An Idea

I am just looking for feedback and making sure I am going about this the right way.

I found out why I can't use photoshop very well, I can't draw

I went out and bought two drawing books, one covers the human body, shading, proportions and dimensions, and artistic anatomy, and I am working really hard to learn to draw... so far my latest creation has been a bottle of 409 window cleaner done in charcoal.

So, eventually, one day, I would like to do this...

Draw myself from a photograph in black and white charcoal / graphite
Print off the Face Template.
Trace it out onto a piece of paper.
Map out what goes where turning a 2d image into a 2d image that is wrapped around a 3d mesh (my avatar).
Apply the proper shading to that... and try and get it to look accurate.
Scan it back into photoshop.
Apply a skin-colored overlay layer at 40-60% opacity so that the shadowing layer shows through from underneath it.
Upload it and apply it to my avatar.

Will this work? Am I going about this the right way? is there an easier way?

Of course, by the time I learn to draw my face accurately in charcoal / graphite, we will probably have a much better system where we can see each other IRL

Jess

Why not just take a few really clean pics of yourself and photosample them into Photoshop? No drawing skills needed there. You will have to brush up on your Cut, Paste, Clone, Burn, Dodge, Distort, and alpha channel creation skills though.

Buying drawing books is not a waste of your time at all. It's just not a key ingredient for your specific task. Besides, drawing skills are aquired through lots of practice and patience, as you probably know.

You hit the nail right on the head with your concept of semi transparent texture. However, for letting the slider settings bleed through your texture, you will discover you lose too much detail at the 40-60% level. It's better to layer the texture below the slider alphas and use an opacity of 70-100%. If you simply mean apply the shading you do to your drawing under a skin colored texture, Multiply, Darken, and Overlay will all work well for that on layer effects in PS.

I have it!

Buy a scanner and lay your face down flat against the glass plate. Scan your face, upload texture, voila!

I didn't think about manipulating a photograph in photoshop, because, I don't think my skills in photoshop are anywhere near as good as the need to be to pull that off. Besides, I don't know PS that well, but can you pull off the same level of detail in photoshop that you can in a drawing?

Just use a higher resolution for more detail. But if this is for upload, 72 pix per inch is as good as it is going to get anyhow.

Photoshop is not really intended for drawing, although of course you can use it for that.

My skins all start with photographs of real faces from multiple angles which are distorted (using liquify) to fit the templates, blended with layer masks, then touched up with cloning and over-painting. It's much easier to get realism that way than trying to paint them from scratch... at least for me

Bottom line Jessica, you're going to have to learn PS or a similar application if you want to make textures like that and upload them into SL.

Well, I was afraid of that. Back to the bookstore for a book on photoshop. I am going to have my own little library soon!

Jeez Louise I have a lot to learn about Photoshop.

Clone? Liquify? Distort? Multiply, Darken, Overlay? What ARE these things? I'm amazed I even came out with skins without knowing about this stuff.

You can also learn the basics by trying out some of the tutorials that are on the web:

Laurie McCanna's complete list of Photoshop Tutorials

Photoshop Crash Course

Good-Tutorials

DAZ

On the non-SL side of things, it's cool that you are picking up drawing. A few tips for ya --

1. get a sketchpad and doodle whenever you are killing time. It doesn't matter if its a telephone pole, the person sitting next to you in a cafe, or your fork... keep drawing and you hand-eye skills will flow naturally

2. go EASY on yourself. Don't censor, don't judge, don't feel like you can't put anything in your sketchpad unless it is "finished" or perfect. No! It is precisely for good sketches and bad sketches. Fast ones and careful ones. Silly scribbles and cartoon doodles.

3. Don't let a blank page intimidate ya! Tell it who's boss with a few smudges!

4. at local art schools you can often find figure drawing classes open to the public, where you group together with other people and pay for the model. You learn a LOT more about anatomy by working off of a real person than from a book. Plus, you'll pick up drawing styles and techniques, such as beginning with 30-second "gesture drawings" to loosen up.

5. grab a mirror and do self-portraits -- at least you know you'll be a model as patient as you want to be!

Have fun!
Forseti