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foothead
03-06-2007, 01:20 AM
hi all

I am student currently studying animation and working hard to improve my drawing skills to compliment my animation work. im very inexperienced when it comes to digital work and this is my first atempt at painting the human figure with my tablet and trying to achieve a believable skin tone. im fairly happy with the result but would love to have some input as to how i can smooth out the tones and give the skin a more realistic texture.

images/attach/jpg.gif

cheers
eishiya
03-06-2007, 12:40 PM
I'm guessing this is from reference? Pick a better reference. This seems to have flash lighting, as bad as it gets for practicing skin tones. Also look at people (or at the very least photos of people) in various environments, different weather, and so on. Skin looks differently in different kinds of lighting conditions.
It's difficult to pull off realistic skin with flat lighting like this. Doable of course, but even if you get it photorealistic, it'll suffer from the same effects as photos lighted with flash do when compared to properly lit photos xP It'll look flat and bland.

Another thing is texture. Wrinkles, pores, and so on. I'm no pro on pores (slickgreekgeo is the expert here xP), but in general if you take a small round brush, set scattering to a high-ish value, and a little size jitter, and opacity on Pen Pressure, it might help. Just use both light and dark colors with this brush (multiple passes, low opacity), you might get something nice. Of course this is if you use Photoshop. I'm not experienced with other programs, but if I remember correctly, Painter 7, IX.5 and X all have something like that brush already. Wrinkles I usually paint with a small boring old brush with Opacity on Pen Pressure, and I use a slightly darker, more saturated version of the surrounding colors. You have to make sure you place wrinkles where they should be however, and an appropriate amount for the type of character/person you're painting.

Also, your colors aren't blended well. I recommend taking a speckled brush and smudging around with it lightly. Also, add some different colors in there. Red, purple, green... in light quantities, they can really add life to a skin tone. The trick is to place them in areas where they can highlight other colors, so purple should be near the yellower areas, and you can place some red near the green parts. This won't work so well with your current lighting, however. Usually I'd put a little green and purple in shadows, but there are barely any here.
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03-06-2007, 12:40 PM
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