Want to create a beautiful, dreamlike painting full of subtle details but with a bold 80s colour scheme? Design duo KittoZutto show you how in this tutorial on creating an airbrushed portrait tapping the glory days of Athena posters.
You’ll learn how to improve your brush skills, working with a variety of different brush heads for varying effects and you’ll learn how to get the most out of colouring, masking and layer blending modes.
You’ll also learn the benefit of working with lots of layers in a digital painting, as this allows you to work on elements separately and quickly adjust detail and colouring.
A layered version of the final composition, for reference, can be found in the Digital Arts Download Zone.
Step 1 You will need to sketch out a rough guide for the portrait. It can be really rough line work, just to give you enough indication on the overall composition of the elements, like the placement of the eyes and nose and the shape and movement of hair.