Painting/Drawing skin techniques

[Sorze]

Allright people, I could use some general pointers when it comes to painting/drawing (skintones mostly). I know some people on this forum are very talented, and I'm sure you can all help out.
It would be nice if a certain moderator I've been PM'ing could take the time to share some ideas... :bounce:

For the record, I use a Wacom Graphire 3.


I attached some pics for examples.

The first one is me doing my usual thing, kind of cartoony with exageratted (usually black) lines, only really one primary color and one shading color for everything. Quite comic-like.

It's a bit inspired by the movie "Ghost in the shell". I do kind of like this style, it's very good for concept art, since it's not too taxing to draw, and it's very clean.
But it doesn't really cut it for those masterpieces y'know..?


This is where the other two piccies come into play.


These two last pics are from the same painting. I've drawn one layer for lines and another for the color and shading, so I'm showing you both.

I want to be able to move away from those black, obvious comic-like lines! I want to be able to draw with only colors, like real paintings...
check this page for examples:

http://www.anry***/eng/gallery/gallery.htm

I'm not saying that's how good I'm counting on being tomorrow, but hey, you gotta aim high, or you'll get nowhere!


Problem is, I suck with colors! (Mostly when it comes to skin. Skintones and painting humans is what this post is about really.)


I know my way around the human body ok, and I'm pretty confident with where the shadows fall and all that, but when I'm supposed to do it in color, things don't work out the way I want them to!

I think there should probably be much more contrast in the skin when I paint, but I just can't seem to get the right colors. My pics just look like the people are made out of clay usually... (Light brown, darker brown, etc)

Another big problem I have is getting definition without drawing hugely obvious lines (like the black ones) staring you right in the face.


If you know from experience or you've just seen some allright tutorial somewhere, it doesn't matter, whatever you can give me!

Can someone help me out??


If you didn't feel like reading all that, just look at my pics and help me paint skintones better. I'd also love to get rid of those black lines, without loosing definition.

 

[The Dark Elf]

hang on then

 

[The Dark Elf]

Ok here's a quick handsketch, I've tried to show the various stages, atleast to give an idea

If you really want to learn how to paint skin tones. I'd recommend the books and artwork by Boris Vallejo. Thats who I learnt from.

Take into account skin thickness (thin skin bluish tint, thick skin reddish tint)

Environment (skin tones, are they tanned or not, nobody is ever naturally tanned 100%, ok some might be but its not a common sight, so don't do it, even on a Tarzan character, cause people aren't that used to seeing all overy tans like that)

Also take into account if they are cold or warm. certain blue or red colors will show up more depending on that too, eg: the colder you are the redder your nose and cheeks go, because of the blood under them, so bare that in mind.

Lighting, what the light is like has an effect on the color of the skin. Shadows of course.

And remember that skin is transparent, so your not really painting the skin, but whats underneath it. Though that mostly only needs to be worried about if your doing full on paintings, otherwise you can get away without it... usually

Above all, study skin tones as much as you can, and like you saw in the Banshee, I used barely any skin tones, just other colors to get the feel across.

-
hmm, wont show as images, weird. Ok then attachments will have to do sorry.

 

[The Dark Elf]

and another five pics.

 

[The Dark Elf]

and the last few pics.

 

[SpuD]

wow
nice fenny

 

[A True Canadian]

Cool work Fenric. I love looking at things in stages right up to the finished piece. It looks quite real from a distance.

Sorze, those pics of yours are quite good. I really like the style. Though not being that artistic or having any sort of artistic information, I can't provide you with any tips or ideas but I can wish you good luck.

On another note, Spud has returned...

 

[craig]

Fenric, just out of curiosity what programs did you use to paint that hand?

 

[The Dark Elf]

Cheers guys. It ain't great but it does show how to build up fleshy tones in a few minutes

Craig, Photoshop, which I use for the quick sketching, I use painter for the paintings and time consuming work. Default brushes and default colors (one of the pantone sets)

 

[Sorze]

I love you Fenric... :dork:

Exactly the kind of info I need!


So, should I generally use red and blue for shading? Because now I usually just use a darker shade of the base color of the skin I'm working on.

In the 3rd/4rth pics, did you just pick a new shade of the basecolor when you did the shadows, or am I missing something?


EDIT: Do you ever use dodge and burn (or similar) for skin tones, or anything else for that matter? I try to stay away from them, generally.

 

[The Dark Elf]

I love you Fenric... :dork:

Exactly the kind of info I need!


So, should I generally use red and blue for shading? Because now I usually just use a darker shade of the base color of the skin I'm working on.

In the 3rd/4rth pics, did you just pick a new shade of the basecolor when you did the shadows, or am I missing something?


EDIT: Do you ever use dodge and burn (or similar) for skin tones, or anything else for that matter? I try to stay away from them, generally.

Ok.

sketched out a general outline

did a more refined sketch (still very loose though)

laid down a base color, the general color I wanted

started to shade it with both light and darker colors, not always fleshy tones, used a few colors in there, though not as many as I would normally

very faintly built up red and blue area's over the surface, using my hand as reference (so based on a very cold hand lol) the knuckles and joints were reddish, the rest of the hand had a slight blue color to it heh

added shading depending on how I imagined it was lit, and took the color of the light in mind for that

did a bit of cleaning up and making the parts appear more solid

since it was all in different layers (not normally how I work, only had that many layers for the purpose of trying to keep a record of the steps) just removed the first two

If I was painting it and not sketching it I would have done it quite differently, not to mention at a much much higher resolution, but I use a lot of tricks and trade secrets I've picked up so I wont be giving those away sorry but the general method is the same

Edit: not very often no. I mostly just rely on straight brush strokes and opacity. I rarely use any special effects, I prefer to do as much as I can by hand, I guess its cause with traditional paiting there was no tricks like that, just brush strokes, so its what I know best I guess.

 

[Sui]

wow..... fenric... id just like to say that looks F*CKIN GOOD!!!
ahem.

 

[Sorze]

Thanks alot Fenric, really helped alot!

I gotta go practice now...



ps. I went snowboarding today, wohoo! :bounce:

 

[The Dark Elf]

Thanks guys, Sorze, hope it was helpful. I really do recommend some of Boris' books. I've lost mine somewhere (prolly my dad took them, dirty bastard lol) He goes into a lot of detail about skin tones in the Art of Boris Vallajo. I think it was called that. It also contains a step by step of a Chrome figure, a rock chick and his painting he did for National Lampoons European Vacation (or one of the vacations) It's all traditional, not a computer in sight, no undo buttons, no clone brushes, just oil paint and canvas so there's no padding with explaining how to use UI's, its just good decent information.

 

[Sorze]

Thanks again for the help, I'm loving it (bleh, commercial tag-line...).

I might check into Boris Vallejo sometime, only I'm a poor teenager, so buying a book might not happen...

I can hardly imagine painting without an undo button! Pretty much every other click I do is ctrl+z (binded to my graphire 3 of course :thumbs: )!

I've tried painting for real only once (seriousely, not back in kindergarten etc....), and it was kind of hard. My dad took me out to this bridge spanning over a river, where we spent some hours painting (my dad's pretty good with oil), so at least I've tried


I spent some more time on my shading-practice-guy, so clickyclicky for the new picciepiccie.. Don't worry about the hair, I have a good tutorial for that I'm going to check out. I'm not going to start badgering you about all things painting (yet)...

I think it looks better now... :bounce: (look at it fullsize)

tips & tricks are always welcome!

 

[The Dark Elf]

Yep it does look a lot better. nice one still need to work on the faint hinting of other colors though, but its certainly improved a lot. Excellent.

-

I'm not much a fan of oil painting, well I like the look of it, but I don't like using oils. They take too long to dry and because I prefer Acrylics, I end up often with muddy colors if I use oils

 

[Sorze]

Thanks man! Kudos to you for that, actually..
And hehe, yeah it's not exactly a masterpiece of subtlety(sp?)...

(I hate that damn Michael Jackson nose!! Thank god proportions weren't the important thing in this piece!)



About oil: Yeah, whenever my dad's painted something new, I'm checking it out (even like 4 days after) and he starts panicking I'm going to touch it, since it's not dry...



PM

 

[The Dark Elf]

Yeah oil is terrible for drying (as in it basically never does, not fully) I know there is stuff out there to speed the drying up but it can harm the picture, and takes away what oil is about, but I'm sure your dad has said that before too. A lot of oil painters don't like using it. Oil also stinks to high heaven and is a bitch to clean, so since I also use airbrushes a lot it would be murder to even consider oil. I prefer watered down acrylic for the airbrush. So long as I'm careful, its not too bad to clean. Though since I haven't used the airbrushes in a long while, I'm betting they'll still need a good clean just cause of not being used for so long. Been having too much fun using a tablet instead so yeah

 

[craig]

Cheers guys. It ain't great but it does show how to build up fleshy tones in a few minutes

Craig, Photoshop, which I use for the quick sketching, I use painter for the paintings and time consuming work. Default brushes and default colors (one of the pantone sets)

The problem I've always had with drawing or painting on the pc is that in programs like photoshop colours arent designed to blend together, rather just to overlap oneanother. is there a way to alter this so the colours are more mallable, like in a real painting?

 

[Sorze]

Well, what I usually do is just change opacity to make them not stand out so much.
But I just recently (yesterday!! :rolling: I'm so stupid!) realized you can change modes on your brushtool as well..
"Soft light" is pretty good I think, but I've just recently started using them, so I can't tell you which is best. Just experiment!

Also I just came to grips with the airbrush.... Hasn't worked for me before, dunno why..



EDIT: I'm not sure if this is what you're after, but it's a bit different than the "normal" setting atleast.