PART 6! Summary! And more! (Patreon)

Just a quick summary of all the post this month!

1. Make sure you have a variety of colors on your skin! Not just the base color!

2 Blend!

3. Add a skin tone! 

4. Add shadows to give an illusion that there are deep parts on your painting that are not hit by the light source.

5. Don't forget the highlights!! Gives your painting life! If shadows are for deep parts, highlights give the illusion that there are high parts of the face that are directly hit by the light source.

More tips!!!! 

6. Skin variation! don't forget adding textures, beauty marks, freckles and all skin variations!

7. if you're doing stylized portraits, don't be scared to exaggerate or saturate the colors! make it brighter! replace black shadows with saturated colors!

8. make sure that the additional colors you put on your portraits still connects with the surrounding colors, to make the whole painting more cohesive. (i'll elaborate on color consistencies next time when i talk about color theories and how i pick colors!)

9. if you're using a reference and you're having a hard time finding out where to place shadows, highlights and all the color values, the fastest trick is to turn your reference picture into black and white!

here it's easier to see the values and how the skin changes and what parts hits the light!! Sometimes all the colors are distracting so starting with black, white and grays is helpful!

Then!! If you want to add color to that, add another layer and turn it into Linear Burn mode! You just slap some colors there without thinking of the shadows and highlights!! Downside to this is that the colors are super saturated and darker than the original color so you kinda have to guess a bit!! But it's a good practice!!! 

10. Remember that skin should be painted in a more complex way than just putting a flat base skin color. There are skin textures, skin tones, skin color variations that you need to look out for to make your painting realistic and to give it more life. The colors, values, the tones, all of it also changes depending on the position of the light source.

I hope these tips give you more confidence in painting skin!

I'll post a portrait painting with only flat colors that you can use to practice!  Stay tunedddd!!!