[LoTekK]

i had some rather broad questions about painting skintones... i've had a couple of decent attempts that actually look kinda like skin (color-wise, anyways), but this is normally after a quick process in photoshop:

1. duplicate the layer
2. high gaussian blur the top layer
3. set the top (blurred) layer to "overlay" or "soft light"

before this process, however, the skin colors end up looking washed out... come to think of it, most of the colors look washed out until i start layering...

so the basic question is, how saturated are the colors most of you use when painting skin? very low saturation, halfway up, or high? just wondering, coz i don't seem to be getting the results i'm shooting for...

in addition, i'm having trouble with shadows and highlights on skin... i have a color chart from the internet for skin, but i've only been marginally effective at using blues, purples, yellows, etc for highlights and shadows... any comments?

thanks,
teck

[Svanur]

It would be great to get an answer to that question.

I am having problem with skintones myself, they always end up to be a bit too comical in values.

[LoTekK]

fergot to add... the skintone article i look at is the one by quaternius at http://www.geocities.com/cubic44/skin1.html

for some reason, to add onto my skintone troubles, the last pic i did i tried using more saturated colors, but like Svanur, ended up with a very comicbook-ish color job...

[LoTekK]

y'know, i don't know why i never saw this before... when i paint in painter classic, skintones and values all seem to fall into place nicely (if a little dull and washed out), but turn out really awful when i paint in PSP... anyways, after using the color picker on other people's paintings and then re-analyzing quaternius' chart, i finally realized the main fundamental i was missing in trying to pick out colors before...

VALUE!!!

all of a sudden (and i don't understand why it didn't occur to me before) i realized how quaternius' chart was organized... since before this i generally just pick and choose a color without regard for value, everything just looks wrong (especially in psp)... before this i was always working with RGB, without thinking of HSV...

suddenly everything i've learned through discussions, forums, theory, is all falling into place...

(and yes, i do realize i'm an idiot... it's taken me about half a year to finally figure this out... )

so anyways, just thought i'd share my revelation in case anyone else is interested and still stumped...

[LoTekK]

whoops, i still have one question, though:

i'm still somewhat stumped as to how to work in things like greens, blues, etc, into shadows... most of the time my skintones have ended up looking quite scary as a result of my forays into those kinds of shadows...

[Jin]

Take a look at Don Seegmiller's Traditional Art Gallery. Notice the shadow colors under the chin, and how the colors are often reflected up from the clothing or surrounding color.
http://www.seegmiller-art.com/traditionalart.htm

Click the image on this page to go to the gallery, then click each of the thumbnails to see the larger view. Don's use of color in shadows is subtle but if you look at each of his paintings, you'll begin to see the differences and how color is used in his shadows.