I got into art again.
Something that really annoyed me was that I just couldn't figure out how artists got the skin to look the way that they do.
I don't have all of the answers! But I do have a workflow that can get you some pretty nice results!
Credit to Fungzau on YouTube for making the videos that taught me this.
This method works with anime style or semi-realistic styles, but you will need to change how exactly certain steps work.
The basis of the system can be used on very cartoon-like characters!
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| Line art from IbisPaint X tracing materials |
But when you try to apply all of your knowledge about the planes of a face onto a chibi drawing, things can get concerning pretty fast!
You can use the simplified version of this process on more realistic drawings, though!
To simplify, I'll just be doing a nose. It's very tempting to go hard and draw a realistic nose! But we want to go for a style that isn't my own right now.
I sketched out a little nose and added eyebrows for context.
So! The first step is to use any brush you like that will lay down a solid color. If your line art allows for it, you can even use the paint bucket!
I made one of the lines a little thinner. Now, the hard part isn't actually figuring out how to apply the colors. It's to know where to apply the colors. For this, your best bet is to find a reference image with very strong shadows. After a while, you'll be able to understand where shadows usually go! But it's always great to have a reference.
You'll want four colors for this process. Skin, skin shadow, blush overlay, and highlight. The highlight will be on an add layer so it can be almost anything. The blush color is on overlay, so it is also less important you find the perfect color. If you are so inclined, you can do the skin shadows on a multiply layer so that you only need the skin, the blush, and the highlight.
Using an airbrush brush, I'm putting in the general shadows.
Now that we have the general shadows, we can go in with the hard shadows.
Now! This will sound crazy, but you're allowed to use the same color for the airbrush shadows and the hard shadows. This feels very wrong. But it adds to the specific style that I just was unable to grasp. It's not going for the full chromatic range. You add that later with really neat lighting effects. So let's add those hard shadows!
This looks scary! But there's a saying - if you're in the middle of doing art and it looks bad, you're doing it right!
I'm skittish about mistakes and hate flattening layers, but that's the next step. Flatten the shading down so that you can use a low opacity brush to blend the skin out. You can eyedrop the colors as you're working to get the in between shades.
I switched between watercolor brushes (water and opaque) to blend everything out.
The tonal variation is really low and I couldn't get the nose as detailed as I would like... But that's part of the style!
With an overlay layer, let's airbrush on some blush. It's a great idea to do the blush on a separate layer so that you can adjust the color using a hue, brightness, and saturation filter. Using overlay allows the color to not block out the shading below it. You can try with other layer types!
Now, we can add highlights. Using an airbrush on an add layer, we can add all of the highlights we want.
And there!
We can add some eyes and a little more shadow on a multiply layer...
And there we go!
I'm not the best at following instructions, so what I made isn't exactly what's intended. But if you've ever tried realistically painting skin, then you know that this is a lot easier than all of that!
Please let me know if anyone found this helpful :)
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