How to make a comic-style portrait in Adobe Fresco

Kervin Brisseaux is a designer, illustrator, and design director based in New York City. His illustration style incorporates influences from fashion, music, and other facets of pop culture.

Brisseaux chose the Basic Taper brush from Fresco’s Vector Brushes to add detail to the hat in the next step.

Next, Brisseaux set the brush size and smoothing to his liking. He then added a new layer and brushed small strokes to add detail to the top portion of the hat. If you’re using a stylus, experiment with the Pressure Dynamics option in the Brush Settings by turning it off and on to see how it affects your brushstrokes.

He tapped and held the Selection tool as he chose the brush selection tool, adjusted its size, and brushed over the areas he wanted to color later. The diagonal lines indicate areas outside of the selection. Remember, you can pinch, expand, and drag with two fingers to zoom in and out of the image as you work.

Next, he added a new layer, tapped the color circle and moved the color stops to find the right color. Then he chose the Paint Bucket and tapped the selected areas. The color covered the face, so Brisseaux held and dragged the color layer below the portrait layer he had previously created. He tapped Deselect from the bottom menu to return to normal viewing mode.

Brisseaux used vector brushes to paint areas of orange and yellow to add depth to the face. He then added detail and texture by mixing vector and pixel brushes. For example, he added a new layer and painted the collar with a Halftone brush from the Comics section of the Pixel brushes.

Throughout his process, Brisseaux used the Eraser tool to clean up the areas where he overpainted with a brush.

Mix some media

Experiment with a variety of vector and pixel brushes and their settings to combine patterns and colors to create vibrant comic-style compositions.

Note: Project files included with this tutorial are for practice purposes only.