Bonus: How to Draw and Paint a Figure and Character

Gaining a solid foundation in drawing and painting can take your image editing skills to new levels. It can open a wider range of creative possibilities and potential job opportunities. On a personal level, drawing and painting teach you how to analyze, observe, and recognize what you see in front of you, rather than just making assumptions about what you see in front of you when you are drawing and studying from live subjects.

In this chapter, we will draw a figure and a character from start to finish. The character I created is named Mother Earth. She is based on themes relating to conservation, the impact of global warming on the environment, and so on.

Using a character like Mother Earth will help us learn how to come up with ideas for a character, organize our ideas and drawings, and learn the basics of mixing and rendering details with paint.

We will begin the project with rough sketches, followed by selecting the best...