Drawing The Avatar

In this tutorial, we’re going to create Aang, from the hit Nick show Avatar: The Last Airbender. I’ll openly admit it-I’m 28 years old and hooked on this show, so I think it’s high-time we did some Avatar art.

This is going to be a pretty fast-paced and complex tutorial, but don’t let it intimidate you. All you really need to complete this is a good working knowledge of the pen tool. If your pen tool usage isn’t up to snuff, you can check out a great tutorial on that over here.

Alright, that said, create a new document and let’s get started! I’m going to put a light grid overlay on top of mine, so that you can see how all of the pieces relate to one another. You might want to do something similar for your own drawing and then delete the grid layer when you’re done if you think it will help you with your image proportions.

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Draw Aang - Fig. 1

Before we get started doing any actual drawing, lets go over the most common techniques we’ll be using.

We’ll be using the pen tool to create paths. Once those paths are created, we’ll be doing a few different things with them. I won’t be explaining each of these techniques every time I do them, so it’s important that you READ THIS BEFORE GOING ANY FURTHER!

Stroked Path:
If I give instructions to stroke a path, that means right-click on a path in the Paths palette and then select “Stroke path.” When you do this, you’ll get a dialog where you can select what brush you want to use to stroke the path. Unless otherwise stated, we’ll be using a 1px black paintbrush.

Stroked Selection:
To stroke a selection, go to Edit - Stroke. Here you’ll be presented with a dialog where you can set la variety of options. Unless otherwise stated, we’ll be using a 1px black inside stroke.

Convert a path to a selection:
To convert a path to a selection, simply Ctrl+Click on it in the pats palette. Usually, we’ll be doing this so we can fill the path.

Group Layers:
Grouping one or more layers refers to Alt+Clicking between two layers in the Layers palette. Doing this prevents any artwork on the top layer (it will be indented in the Layers palette) from extending beyond the filled areas in the layer it’s grouped with.

Got it? Good. Now let’s get drawing. Grab your pen tool and trace out the shape of Aang’s head, including those big ears of his. You may find it easiest to start at either the top of an ear or the point of his chin, anywhere where there’s a reasonably hard angle. For the best results with the pen tool, you always want to draw the sshape using the fewest points possible.

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Draw Aang - Fig. 2

Now create a new layer (let’s simply call it “head”, convert the path to a selection, fill it with #fcd0ac and stroke the selection.

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Draw Aang - Fig. 3

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Added Wednesday, October 25th, 2006 at 8:10 am under Drawing & Painting.