DIY CUSTOM PORTRAIT

As an artist it has always been hard to draw myself, yea I have mirrors...I don't think drawing has the same effect as digital paintings though. I love the idea of being able to personalize things with animated self. You can use almost any drawing software on your device or on a computer. For this I used Sketchbook Pro on the Ipad, and it's also on the Mac app store. 

So start with a taking a picture of yourself, or anyone really:

I don't like any picture of myself but this one will do. So first open the program. When it loads, click on the upper right corner, to choose the image from your photos.

Ok, now create a new, empty layer. Basically you are drawing on top of the image but not on it (digitally tracing). Select the empty layer, and now you can start.

Select the pen, its the one that is blue and its set to 1.0 (size). Make sure your color is black (select on right side). Continue to trace the key parts. This may sound hard but it was really easy and anyone can do it.

Ok so the face is very important but it is up to you if you want to do the neck and clothes too. When you are done turn the picture layer off.

Click the eye next to the picture, you can see it again at any time. So now it's the point where you can start to color it, but when you use the "fill" tool it will "leak" out. That is when you cant fill in what you want to. So make sure that every thing you want to have different colors has a border, "sealing"the spaces. To seal the bottom, like where my hoodie's bottom is, I made an oval around it with another tool.

Select the circle at the end, this is what it looks like when it is has the circle:

Now there are all the lines at the bottom so I erased them. I wanted it to be really clean, I don't know about the Mac app but on the Ipad I just zoomed really close to erase with a small sized eraser.

 Select the eraser tool on the bottom of the toolbar.

Here is it, clean and done! Now it's time to color!

Click on the tiny pen on the top to get more color options, and select the "fill" tool under the big color rectangle.

I love how simple and clean it is, you just touch the space you want to fill!

Repeat the steps and fill in all the spaces!

My shirt had some color variation, to do this you can choose a lighter or darker color,

then scroll along all the tools at the bottom:

On the third slide top right corner is a cool tool. It created a cool effect with low opacity. I set the size to 11.0 and opacity to 0.60.

It really added to the shirt...

This was a perfect example of why you need to seal the spaces, but it is easily reversed by pressing the red backspace button.

I like how easy this program is and it took me under a half an hour to make this (totally worth it).

Now it's time for the background, I like it white but for example purposes, here is another option:

Green is my favorite, doesn't match but it's a good contrast. Idid the same effect that I did the shirt on the background. Its good to experiment with all the tools.

It just adds a little touch of dimension and I love it!

Thanks I hope you like it please comment and send me pictures of your results!