The base used for this tutorial is from my dollz site Faery Ink Dollz (temporarily unavailable so please just link your results to www.faeryink.com).
Please keep in mind this base cannot be used toward a profit! So if you are wanting to use this tutorial to create something to sell then you will need to use your own base - NOT this one.
Thank you!
Let's get started, this is stuff you can use on all of your dollz, using any base, or none at all ^_^
Get your base prepared for working with. Now add a new layer, name it dress outline. In Photoshop you will want to use your pencil tool, size 1, full opacity and flow. You can use any color you like to draw the outline, I am using black so it stands out ^_^ This is the color palette I am using for this dress, feel free to use it if you like:
Now we are going to draw in some sleeves. These sleeves should be long and kinda loose. I used a different color just so you can see the difference in what we've done.
Now recolor your outlines and fill in the dress. To get the same colors I have you will want to use color 1 ( from the left ) as outline, and color 2 to fill.
That dress was looking kinda boring, no? So let's add a new layer, named wrap and add a wrap around her waist and try to give this dress some life ^_^ This is the color palette I am using for the wrap :
Outline with the first color from the left and fill with the second color.
Already looking nicer I think ^_^
We've got to figure out a pretty, enchanting way to hold her wrap on, buttons are just too boring! Of course, we add a new layer.. Here, I've drawn the outline for some leaves. I am going to try a "corsage" thingie to hold her wrap together... So lets recolor the outline and fill in the leaves. I have a bunch of leaf palettes in the palettes section so Im not going to provide this specifically.
Add a new layer and draw in the outline for a pretty shaped flower..
Outline and fill :) This is the palette Ive used for the bigger flowers, I strongly encourage you to use your own colors for the flowers since they don't require as many as say the dress..
Well I didn't like the corsage idea, it was looking kind of plain, so I added a new layer, drew a "leaf belt" of sorts.. ( At angle with the wrap ) and dragged the layer below the flower. If you don't know how to do this, just open your layers palette and click and hold on the layer and drag it downward.
A few more flowers seemed nice :) All on their own layers!
To add a few details to our flowers now ...
Still looking a little boring, so I thought we could add some cute ruffles to the hem of her wrap...
Above you will see where the ruffles have been drawn in rather roughly. You will want to go in and smooth the edges out by erasing "doubled up" pixels.
The ruffles are cleaned up and I've added a small crease in the center of each...
Now fill ^_^ You could also use a different color for the ruffles for an interesting effect
When I finished with the ruffles I realized the skirt did not flare out enough on the right hand side... So I had to fix that..
After that I decided I just didn't like the way the bottom of this skirt was laying, so I decided to redraw the bottom
Thats a little better. But I dont want her toes peeking out and I just dont have the patience for a shoe tutorial today :p So lets go back to our base layer and erase those sneaky toes ^_^
The dress definitely still needs some more detail, so lets draw some lacey stuff along the top hem...
Its an amazingly easy process and has such a nice, romantic effect.
Details, details, details... Details can really punch up a doll.. So I thought we could add some goldish trim to the top of the dress... You can use whatever color you like, white or dark blue would work equally as well :)
Now to start on her staff. The first thing I usually do is draw two lines showing the maximum width of the staff, this way the staff doesnt look too girthy for her hand to hold. This also shows me where her staff touches the floor. So choose a dark brown and get started already :p Heres a decent wand/staff palette:
The top of her staff should be very ornate, the more ornate, the more magical it looks. This one is rather plain, but most of the time I add crystal balls or some other kind of magical symbol to the top. The top of your staff can hold anything you can imagine, so have fun with it and just go where your heart takes you.
These bends in the staff are basically just a guideline for where to add shadows later and give the staff a somewhat twisted appearance, you can omit if you prefer.
Here I have outlined the areas where her enchanted jewels will go on her staff...
Then I colored them in :) Here is the palette I am using for the big gem..
Now you will want to go back to your wand layer, and erase the pixels covering her hand. I have totally forgotten to do this before and had to draw the whole hand over :p No fun! lol..
Now the hair.. We are going to do long hair, so first we will draw the hair that will be behind her back and head. Its not as difficult as it looks ^_~ Give it a go and if you have trouble just use mine above as a reference
Now move the hair layer to the back. In Photoshop you would make sure the hair layer was active then go into LAYER >> ARRANGE >> SEND TO BACK. In PSP I believe it is pretty much the same...
Now back up to the top, add a new layer and draw the front of her hair in. This has to be some of the crappiest hair I've ever drawn but I want to get this tutorial finished so we are going to move forward regardless :)
One of the easiest ways to cover sucky hair when creating fantasy dollz, is to draw some flowers over it ha ha.. So here we will repeat the same steps we did for our other flowers. Once you have the flower like above, duplicate it and mirror it to put it on the other side of her hair too. Alternatively you can just draw another flower and it will be equally as beautiful if not more so.
I added some baby's breathesque sparklies around the flowers above.
Lets begin with the wings.. Here is the palette I am using for these..
Use the first color to draw the outline of the "skeleton" or top of the wing, fill that with the second color, than use the third color to draw the flimsy part of the wing and the fourth to fill it.
Now use your magic wand too to select the fill of the flimsy part of the wing
Change to the paintbrush tool if you are in Photoshop. If you are using PSP, it is crucial that you add a new layer for each color of shading we are about to do on every aspect ( wings, dress, hair etc.. ) PSPers will need to use their paintbrush tool or airbrush tool now.
Draw in some shadows and some veins on the flimsy wing like above in color #5 of the palette. For PSPers, once you have them pixeled in, get out your smudge tool 
with the settings listed at the top of this tutorial, and start smoothing your pixels out. If done properly they will look alot like above after being smudged. This is the procedure you will need to use for each layer of shading on everything. I recommend Photoshop for anyone willing to learn a new program :p
Now add a new layer
Use color #6 to further define the main line of the veins and give the shading under the wing skeleton more depth.
Use color #7 on a new layer, to add some light to the flimsy wing.
Now deselect the flimsy part and use your wand to select inside the skeleton. Use color # 8 to add a highlight in the center of the skeleton.
Use color #9 to add even more bright to the very center of the skeleton
Now you want to merge your wing layers. In Photoshop this is super easy. In your layers palette just click on the blank spot next to the eye for each layer of the wing.. A chain will show up like below... then go into LAYER >> MERGE LINKED And voila youve got a solid wing :) In PSP I think you will have to make all of your other layers invisible ( LAYERS >> VIEW>> CURRENT ONLY and then click the eyeball to view the other wing layers ) and then LAYERS >> merge >> visible.
Now duplicate your wing layer, then mirror it. Photoshop >> EDIT >> TRANSFORM >> FLIP HORIZONTAL
PSP >> IMAGE >> MIRROR
Now merge both wing layers, as shown above. Send the wings layer to the back ( also shown above )
Yes we are finally getting around to shading lol... So I am going to move us to the next step ;)
~Link Hearts Enchanted~
Links are definitely appreciated! Please feel free to right click to save one of these images to your hard drive and link them back to:
http://www.heartsenchanted.com
Thanks for your support!
