The process of drawing and texturing a realistic marble statue is much easier than it might seem. When it comes to drawing something, it’s better to break the drawing into the simplest forms. And the textures and details are always added last, it doesn’t matter – this is traditional drawing or digital.
In this lesson, George Patsouras will show you how to draw a realistic portrait step by step and then add textures and details. The drawing stage is no less important than the final touches, such as adding a texture — without these two steps, drawing just won’t work.
The portrait is drawn from the artist’s brother; The original lesson is included in the lesson materials. You, in turn, can choose any portrait shot as the basis.
First of all, go to cgtextures.com and download some textures from the section Marble> Noisy
Step 1
When working with a portrait, the main thing is to draw the model as accurately as possible. You can use the grid to simplify working with proportions. She is especially good at drawing portraits like ours. First open the photo source, then create a new document of the same size. Work in high resolution – 300 pixels / inch (dpi) or higher to get a good level of detail. After the document is created, you can turn on the grid. If you are using an image from the lesson materials, open the file. sketch.psd and go to step number 3.
Step 2
Go to menu View> Show> Grid (View> Show> Grid). You will see a lot of cells that will help you accurately draw a portrait. If necessary, you can increase the size of the cells. To do this, go to the menu Editing> Settings> Guides, Grid, and Fragments (Edit> Preferences> Guides). Adjust the parameters so that you feel comfortable and start drawing in the cells. Save the file as sketch.psd.
Step 3
When the sketch is finished, select several colors for the skin and background. It is important that the colors in the early stages of the pattern are not too saturated. Create a separate layer for the skin, name it “skin”. This will give you better control over the image.
Step 4
After you have chosen the colors, use the HSB sliders to work with shades. Take a brush and draw the first details of the shadows. Shadows will give the figure the illusion of form. This is one of the most important steps in drawing our portrait. To activate the HSB sliders, click on the drop-down menu in the upper right of the color bar, then select HSB.
Step 5
To liven up your drawing even more, use lighter halftones and work from the light source. In our example, the light goes at an angle of 45 °. All colors were selected manually using the HSB slider. Highlight the color values to create a contrast and add realism.
Step 6
For maximum expressiveness of values, you need to add a little glare. Here you need to be careful and not to overdo it. When determining the shape of a picture, shadows always play a larger role than glare. Excessive use of light will give your drawing a fake, plastic look, especially skin. Add a little subtle glare to the forehead and nose, using lighter shades of the main color.
Step 7
When you are happy with the current result, create a new document and draw your color palette on it. You can also drag it to the corner of your drawing to work even faster. Take the time to experiment with color palettes, as haste only hurts the further result. In our case, the author chose very pale shades of yellow for light areas, as well as warm tones of purple for shadows.
Step 8
Softening the oval of the face in the image will make it more realistic. Using a soft brush, remove the rough edges to give the face softer features. The main thing – do not overdo it. Excessive use of soft brushes will make your drawing plastic and lifeless, so find a middle ground. The hardness of the brush can be easily edited by right-clicking on any part of the image when you have selected the tool. Brush
(Brush Tool).
Step 9
Now that the base is complete, you can add details. The artist says that he uses very small, hard brushes for details. For our picture, you can detail the hair, eyebrows and eyes, giving them greater clarity.
Step 10
Continue to work on the details, not forgetting our source of lighting – finish your hair and improve the overall details of the face. We don’t need the sketch layer anymore, delete it. Try not to create too many layers – one for the face, one for the background. It’ll be enough.
Step 11
On the layers panel, create a new group, name it “Textures”. Now we will experiment with textures until we achieve the best results: always use different layers so as not to spoil the ready-made textures. Create a new layer in the “Textures” folder, change it Blend mode (Blending mode) on Soft light (Soft Light). Open the texture downloaded from cgtextures.com. Apply it to the drawing with the tool. Stamp 
(Clone Stamp Tool). Then completely discolor it. Applying textures with blending modes Soft light (Soft Light) or Overlap (Overlay) may lead to glut. To eliminate this disadvantage, go to the menu Image> Correction> Discolor (Image> Adjustments> Desaturate).
Step 12
Create another layer, change its blending mode to Overlap (Overlay). Use a different, stronger stone texture. Again apply it to different parts of the portrait. With the help of brushes from the archive of the lesson you can delete some areas of the texture. This will help achieve a more realistic effect. To emphasize the texture, create another layer, set for it Blend mode (Blending mode) Normal (Normal). Apply textures with brushes.
Step 13
Now the image looks quite good, but the colors are too saturated and warm. To fix this quickly, use the tool. Color balance and colder tones. To activate it, go to the menu Image> Correction> Color balance (Image> Adjustments> Color Balance). Reduce the opacity of the “Textures” group to 75%, since in some places the textures turned out too coarse.
Step 14
At this stage, the drawing is almost complete, but we will add a couple of final touches. The problem is that in real life materials made of stone or marble have few shades and look unsaturated. With this in mind, reduce the saturation of the entire image for more realism of the finished image.
When you’re satisfied with the result, finish the job. If you worked with the author’s sketches, then why not try to portray yourself or one of your friends?
