Before you know it,
you’ll build a scene you will wish to photo-manipulate, sketch, illustrate, and paint.

It will be something cute an funny,
and extremely relaxing to work on.

Photo manipulation,
actually includes painted elements.

Here you are painting,
right on the photo.

Sketching,
is about capturing the lines.

Or to be really precise,
what lines not to capture.

You create line art,
that can stand on its own.

But line art is also an important part,
of comics and illustration.

Here you are coloring between the lines,
so to speak.

You can use flat colors, or gentle shadows,
or go all out like comics do and use gradients.

Illustrations are precious works of art,
they are not considered studies or notes.

They are exhibited,
right next to the paintings.

The final step here,
is my favorite, painting.

Here you can do a value study,
where you create a black and white painting.

And complete it by glazing it with color,
on a Layer set to color mode...

Which uses values
from the black and white painting beneath.

Or use color directly,
which you may take from the photo-manipulation.

Or as you progress,
mix yourself.

The secret to color mixing,
is relativity, sometimes termed local-color.

When you are panting lips on a face,
you don’t reach for red.

But you use the face color,
or mid-tone.

And make it slightly rosier,
and repeat the process as needed.

You see, you are using the local color,
the local shadow, value, mistiness, shadow, or sunshine.

To paint the lips, you add rosiness to the local color,
think of it as working within the atmosphere.

Which brings us to the magical part,
all artists are magicians.

Be it glowing eyes, or a magical staff,
or skin that seems opal-like or pearl-like.

Here you are conjuring up,
color magic.

Still rooted within the local color,
but no longer bound by the rules of reality.

It was Leonardo DaVinci, the person, not the Ninja Turtle who said:
“Art is never finished, only abandoned”.

He does not mean that it is OK not to finish,
he is saying a good scene is like a friend and it should not be abandoned.

But, you can in fact finish a painting,
he was just being melodramatic.

You finish it,
when you get it all perfect.

From the photo, the manipulation, and sketch,
to the illustration, the painting, and its magic.