A Work in Progress: Little blue bird

This guide was made for entry:
Little blue bird
In Contest:
new perspective

step 1 of 13

I created the background first by soft brush

step 2 of 13

Then used the hard brush with high opacity to make the sketch.
Identify some blue areas by blue brush

step 3 of 13

Used hard brush (white) with opacity of 50% to draw the light feather areas (on the top layer)

step 4 of 13

Use the hard brush (black) to draw the shadow and dark area on the feather (draw on the new layer)

step 5 of 13

Now the shape with color areas of the bird is identify, I focus on making the detail

step 6 of 13

Start with the head, I use the black brush (hard brush) to draw the critical strokes around the head, beak and eyes

step 7 of 13

Create new layer, use the hard brush (white) to draw the feather on the dark skin that I made from the last step

step 8 of 13

Make more details with hard brush, on some areas which don't need much detail, I used the softer brush with lower opacity. To draw the feather, the brush setting was change to shape dynamic (I used tablet) with smallest minimal brush size.

step 9 of 13

The same steps were done on the body part

step 10 of 13

With the feather on the chest, I made the dark skin first by soft brush, then drew the strokes of feathers later by hard white brush

step 11 of 13

Finish the tail and legs

step 12 of 13

Draw the shape of the dog's leg and change the background by soft brush with low opacity.
The light source comes from the right side, enlighten the feather on the same side of the bird

step 13 of 13

Draw the dog's leg the same way as the bird. I merged all layers of the bird into one, then created a clipping mask to control the light and shadow on the bird. Use black and white brush to draw on this layer (soft light blending mode).

Final result

Votes

user	voted
George55
erikuri
alwani
loopyluv
Nator
ponti55
Score: 9.67

Comments

George55 says:

Congratulations, you did a wonderful job here, with the bird and paw. Waiting to see a tutorial for this.

(5 years and 3502 days ago)

Pxleyes

Photography and photoshop contests

We are a community of people with a passion for photography, graphics and art in general.

Every day new photoshop and photography contests are posted to compete in. We also have one weekly drawing contest and one weekly 3D contest!

Participation is 100% free!
Just register and get started!

Good luck!