[Bibbit]

I desperately want to do portraits, as lifelike as possible, but I just can't get skin down. If anyone could provide assistance, I would be very greatful. I know I have other problems too, btw, but I feel like the skin is where I need to improve most, and first.



Reference


I am sorry the quality of my pic is not that great, but when I turned it into a jpg, that happened, and I have no idea who to make it better. And I know he doesn't share much of a likeness, but as I said, that's not my main concern. I just want to get better.

Thanks.

[jr]

ok bib... if you want it to look realistic, first get the drawing correct. if proportions are your problem, draw some boxes like a graph and map it all out.
as for the skin, our brains will make something look like skin as long as the tones are right. if you have good eyes, nose and mouth, and the tone on the face is right, it'll look like skin, even if he has blue skin. is this on photoshop?

[Steven Stahlberg]

Yes, I agree that you have more training with drawing on real paper to do, but to adress your question:
you could color-pick a spot in the middle of Kevin's forehead, create a new layer and put it under your drawing. Fill up all the skin area with this picked color. Pick one of the almost-blacks, the deep red-browns - fill in all the shadow areas of the skin. Pick a color from the highlight over his left eyebrow and block in the highlights. This blocking-in takes practise, you must learn to see where each color goes.
When you've done that, you start smearing and blurring some of the edges between the 3 colors, this will give you intermediate colors that you can pick and paint more details with.

Of course it would be much better practise if you could do this without color-picking, try that too. Perhaps if you start with darkening the background and hair you'll have a better chance of getting the skin tone right.

I hope you can see, if you look and compare again, that your painted skin is just off-white, some pink, some yellow, some gray, while Kevin's real skin colors in this photo are mostly a very deep orange-brown to brick-red (not a good photo when it comes to the skin-color, IMO).

[geoman2k]

just linked this in another post

seegmiller.com

look in the tutorials section. there is a great section about skin.

[lildragon]

actually here's the proper link http://www.seegmiller-art.com and the direct link http://www.seegmiller-art.com/tutorial.htm

keep at it until you feel like you're going blind, study forms and shapes and just basically attack the paper, pencils have erasers and scrap paper is plentiful (well at least where I am :-p)

[Bibbit]

Thanks guys. I do agree that I need more paper time, and I work on that too. I don't think I have any real talent, but I like drawing, so I keep at it.

I am developing a strategy to improve my technique and your comments are very helpful. One of my major weaknesses is knowing when to use different layers. I need to utilize them much more than I do.

Thanks.