thinner than others). I also added the details to the nose and adjusted its size to better suit the dog's face. Using a hard round brush with about 70% opacity I darkened the dogs eyes.

Step 7: I created another layer underneath the head and blocked in the basic colours of the body.

Step 8: With the multi-tipped brush I used for the fur, I feather in the shiny hairs on the body. I don't bother being specific because this is in the background and it's not going to be in focus. After painting in the fur, I apply a 6% Gaussian Blur to make it look convincingly out of focus.

Step 9: Final details. Whiskers with a hard round pressure sensitive brush at 4px diametre. A bit of erasing of rogue fur here and there. And a touch up on the eyes.

And that's it.

3 layers: Background, Head, Body.
2 Brushes: Hard round & multi-tipped pressure sensitive.

I really hope this helps someone!