.[1].

1. Base image rendered at 2500 X 3100 & 300dpi (the bigger the picture the easier to work with and more detail you can put in it). She's already had considerable postwork done to the body and the hair etc since this tutorial is focusing on cloth.

.[2].

2. Create a new layer (or in my case 2 layers, one for the dress and one for the shawl). Grab a paintbrush and scribble in what you're actually going to end up painting. In my case my figure is going to be wearing a shawl and dress. I'm never too fussed when I do this because it changes so dramatically over the evolution of the picture.

.[3].

3. Grab your a solid airbrush in the colour that you're going to be working with and then fill in all the gaps so that you've got 2 solid panels you're going to be working on. Once again i'm not too fussed with the edges, I'm still roughing her out. I've also added a bodice panel at the front, as Layer 3. It's positioned in between the Top layer (Layer 1) and the Bottom layer (Layer 3).

.[4].

4. Now, grab your dodge brush, we're going to be creating some folds. For the shawl I used a round 45 airbrush with the Opacity set to 50% and Range on Highlights then roughly dodged in some folds. Then I switched to the bottom layer and changed the Range to Shadows and dodged them.

Things to take into consideration is where you're actually draping the fabric, a handy way of trying to think 3D is to grab some fabric and drape it around yourself and have a look in the mirror and see what folds where.

.[5].

5. Ok, now i've taken the Burn Brush and deepened the shadows, (Opacity 50%, Range = Highlights). Then I've returned to the Dodge brush and dodged over the same creases in Step 4. Still as rough as guts here.

.[6].

6. This is where it starts to get interesting and you start to have some definition with all the mess you've made. This is also the point where the more practice you have, the better understanding you gain on how to draw cloth. The top picture shows where I've started on the left hand side. Using a 45px Smudge Brush set on 94% I've smudged the highlights into the shadows and vise versa. The pink arrows indicate the general direction which i've smudged. The crappy looking bow is just to give you an indication on what i'm actually trying to achieve in the first place.

Picture B shows how i've continued to work into the various shades, in the center where the shawl comes together i've reduced the size of my smudge brush down to 35px and 27px to get better detail. The blue marking shows where i've started to clean up the edges by running the smudge brush along them.

Points to note are varying the size and the opacity of the smudge brush will allow you to work with more detail or less. I tend to work with long hard smudging strokes because i find i get better definition with my folds but it really depends on what you're actually trying to achieve.

.[7].

7. Image A, i've finished smudging the cloth and cleaned up the edges and am fairly satisfied with it, but despite how lifeless my model is, the cloth is too. It looks flat.

Image B, the blue arrow shows the direction my light is coming in at so with the burn brush and put some shadows in under the arms and with a large dodge brush (300px) and dodged the highlights on the shoulder and across the chest accordingly. Still not entirely perfect but she's ok for the time being. From here I repeat the same steps (4 - 7) I used for the shawl and start work on the dress.

.[8].

8. And here we are now an hour and 2 cups of coffee later with the dress done. The arrow indicate the direction in which the folds go, I've also fixed up a few little areas in the shawl because I wasn't happy with them.

Between the two layers I grab a large round brush and with a light opacity (35% in this case) i put some shadows between the shawl layer and the dress.

From here the cloth is basically finished and I go on to work on the remainder of the image by adding little details like lace, bows a background etc. I make minor adjustments to the cloth like hue and saturation changes in order to get a better blend of colours throughout the picture as I work on the rest of it.

.[9].

9. And a several hours, countless spelling mistakes and lots of swearing later, we're finally finished. :)

Hope this has given someone an insight into different methods of post working cloth and if you have any further questions feel free to harass me.

Roses,
.[SinSister].