[Jabberwocky]

I know I've seen this before but I can't find it. Can someone give me a link or two to a site where I can get some desent flesh colours for adobe ps and illustrator.

I tried using a picture of a person, but the colours I get are too pinkish.

[GPoodle]

Theres a few default Swatches that are different skin tones.

[Bishop_Six]

http://www.seegmiller-art.com/skin.htm There's one. There was another that I had bookmarked which might be the one you were looking for, but the artist's website was hosted by critical depth which isn't hosting anymore.

[V Shane]

Thats a pretty tough question, since any enviroment is going to influence the color of the skin, and the colors next to it. You might find when you find the "right" color, then you put a deep color next it, it will suddenly be too "pink" or red or yellow..etc..

Hope you find a standard, if there is one.

Shane

[Gothic Gerbil]

Basically anything can be a "flesh colour" it is more how you shade and highlight it. Get the correct lighting, the correct understructure, and finally the correct texturing and you could have a convincing blue flesh colour or red flesh colour or even green flesh colour.

[cybertoker2001]

Here is a pallet I use for base flesh tones.
There industry standerd.


Hope this helps.

CT2001

[cybertoker2001]

Oops, didn't show........

Try this~


CT2001

[EDIT:] I'm a moron the first one showed fine. =/. Would the mods please delet this here post. CT2001

[ October 08, 2001: Message edited by: cybertoker2001 ]

[Jabberwocky]

Well I tried the odd colour like the blue... but it didn't look right. I just need flesh colour... really doesn't matter of what race or region... most of them would be nice, but trust me when I used the colour off of the picture it was pink... not like just one shade all pink. looked really odd to me. Oh well.

Bishop_Six: thanks that'll really help.

[Rohan]

Hey thanx for the skin Tones cyber!

[Jabberwocky]

I just need the colours... I'm pretty good at shading and high lighting. I learned from the best (umm.... here). I just need the basic skin tones cause I can't seem to find them and colours I put together just look wrong. One pick the guy looked more like Elmo! (little too much red I think).

[balistic]

What Jason said.

How can you even define what color something usually is? A surface's color is conditional, and depends largely on its lighting situation . . . even skin's perceived /value/ is highly variable.

I'm a fairly pale white dude, but looking at my feet in the shower, contrasted with the porcelain tub, I'm positively Jamaican (jah mon).

And I don't even keep my tub that clean.

Skin lit only by the sky is going to be very blue . . . skin lit by candle light will be warm in hue . . . as long as the skin color is deliberately connected to the lighting and evironment that surrounds it, it will look correct.

Green might not be considered a "fleshtone", but if you're painting someone sitting on grass, there's going to be green in their skin.

Think about light first, surfaces second . . . consistent, readable lighting is the glue that holds a great painting together.

I realize that's not what you asked for . . . but I think its something that needs to be understood if one wants to make progress in learning to see objectively.

[ October 09, 2001: Message edited by: balistic ]

[Jason Manley]

you will only get the colors from observation.

there is no shortcut...even if you do look for one.

that little chart up there...yikes.


jason

[ October 09, 2001: Message edited by: Jason Manley ]

[Jason Manley]

I agree....it all comes down to personal observation.

paint from life as much as you can. Photos will not help you with these kinds of questions.

jason

[Jason Manley]

hey..nice topic...

I would stay away from that pallete above...nobody is really those colors...look at a bandaid..does it ever match your skin? is flesh color really a color?

Flesh has a full spectrum of colors that shift and change as light changes.

where are your greens?..your blues? your blue green greys? your yellow grays? your violets? Your golds???

WHERE IS YOUR VALUE RANGE in that pallete?

Where is your temperature range in that palette?

Where is your saturation/intensity range in that palette???

take a look at artrenewal.org at all the fine figure paintings and see what other artists are using.

you can use a variety of palletes...but nobody is pink with orange shadows or bandaid color.

jason manley

Here is how you do it...look at yourself in the mirror...paint from life...paint your friends...paint people.

the only way to master flesh tones is to paint from life. if you dont paint from life you are stuck thinking what flesh tones are rather than knowing what flesh tones are based on your own observation.

observe.

[Jabberwocky]

Okay I got you guys and thanks, but what I'm looking for is just a basic colours to start the outline basic shape stuff with... not shading or anything like that... just the undercolour that I can use a a base.

Like how I see your guys' beginning drawings you use one basic colour to get the shape and then work off that with detail.

[Jason Manley]

the undercolor depends on what your lighting system is like.

if I am using a cool lighting system...like a moody stormfilled day...then I would push the undercolor toward the warm side of the spectrum...that way when I paint my cooler grayer lights on top of it there is a range of color and thus luminosity to the piece.

if I am pushing a warm light then the undertone will be more toward a cooler greener or bluer gray...

if it is a nuetral light then my undertone will simply be toward the opposite color of what my light color is.

a good trick to use is to use a color for your shadows that is the complimentary color and thus opposite color to the light.

do you know your color compliments? what are they?


here is what I want you to do....are you ready for this?

go to www.artrenewal.org and make a complete copy of a painting or part of a painting that has lighting like what you are wanting.

when you are done with that I will answer more of your questions.

if you arent going to look for yourself then I cannot help you....

try my suggestion...you wont be disappointed.

I will give you other excersizes as needed..if you are up to the challenge.


jason

[eye]

i've always had a problem with skin tones, i can never seem to find the right one. and shadows too, i know where to put them on a person depending on where the light is coming from, but i don't know how!
i've actulay been trying to get a skin tone for the last week or so... ugg

[balistic]

This isn't exactly a masterpiece, but I've done some of what Jason is talking about in my recent self-portrait:



If you look closely at the neck, you can see my green underpainting between the strokes of orange . . . that warm/cool interplay is one of the things that can make your subject look alive, instead of zombie-ish. Skin isn't so much a surface as it is a translucent volume . . . light penetrates it and bounces around, taking on the colors of blood, veins, and even cartilidge. There's a whole rainbow of potential coloration in human flesh just waiting for you to spot it and pull it out.

Ask for a cup of sugar at Sijun, and we bake you the whole damned cake

[Jason Manley]

nice job with the portrait...thought I think you should pay attention to one particular thing....your piece..while having other colors other than orange...still feels like it is mostly warm...almost monochromatic.

it feels monochromatic and looks it even though it is not because you have not seperated the temperature difference between light and shadow.

next time you are outside or inside or just plain bored..notice what colors seem to be in the shadows...look and see if you see color differences between the large mass of light and the large mass of shadow.

no matter what time of day and what light condition you will see color difference between the light masses and shadow masses....of course reflective color and fill lights can influence this theory...

in the portrait above I can see that you are playing with color variation...that is great..keep it up...but also try to vary the color feel of you light vs shadow masses in the same way...

one last thing....in any given area of value there will be a spectrum of subtle color.

can anyone explain this better?

jason

[balistic]

Thanks for the critique Jason. I do realize its fairly monochromatic, and that I should've pushed the cools more . . . though in my beige-walled apartment, with brown carpet and incandescent lighting, they can be hard to spot.

I was better at this when I was working with acrylics from an all primary palette . . . I think the Photo-Paint/Painter color gizmo almost gives me too much to fiddle with, and leads to spectral homogeny. I should maybe try working from a prepared palette and see what happens.

[dr . bang]

here's a good link i found
http://www.geocities.com/~jlhagan/lessons/analysis.htm

[cybertoker2001]

Yikes!
I wasn't trying to say use the pallet as a guide or anything. It's just something I though would help out a beginer. I haven't used that pallet for almost a year. Of course add diferent tones and values of your own.
I was just trying to help, I wasn't saying "This is the be all and end all of all skin colors. Use ONLY this."
BTW~ I've only found this useful for comic coloring, not painting.

Anyway.......

Take it easy,
CT2001

[KiNgStiNg]

What I have noticed with realistic fleshtones....is also do a layer of dark blue on about 8% opacity. And don't get *black* with shading

[ October 12, 2001: Message edited by: KiNgStiNg ]

[Frost]

I'm with what Shane_of_IBS said above. Not only are there different skin tones from different regions, races, backgrounds, lifestyles, etc, but there is lighting to consider, diffuse lighting, specular, etc., not to mention that skin is not a uniform color. There is no single one color palette that will match your needs, unless you're rendering some saturday morning cartoon with color reference sheets and no shading.

[Muzman]

I know what the guy means. While all of the above is true there are a myriad of occasions when just putting *something* down makes you feel better, helps you move forwards etc.
I would offer spooge-esque advice and say put anything in there to remind yourself just how arbitrary the whole business is. But the comfort derived from a "standard" is often hard to beat. So long as all the pitfalls (ie. all the stuff above) are remebered there's no harm in it.
Still, from that I'd have to say you've got them all there already, Jabberwocky. In the basic Pshop swatches there are a few colour groups. Particularly the Red-y brown and "cardboard tan" parts. It doesn't seem like much, but it should be enough really. If that doesn't float your boat, get hold of some good photos and pick colours out of them. Make your own comfortable base.