Foot Construction Step by Step

Hey everyone, thought I would try another tutorial, these are great motivation to get me practicing new techniques, and studying in general, which I sometimes have a problem doing. Hopefully this can help a few of you ^^




STEP INFO:

Step 1: Start by simplifying the overall foot shape into a kind of wedge. The overall shape will depend on the reference you use, or pose your foot is in. For this step to be accurate it's best to use a foot reference, so you can get an understanding of the general shape and memorize it. Also roughly sketch in where the ankle is, in this pose, the ankle doesn't protrude much, so I exaggerated it a little to show it off better. Some poses you do will have the ankle very prominent, some not, it's up to you to decide how much of it you want to show.



Step 2: At this stage, the main idea is to get the toe placement down. Drawing a curved line from one side of the foot to the other (this line indicates where the toes begin on the foot) is the first thing you need to do. You can now refine the inital shape of where the toes are if you haven't already, making the side with the big toe longer, and making the pinky toe side much shorter. Also while working on the toes, make sure to sketch five lines in to indicate where each toe goes, the further away the toes are, the smaller they get.



Step 3: In this step, refine the drawing. Sketch in each toe as you see it, refine the ankle, should yours be more prominent, and add any little details you wish to have later on. Also feel free to clean up your sketch so the lines are cleaner, I do this because I find it easier to paint over, but it isn't necessary.



Step 4: I strongly suggest you sketch in the forms of the foot before painting, this will really help you memorize the different forms in the foot, not to mention help you paint it more accurately later on. This will also help you think of things more three dimensionally, which will help make your painting in general more realistic. Many people, including myself sometimes skip this stage, especially if you have a good understanding of three dimensional painting already. But if your a beginner I suggest you practice this stage, it will help a lot later on.



Step 5: Pick a colour pallete before painting. My tendency is to choose a light colour, a light/medium, and dark/medium, and a dark tone. This will give you 4 different variations of shadow to work with (even more when you blend them later). I also choose two more saturated colours to use later, to make the skin tone a bit more lively (don't overuse these colours). Now begin blocking in shadows. You can either choose your own light source if your confident in your abilities, or try to replicate the shading of your reference. Try not to use the same tone for all the shadows, some areas will be darker, some will be lighter.



Step 6: Finish the painting! At this stage just try to render the painting to a polish. Blend your shadows together, play around with the darkness/lightness in certain areas, and add those subtle saturated colours to the skin tone to liven it up. You can even add some subtle texture after you finish painting. This stage is hard to explain, the best way to learn how to bring it all together is to practice and develop your own painting techniques.




Hopefully this technique can help some of you! I know how frustrating feet can be at times, often times I try to avoid them all together by giving my characters shoes, even if having exposed feet would be much more fitting. Just practice feet a lot, and you'll find them easier and easier, hopefully in due time you even enjoy doing them!



More examples of this technique in use:




Other Tutorials: