Painting skin tones

SyaPed

Everyone always says you need to have skin tone variations when you paint flesh. Subtle blues, red, greens 'n stuff. But how do you know where to put these colors? Do you just chuck them anywhere you think they look good? Or are there anatomical reasons for putting colors in certain places?

I'm struggling a bit painting flesh and would appreciate any help on this. Feel free to give any other tips on painting skin too.

Thanks!

Rick Stirling

There are!

Blood flow, skin thickness, skin age, diet, hair all come into play. Then the scene lighting will affect things - you shouldn't need to paint light information into the image, but you may have to. In the olden days, when I were a lad, people used to paint light colours into their textures - blue from above and brown from below to simulate reflected environment light.

A good technique is to take some colour photos from the web and increase the saturation. That way it becomes more obvious where skin tones change.

There was a technique of creatnga new PS layer, and in each channel rendering clouds and clumped grain. This created a random colour shift image that you could then apply to you skin on a VERY low opacity to break it up a little.

Fuse

Steve Schulze

Ooh, handy reference.

Tah Fuse.

gauss

quite. image saved!

thnom

[ QUOTE ]
There was a technique of creatnga new PS layer, and in each channel rendering clouds and clumped grain. This created a random colour shift image that you could then apply to you skin on a VERY low opacity to break it up a little.

[/ QUOTE ]

http://www.poopinmymouth.com/process/character_tutorial/character_process_page_5.htm

Harls tecnique I believe - poop's tut

SyaPed

Very handy Fuse, thanks

And thanks for the link thnom, looks like a useful technique

Zeldrik

A nice basic rule to follow for a generic white male face is to have yellow tones for the forehead as the skin is closer to the skull there, reddish pinkish tones around the cheeks and nose as there is a lot more blood under the skin due to more flesh and finally desaturated greenish/purple tones around the jaw and chin to simulate a 5 O'clock shadow.
Those 3 bands will help break the face up greatly and when used subtly can add some realism. Also if you are feeling adventurous try adding some purple tones around the eyes, careful though if it isn’t subtle enough the face will look like it has 2 black eyes.

hawken

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
There was a technique of creatnga new PS layer, and in each channel rendering clouds and clumped grain. This created a random colour shift image that you could then apply to you skin on a VERY low opacity to break it up a little.

[/ QUOTE ]

http://www.poopinmymouth.com/process/character_tutorial/character_process_page_5.htm

Harls tecnique I believe - poop's tut

[/ QUOTE ]

looks too random, I'd avoid this if possible, pior has the best advice