Melissa's Dollies ♥

Complete Tutorial

Welcome! This is my full doll tutorial! This will show you step by step how I make my dolls! Remember this is simply to show you how I make dolls, please do not copy every pixel as I show here actually try to draw, its the only way you improve. ^_^ I use Photoshop, but this tutorial can be used for any paint program pretty much, but for other programs you will just have to know where your tools, etc are. Enjoy!
I will be using this base (made by me):

Things you will learn in this tutorial: How I draw the clothes, shade, highlight, lace, transparentsy, hair, shoes, ruffles, and wings!

First step I do before every doll I make is (of course once you have the base open in your paint program) I go to Image > canvas size.. and I increase the width and height by at least two inches, so in this case 3x4 inches; this is to make more room to work in.

Next step is to go to Image > Mode > RGB mode. (I think every program has a different way to change this setting just play around a bit if you don't use ps)

Now make a new layer! (For ps layer > new > layer) We are going to start with the shirt so name it Shirt or soemthing similiar. ^^

Now to the actual pixel work! Zoom in until you can see the pixels better, and grab the pencil tool. Change the tool to 1px if you need to. Choose a color, I'm choosing a dark green.
Now, draw the outline of the shirt in the color you have chosen. (left) Then grab the eraser (settings: 1px pencil) and clean up the line like on the right.

I usually don't use color palettes to make my dolls, I just got to the color palette and choose a shade much lighter than the outline, in this case it turns out to be like a light-medium shade of green. Use this color and grab the paint bucket tool. Paint the inside of the shirt. (If its not painting right make sure you don't have the all layers option checked.)

Your shirt should now look similar the picture on the left. Now you want to take a shade darker than the color you just filled in the shirt with and shade where ever you think shadows will lie on the doll. See pic to the right.

Next step grab a shade even darker than this one and shade the darker shadows. Once you have the shadows in its time for highlights! Get the color you filled the shirt in with and make a shade that's a couple shades lighter than that. Now draw in where you think the light is going to hit the shirt!

So, finally because I couldn't stand a plain shirt, I added a strawberry! AkA ichigo.. =^^= You can add whatever you want on the shirt, or just leave it plain!

We finished the shirt! Yay! now lets go on the the skirt. >>>