Toonin' Around With Faces

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This tutorial assumes you have a working knowledge of Paint Shop Pro, the use and location
of tools and their usage. This tutorial is written using PSP 8.1 but can be done using other
version.

In this tutorial we will be constructing a basic cartoon face. I will show you how easily
different expressions can be achieved using the Pen Tool and Preset shapes. Facial
expressions are a great part of speech, no matter what language we speak our facial
expressions can tell a lot about how we are feeling. In this tutorial I will try to demonstrate
how placement of brows, eyes and lines can help show emotions.

Remember to Save often!

1.) Open a 500 x 500 transparent canvas. Flood fill your canvas with a nice skin tone, I used
#F8F1E6.

2.) Set your foreground color to black, background to null.

3.) Click on the Pen Tool and set to these settings...

4.) First we will draw the left eye. On the left side of the canvas using the Pen Tool, click and pull
across to make your line. Right click on both of your Nodes and change them to Symmetric, right
click again and change them to Cusp. Use the handles on the Nodes to shape the line so that you have
something like this...

Now you can convert to raster if you wish or you can make all your vectors on this one layer so that
you can save the eye shape as a preset shape later. Whichever way you like best when working with
vectors is fine.

5.) Next draw out the bottom part of your eye using the Pen Tool. Shape the line so that you have
something like this....

6.) Set your background color to white, using the Preset Shape Ellipse, draw out an oval to fill in the
white of the eye....

Note.. (All Preset Shapes are set to Create as a Vector)

Pull this layer below your outline layer. Use the Pen Tool to adjust your nodes so that it fills
in the Sclera area of the eye.

7.) Set your foreground color to black and your background color to #35658D or whatever color
you would like your eyes to be. Use the Preset Shape Ellipse, Line Width set to 1 and draw out the
Iris of your eye....

8.) Next, set your background color to black, foreground should be null. Using the Preset Shape
Ellipse, draw out the Pupil for the eye...

9.) This is your basic eye shape, if you would like, save it as a Preset Shape before continuing.
Convert your eye shape to Raster.

10.) Using the Magic Wand, click on the Iris to select it, add a New Raster Layer. On this layer
use the Airbrush Tool and different shades of the blue used for the Iris and black to give your
eye a little extra oomph! *L*

11.) Merge Visible your shaded layer with your eye layer. Duplicate and Mirror this layer so that
you have two eyes.

12.) Next we will use the Pen Tool to create the nose. Pen Tool settings are...

13.) Draw a vertical line between the eyes. Add Nodes to your line, changing the Nodes to Cusp
as needed until you have something that looks like this....

14.) Convert the line drawing to Raster, copy and paste as a new selection, mirror the selection and
move into position as the other side of the nose...

15.) This is our basic face shape, what we do from here on out will help show what mood our character
is in. Save your basic shape so that you will have it for later use.

16.) Using the Pen Tool we can give our character different emotions. Look at the below images, note
the lines that are on the face. Just by simply adding a few lines, shaping the mouth and brows
differently we can achieve many different looks for our basic face shape.

This is just a small sample of the different emotions humans have that can be expressed through our
faces. As you draw either in the cartoon style or realistic faces I hope you will keep in mind
the different examples I've shown you here.

Toon around and see how many other facial expressions you can come up with!

Until next time... Have fun Toonin' up your face!

God Bless!
Connie