Introduction: Big Grinning Cartoon Skull

About: I am a former active duty Marine. I am married and have two cats. I love learning new things, tools, and sharing/ trading skills and ideas with others. For 2018 I plan to release an instructable every month. M…

This is easy yet hard if you can believe I spent 5 hours sitting here working on the skull straight no breaks. I use a mixture of Autodesk's sketch book pro and Photoshop cs6 to complete this tutorial, however you only need one of the programs. The reason behind using both programs was merely my preference i find that I can sketch way better in sketch book pro  then I can every in Photoshop, but I prefer to do line art inside and coloring in Photoshop. Included with this ible is the .psd, the back ground, and the texture you need.

Please feel free to ask any and all questions I will gladly answer them.

Step 1: The Sketching Process

The size of the document doesn't matter. To begin I open up a blank sheet in sketch book pro then change the back ground layer to black then picking a neon-ish blue and begin to work on a new layer above the background. Starting with the outline then the inside with the bigger features trying to figure out spacing moving into the smaller features then.  Choosing between black or white to sketch on is a personnel  choice i prefer to sketch on black then change back to white for line art. Also note I use a number 2B pencil to sketch. 

Step 2: The Line Art

After finishing you sketch and you choose to bring it into Photoshop save it in Autodesk sketch book as a .psd not as the default .tiff it makes it easy to import it in. 

Okay go to the brush set it to a line weight that is decent I chose a 5px line to do the outline and the teeth. The pen tool is great for line art, start putting the points then go all the way around and try to keep to the guide lines as much as possible, but remember its just a guide not the perfect exact thing. When the outline has been made and closed at the starting point right click hit make stroke then change it to brush and press okay. Afterwards, its time to work on the ridges, but before that we have to change some settings by going to the brush editor ( in picture 8) we have to turn on shape dynamic  and set the control to pen pressure. line so the same thing you did for the outline, but when click make stroke and go to the dialog box click the simulate pressure box. You have to choose where the brush starts and end but it will get thin at the ends and thicker to the center.

Step 3: Small Teeth Detail

for this i did it by hand with a 3px hard round brush set to shape dynamic with the control being pen pressure and went over the lines at least three times.

Step 4: Coloring

This is a long and hard process that takes some basic art knowledge on shadows and highlights. Figure out the direction your light is coming from then pick your base color then you highlight then your shadow.

color codes:
highlights: cec8c2
base: a49689
shadows: a49689

Now start by creating a new layer under the line art and coloring the whole thing that color then layer on the shadows and highlights on, but if you over do it don't erase use the same brush and switch back to the base color and just push  it back. I use a soft round brush in different sizes but i usual use large sizes and go out the lines. After the color and shadows are applied its time for the eyes by creating a new layer.

Eye color codes:
base: 25211e
the socket : 050504

color with a large soft brush for both then erase the extra that spilled out the socket.

Now erase the extra color that spilled on the color layer.

Step 5: Texturing

place the texture in its own layer above both the eye socket and color layer then make sure it covers the whole skull area then go to the layer mode at change it from "normal" to linear burn then press ctrl and click the color layer on the layer panel while on the selection tool right click the click on select inverse and erase the extra texture.

Step 6: Background

All i did was drop in that picture the with a brush at 50% opacity and at a random red colored over it real quick then bam.