How to Draw People in Photoshop

Digital illustration is rapidly becoming as viable as traditional methods of illustration. Photoshop provides a wide variety of digital tools that help with everything from shading, resizing and undoing mistakes. Creating illustrations of people in Photoshop can be done in much the same manner as drawing on paper. However, you will find that coloring and shading your illustration can be much easier in Photoshop. For the example in this article, you will be learning to draw an average young adult male, using Photoshop software.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Mouse or digital tablet (tablet recommended)

1. 
    

   Select the airbrush tool. Set the size to 5 pixels to emulate a pencil or pen tip. Select black or dark gray for the color. Draw the head with an oval, the chest with a rectangle that is wider at the top than the bottom. Add the hips with an upside down triangle. Draw the arms and legs with simple lines. Add hands with ovals and feet with triangles.

2. Add guidelines for elbows and knees with small circles. Connect the head to the chest with a vertical line for the neck. Connect the chest and hips with a vertical line for the spine.

3. 
    

   Add a cross shape inside the face. This will act as a guideline for the facial features. Draw cylinders for the upper and lower arms. Make the upper arms wider than the lower arms. Do the same for the upper and lower legs.

4. 
    

   Connect these shapes with parallel lines around the arms and legs. Add two small ovals on the horizontal line of the cross for eyes. Add shaggy hair around the outside top of the head with curved triangle shapes. Add the t-shirt with parallel lines at the top of the arms, across the waist and base of the neck. Create the hands by attaching a rectangle to each hand oval. Split this into 4 rectangles for fingers. Add a thicker, shorter rectangle for the the thumb.

5. Add eyebrows with small curved lines above the eyes. Draw the nose with a small curved line. Add the lips with a curved line below the nose. Erase the guidelines. Click on "Layers" and select "Duplicate Layer" from the pull down list. Set the top layer to Multiply. This allows you to color under the lines without damaging or painting over the line work.

6. 
    

   Select a dark tan color for the base of the skin. Set the brush size to 20 pixels. Color the skin in on the bottom layer. Select dark brown for the hair and color this in on the bottom layer as well. Use a dark blue for the jeans, black for the rings on the ringer T-shirt and red-brown for the shoes.

7. 
    

   Set the brush to 15% opacity. Pick a light tan color for the flesh highlights. Paint this on top of the dark tan. Build up layers on the outside edges of the arms, chin, cheeks and nose. Select light blue and paint highlights in the middle of each leg of his jeans. Add light brown for the hair highlights. Use yellow-brown for the tips and heel of the shoe.

Tips & Warnings

• The keyboard shortcut for "undo" is Ctrl+Z. This will be incredibly useful if you make any mistakes.
• Save your work often. Losing hours of work in a power failure or if your computer crashes can be extremely frustrating.

Resources

• How to draw shadows on faces.
• How to draw a human skeleton.
• How to draw an Anime style male.
• How to draw an Anime styl female.