Love is Mean, and Love Hurts Process/Tutorial

Warning: HUGE FILE

I'm going to hold your hand through the process piece to make it more of a tutorial! :3
1. First off: Start with the drawing. (I don't own a scanner, so I use my camera then I just paint over it). I used a mid grey to make my lineart - so I when I'm done I can use the layer features to change it to my desire. (The dropdown box right in the box with your layers, right above your layers)
If you have a scanner, I suggest making a neutral grey-scale after you finish your lineart: so you can understand your color balance. It helps me ALOT.
If you want a cool piece, make the greyscale on the cool side (aka blue grey)
If you want a warm piece, make the greyscale on the warm side (aka red grey)

2. Lay the concept colors - aka how you want to color it. You know how you think of a piece and it looks like a masterpiece but when you finish it looks like poop? This helps you avoid that - you physically see your color choices and you only lose about 2 minutes of your life if its right rather than lose like 20 hours if you were wrong
Once again, this saves my butt a lot
I also use this point to determine the lighting position (note the ugly dot on the page)

3. Skin coloring. I kept my palette there - I used every single color minus some of the blues. Well I used like 3 of those -w- What I do is I laid down the shading very crudely to give me a jist of what I wanted. I'm still learning how to paint in this new style - and it's helping me a great deal to do this. I smear is all together crudely before I go to the next step.

4. Skin smoothing - I continue with my painting. I use this tutorial to help me out with this [link]
It is rather complex, but from oil painting and makeup breakdown, my eyes have begun to learn to breakdown colors. I'm sorry to say, but this is something you are going to have to just do by staring at things and trying to paint them. I suggest bland pot paintings like this [link]
I airbrushed the crap out of this to make the skin look all soft and smooth - because that's just how I like my skin to look. If you like the rough, palette knife look, then do it! Art is for you

5. Hair. You can see the color palette here, too. I always make the color palette before I start. I mix dem colors UP. I can't teach you how to do this since I just learned how to do this from this tutorial: [link]

6. Just painting the bathing suit - there is the palette. Idk what to say about this because I was half asleep when I painted it LOL

7. Face time: Zoom in! I am doing the eyes. They are all on one layer. I used to make my irises all one color but now I like making them very dark with a spurt of color in the corner - I think they look 10000000000000000000000000000x better that way. Also, notice the eye isn't 100% white. It is hardly white at all - it makes it look way more natural rather than someone giving you the creeper stare

8. Face time: Zoom in! Lips! I love lips, but painting them is still a pain. I don't think I can say much to help you, just read a how to apply lipliner and lipstick article and try that. That's what I do - apply my makeup knowledge to this part of my painting. I also use this tutorial (because I don't know everything, I will be the first to admit that) [link]

9. Face time: Zoom in! I actually put makeup on my paintings every time (recently anyway). I love makeup, I'm a girly girl, and nobody else does it. I find it to be a real adorable tweek to my style :3

10. Background time! Here I just put my stock photos down (and they are properly credited in my final piece with which the link is provided at the bottom). I get them looking all nice and jazz

11. Here I tweek the crap out of them with my Painter 11 features and stuff. I would tell you what I did if I remembered -fail- I literally don't follow a set pattern, I play until I like it. I wanted a soft look so that's what I stuck with :3

Done <3

Finished piece: [link]


I hope this helps
Please comment and tell me if this was helpful or not, being my first process piece and all

Painting took between 12-18 hours
System: Corel Painter 11