[nailpipe]

I have a difficulty coloring shade and highlights of human skin in Photoshop. I've looked at a few tutorials such as those by Fred Flick Stone and Prometheus, but what i need help with are the steps or process by which I should paint the various tones. I've tried drawing a gradient of colors from darkes to light and color picking from that and ive tried using a brush on the color dodge mode, but it seems like there should be a better way, color mixing is the problem i guess, the gradiation from dark to light always seems to just desaturate and look crappy. If you have any tips or techniques i would very much appreciate it.

[Capt. Fred]

Probably not the right thing to say, but I'd have thought that if you make studies from life, in the mirror, whatever, and paint all the various hues and values you see, with practice there's nothing stopping you achieving realism. just study and practice.

i once read a quote that said something to the effect of 'never blend from one value into another, make a new value for each step of the graduation'. Velazquez or sargent or someone said that i think.

[sketchling]

If you use a brush in photoshop that ranges in size and opacity according to the pressure of the pen, its great for mixing tones together. just put basic colours down and then pick them up with alt-click and blend/mix them.

as for the texture of the skin, try a roughening up the existing tones and painting many many small overlapping circles over the tones you made, using values from within the tones. With enough overlapping and alteration, you zoom out and it looks like skin... obviously with a bit of work and more thought than just circles, but the basics are there.

This is more geared towards texturing than painting pictures, but it should be of some use.
-K
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