How to Paint Skin - My 6 Recent Techniques

Begin with the basics
I always start with a desaturated bright version of the skin, regardless of whether the skin tone is white or black. Then I use the same tone in a layer on top in multiply blending mode for the shadow. Depending on where the light source is, I define the position of the shadow. This is the straightforward approach which will come as no surprise if you have been paying attention. But how do we boost those colors to match the vibrancy of skin?

Shifting to balance and depth
This is about information and balance. You can split the painting in two ways, whether you want the information to be in the shadow section or where the light hits. I'll recommend you choose one of those and then make the other side less crowded with info, very serious and simple in order to ensure balance.

Defining what matters
Information in this sense can also mean saturation or amount of values. For skin color it's the slight variations of pink, red, orange, purple and blue that light shows beneath the skin. Values for skin can be the skin folds, the veins, scars, pores etc. Anything that can be shown with shadow or darker tones.

Deciding the focus
How to know which one should have more information? It's different for every artistic goal and subject but a good rule of thumb is to judge by "space". I often choose to add information like saturation and texture through values on the bigger space, whether the bigger space is illuminated (the bright spot) or if it's in the shadows (the dark spot).

For instance, imagine if a big part of your character is hit by light, making all that portion of the skin too bright. Desaturated or flat might be too boring to look at. Again, it depends on your goal, but generally, I like to have interesting information on big spaces of the skin.

Secrets to skin tones
For dark skin tones I like the base color to be middle tone, and since the shadow might be too dark for information I choose to keep that in small sizes. For highlights, I like to play with purple tones.

For bright skin tones I like the shadow to be saturated and the base very bright and desaturated, but not bright enough so the highlight still can be spotted.

The cherry on top
One last tip about edges. I always start defining the shadow silhouette with my hard edge brush "Limberto" but down the line I use my brush "Soft Shapes" or "Soft Texture Shapes" to erase some edges of the shadow. This is what creates this skin surface material, smooth with pores.

Make sure to check some of these process videos in which I spend a bit extra time painting skin:

Learning To Paint Simple Shadows & Draw Perspective – My Process Video and Brushes!

Learning To Paint Big Cats, Sea & Tomatoes – My Process Video and Brushes!

Tips on Painting: People, Objects and Environments

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Remember you can now pre-order my book Life in Every Sketch on the 3DTotal shop.

https://rebrand.ly/The-Art-of-RamonN90

Please let me know if you have any questions, I’ll be happy to help with art advice or book details.