How to paint on Photoshop — Beginner Guide

Have you ever thought about painting on Photoshop, but you don’t know where to start?

In this article, I explain step by step how to draw in Photoshop. After following all these steps, you will be able to create your own drawings.

Which version of Photoshop I used?

I used the latest version of Adobe Photoshop 2020. However, you can use any older version of Photoshop . After opening the Photoshop, you need to select a photo that you want to draw it. You can download the sample photo from here.

Step 1: Opening a new Photoshop document (canvas):

from the top menu, open a new document : File>New>

Pick a name for this document, and set the Width/Height to your desired dimensions. You can change the measurements to centimetres or inches as well. If you want to use the drawing only as a digital file, choose RGB color in Color Mode section. Otherwise, if you want to print the the file, choose CMYK as the Color Mode. Press OK to make the new file.

Step 2: Bringing the model photo to current document:

Now, you must see a white canvas and other basic panels. One of these basic panels in Layers panel. You need this panel frequently, so if you can’t see it, make it visible via top menu Window>Layers>

In the Layers panel, you see a single layer as “background”. You need to bring the model photo to this document. To do so, click File>open> and select the photo. Then press Ctrl+A or from top menu Select>All to select the photo. Now, copy the selected photo by ctrl+c or from top menu select edit>copy to copy the photo.

Go back to your current document and paste the photo there by ctrl+v or from top menu edit>paste. You may notice that a new layer is generated automatically with name “layer1”. double click on its name to make it editable and rename it to “model”.

Step 3: Resize the photo:

depends on your canvas size, the photo might be smaller or larger. Adjust the size of it by pressing Ctrl+T or from top menu edit> Free transform. You may notice that quality is decreased specially if the photo is very smaller than canvas. But it doesn’t matter because at the final step you will remove this layer.

Step 4: making the model ready to trace:

Change the Opacity of the photo and make it a little transparent so you can trace it easily. To do this, go to layer “model” from layer panel, and change the Opacity to 50%.

Step 5: Start Drawing:

Create a new layer on the top of the model layer by pressing the small plus icon on the bottom of Layer panel. Rename it to “drawing”. Please note that you must draw only on this layer.

From tools, select brushes. You may ask “Which brush should you use?”. It is totally depends on you. But, by experience, I found “kyle’s inkbox classic cartoonist” is a very good brush for drawing. It works like a good pencil. adjust the size and make it very small (12px is good). Because you draw the details with this brush.

Start tracing the photo by drawing the key elements of the photo. For a portrait, start with the shape of face, the shape and place of eyes, nose, lips and ears. Leave drawing the details for later.

Change the brush size to smaller to add wrinkles and shadows. Change the brush size to larger to draw hair. At each step, you can see the result by hiding the model layer. to do so, remove the model layer’s eye sign on the layer panel by clicking on it.

Step 6: Adding Freckles:

adding freckles make the drawing cute and more realistic. Change your brush and pick a spatter brush. kyle’s spatter brushes are good choices. Change the size of the brush based on the size of the drawing. I found out that larger brushes are more useful for drawing freckles. remove the extra spots by eraser after adding enough freckles.

Step 7: Saving your work:

You are almost done! remove the model layer but selecting the layer and clicking on the rubbish bin in layer panel. Save your document as JPEG if you want to use it on the web or save it as TIFF for printing.

Step 8: Please let me know your about your questions and feedbacks on the comments and Share this post with your friends if you liked it.