Tutorial - Beagle Smudge (Part I)

5. In this step we’ll give him a little more life by enhancing his eyes nose and mouth. Use the same 10 px. brush at 40% to smudge the irises (the colored part of the eye) and any parts of the eyes that haven’t been smudged. Set the smudge tool to darken and use a 5px. brush at 100% to remove the existing catch-lights. Use the burn tool (about 5 px., exp. 6% - set to shadows) to burn in the pupils, the circumference of the irises and the outlines of the eyes. You may need to smooth these areas out a little with the smudge brush. Use the burn tool (about 15 px. 3% shadows) to darken the black areas of the nose and mouth. Use a 1 px. hard brush to paint white catch-lights into both eyes. Use the dodge tool at a low exposure to add a little extra light to the irises opposite the catch-lights. Also use the dodge tool to add highlights to the tongue and brighten the highlights of the nose. It looks like this now:

http://www.pbase.com/sdfp/image/55873552/original

6. Usually the background is done first in a smudge painting. For this tutorial, we’ll do it at this stage. First, erase the whiskers (they’ll be painted back in later) using your smudge brush (darken/10 px/100%). Take a snapshot and designate this as the history brush state. Now use the smudge tool (lighten/60 px. 60%) to smudge some brushstrokes into the background. Move the brush from the background, toward and overlapping the beagle. Once the background looks good you can use the history brush to go back over the subject removing the smudge strokes. You’ll need to clean up the edges with a smudge brush set at normal/10 px. 75%. Here’s what that looks like:

http://www.pbase.com/sdfp/image/55873553/original

7. This next step will enhance textures substantially. On a duplicate layer apply the paint daubs filter (brush size 1/sharpness 4). Use a layer mask to remove or lessen the sharpening in certain areas that appear over sharp. Flatten. This is how the image should look at this point:

http://www.pbase.com/sdfp/image/55873555

8. Now smudge in the whiskers (normal/3 px. 100%). For the long eyebrows take a color sample of a fur highlight area and check the finger painting box. It looks like this now:

http://www.pbase.com/sdfp/image/55873560/original

9. Remove the green color cast under his nose and jaw line by selecting and feathering that area then making a color-balance adjustment (add a little more red). Here’s that correction:

http://www.pbase.com/sdfp/image/55873562/original

10. For the grass (not shown in the detail) use a grass-blade-sized brush at about 85% to smudge the individual blades. Set the mode to darken for blades directly in front of white fur.

Here’s what your painting should look like when it’s done:

Click here if image doesn't appear:
http://www.pbase.com/sdfp/image/55873872/original

I hope this tutorial has been of some use to you. If you have any questions please feel free to ask.

Scott Deardorff