Finishing Up

 

Those last little touches

After looking at the drawing a bit, I decided that it looked unbalanced, so I added that last lone pine tree in the corner in the forground, using soft brushes to make it look blurred and closer to the viewer. I also added one more layer of falling snowflakes, this time larger ones, to add more depth.

And, well, I was done! So that's how I did it.

 

What about my sketch?

Well, now you decide what kind of look you'd like. Most of the time, like with the drawing I did of Lyosha, I exclude my sketch fromt he final product. Sometimes, however, I intentionally want a loose, sketchy style. For example, take Myuree-na in the above drawings. I started with a sketch, painted, and decided that I liked it best with the sketch intact in the final drawing. So it's up to you and what you're trying to do with your art! :}

 

Those nasty levels

A little confusing, but a handy tool... once you're all done with your drawing, you can change it's levels. You can do this to a single layer (simply select the desired layer, and go to Image -> Adjust -> Levels..) Or to the entiree overall image. Simply hit Ctrl + L, or go to Image -> Adjust -> Levels. To be completely hhonest, I'm not exactly sure what the levels do, I just know that I can mess with them to get the desired results. Okay, you'll get a window like the one above. You'll want to have "Preview" checked so that you can see what's happening as you mess around (make sure your image is saved prior to this in case you don't like what you do). Try hittin "Auto" to see what the computer thinks looks best; sometimes it truley does look best. Most of the time, though, you'll want to mess with the sliders till you get your drawing looking how you want. I leanred what they sliders do by pure experimentation; you can too. The channel indicates what you're changing. RGB means what you do will effect all colors. The red channel lets you mess with the red hues only, same with the green and blue channels. The eyedroppers are useful, too! If you use the one filled with black, click on the part of your image that's supposed to be the darkest (black) and it'll automatically change the rest of the image accordingly. The same witht the one filled with white; use that to select the brightest part of your drawing. The one in the middle is for midtones.

To the left are all variations of the same drawing, changed with Levels. As you can see, it can greatly change your drawing.

(There are tons of options under the Image -> Adjust menu, all of which are good to play around with to see what they do!)

 

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