In this tutorial We will show you how to paint a proportioned female face from scratch… There are plenty of advanced ways to achieve this, but this tutorial will start with the absolute basics and move on to more advanced techniques, so even beginners can follow.

First We are going to show you how to achieve the right proportions… After that we bring the face to life by painting and smudging it into a beautiful woman.

Step-1:

Open a new document 1500×1500. The first thing we have to take into account is the facial proportion. I am going to draw the rough sketch by using grids. Go to view > show >grid (check the grid). To change the default settings

go to Edit > Preferences > Guides, Grid and Slices

Step-2:
They say width of an ideal face spans 4.5 to 5 eyes and height of 7 eyes. Consider each grid as the measure of an eye. Now we will construct the face. Below figure shows you how they are in proportion.
Step-3:
Create a new layer call it “Sketch”. With pen tool draw the shape of face assuming it’s going to look like an egg. Once the sketching is done we don’t need the grids so go to View > Show > Grid (uncheck)
Step-4:
Create a new layer in between background and sketch layer call it “Base”
With a large brush fill in the color.
Step-5:
Now that we have the skin color let’s add some shadows and highlights. Create a new layer call it “shadows”. If you don’t know which colors to pick then don’t worry you can see it in the below picture. With a soft air brush of size 50-75 I made some strokes.
Step-6:
I hid the “shadows” layer intentionally just so you can see what I’ve been doing. Create a new layer and call it “Blush”. I use this layer to show the blush on cheeks, nose and forehead.

Step-7:
Create a new layer and call it “highlights”. Keep it in mind that any new layers you create should be below the “Sketch” layer.
Step-8:
Merge base, shadows, blush and highlights layers. The image should look somewhat like this.
Step-9:
I read that a lot of people use the smudge tool to give the face a smooth look or to blend the colors. That tedious procedure didn’t work for me so I figured out another method. Select the whole face (you can do that by clicking on the base layer by holding ctrl). Then go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and blur it by 31px radius. Tadaa!!!!!
Step-10:
Clean the edges off.
Step-11:
Create as many layers as you want and don’t forget to name them. You can delete them if you are not happy with what you have done. Create a new layer call it “nose”. Added shadows
Step-12:
To give it a smooth look blur it by 10px radius.
Step-13:
Give some details to the nose.
Step-14:
Create a new layer call it “Lips” The upper lip is darker than the lower lip. Remember one thing. Whether it’s a face, nose or lips don’t just use burn and dodge tool. First add darker/lighter shades to create depth.
Step-16:
Create a new layer call it “eyes”. The eyeball that you see is not pure white at all. So use some lighter shade of Grey to paint the shape. Now the series of screenshots below should be pretty self-explanatory.
Step-17:
Focus on Iris now. I am just painting simple iris with less details.
Step-18:
Painting pupil is the easiest thing and fun to do too ;-)
Step-19:

Usually hair of brows is messy. So go easy on `eye brow shaping` for that natural look. See to it that the color of brows and color of hair is close.
Step-20:
No need to scratch your heads when adding an eye shadow. Just pick the darker and lighter shades from face.
Step-21:
Some times after smudging, the edges appear as if they are not blended with the surroundings. Use blur tool to get rid of the edges and blend the colors nicely.
Step-22:
Painting is almost done now the time to use burn tool ;-)
Step-23:
Don’t burn your painting if it turns like below. Instead pick a darker shade of the color from the area you want to burn and manually add that color.
Step-24:
Defining more with dodge tool.
Step-25:
Fix the gaps or sharp edges if you have any.
Step-26:
Thought of doing hair also but I didn`t want to drag the tutorial. May be in another tutorial.
Final result.

Hope you liked it:)