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Hi everyone, today  I will be going through some tips that helped me and my process to achieve a more vibrant and interesting skin painting. Let’s get started!

Before we start painting, lets go over my favorite tip for a better result when belnding your colors, and this is a recent feature added to clip studio paint since 2.0, which is perceptual color mixing.\

Have you found that a lot of your painting came out dull and muddy, and you have no idea why? If you try to mix colors in most digital drawing programs, you will notice that color mixes differently compared to, say, mixing paints on a palette. Yellow and blue doesn't really make a true green like it should. But with perceptual mixing turned on, you can see that the mixing result is more vibrant in chroma.

Perceptual Color Mixing

It is subtle in colors closer in hue ranges, but it will bring out the colors a bit better.

If you have clip studio ver. 2.0 and onwards, you can find this setting by clicking at this wrench icon.

It should open up a pop up screen, and go to Ink, and mixing mode. Click on perceptual.

 

 

You can set this mixing mode on any of your brushes. But if you don’t have this version of the software, you can still replicate the effect by adding a color of higher saturation in between the two colors you are mixing. This effect looks especially great for skin on the borders of light, mimicking a stylized subsurface scattering effect, like so.

Underpainting

What I like to do first is to do what is called an underpainting. This method is commonly used in traditional art.  the color you pick as your underpainting can be any color. Most skin tones will work with a warm color underpainting (like orange or yellows)

 

but your choice of color can also be determined by the setting of your character, or overall vibe you’d like to go for. Example, a pink underpainting for a valentine themed illustration, or a blue underpainting for a character is set in a mostly blue environment.

On top of my underpainting, i will do my hue variation.

You probably have heard of the classic 3 tone for the face. This is more prevalent in lighter skin tones, but darker skin tones will also benefit from the hue variety. The simplest version is :

        + ayellowishtonefortheforeheadareaduetolackofsurfacecapillaries,

         + warmreddishforthecentralareaofthefaceduetomoresurfacecapillaries

   + andacoldtoneforthejawarea

This can be further refined as the yellow tones go down the nose bridge, the cold tones around the brow bone and under eyes, and the reddish tones around the lips.

Right now it’s looking a bit wild-

What I do next is make a new layer on lower opacity and paint over the underpainting with the skin tone color. What that does is making all of those colors and hues into a more cohesive color palette, and make the hue variation more subtle. Adjust the layer as needed with clip studio’s color adjustment sliders, like saturation and contrast.

From that on, it’s just rendering the face while being sure to keep that hue variation visible.

 

warm light tend to have colder shadows, and colder light tens to have warmer shadows and bounce light, so shade acordingly.

 

I use brushes with harder edges to carve out deep shadows before blending it out with a soft brush. Then with the fill lasso tool,i like to add small, hard highlights on points like the nose, lips, cheekbones and eyes.\

Don’t overdo this step! We want the skin to look like skin still, and not plastic.

i personally feel brush strokes makes the painting much less monotone, and more “human”!adding imperfections like

• blemishes

• scars

• wrinkles

• darkundereyes

also helps to add that layer of detail and complexity in your painting. Have fun creating!