In this tutorial, I will teach you to paint skin in anime style!

Painting skin, such as colouring, choosing tones and make up is important to making your portraits or other character art look lively, but doing it right can be difficult. I will show you my best tips in painting soft and natural anime-style skin! Let's start with some basics before we move on to the step-by-step tutorial and advanced skills.

As seen in the picture below, choosing colours is key to painting skin. Pay attention to what colours are used in the 'correct' example. They are all warm and saturated, even the shadows. It is a common misconception that shadows are grey, but actually they have colour! You should use coloured shadows instead of grey shading to give it more life and colour. Try to avoid using black or grey as it will make the skin look dull and lifeless. Instead, pick warm tones with some saturation, such as brown, peach, or orange. We will talk more in depth about the colours in each step.

Besides colour choice, what kind of colouring technique you use also greatly affects the look of your artwork. Some people will try to use airbrush to make the skin look soft, but it will look smudged and dull if you simply apply a large airbrush on top of your base colour! The problem is that both edges are soft and you cannot control the blended part fully. In the example below, you can see that 'correct' example looks blended and soft, yet not smudged. You should first apply cell shading, then use the default blending brush in Clip Studio Paint (small size) to softly blend the hard edge instead of the whole shading area being soft. Good colour choice also makes the skin have a different kind of feeling. Dark, dull colours will give a very harsh look. While this example is on the face, these rules apply to all parts of skin colouring!

Next, let's talk about blending. Too much or too little blending is bad. If it is blended too much, the result will look smudged and flat as the shading is not clearly obvious. If it is blended too little, the lines will feel harsh, but skin is supposed to be soft. As seen in the example below, a 'gradient' shading will not look clear enough. You should use a small blending brush to blend only the edge of the shading where it meets the normal colour. You should also use a second darker shadow colour to give your art more depth, although this is optional. Refer to the example below!

Here are some examples for more skin tones. The rules for shading techniques and colour choices apply to all skin tones. As seen in the example below, choose warm colours for a lively feeling and apply the aforementioned shading techniques. The difference in the two examples is very big despite the only change being the blending and colour choice! If you are not sure of what colours to use, try to use reference photos online or look at makeup palettes that give you an idea of usual skin colours. There are many useful references online, so make use of it!

Now that we have covered the basics, let's try it out using a sample. I have prepared a line art to colour. As we are focusing on the skin today, other parts have already been coloured. Firstly, use the bucket tool to fill in all the 'skin' areas with your base colour.

 

Note that while this example is for the bust-up area, it is similar for other parts of the body. I chose to show the bust-up part as the face is complicated to colour due to many features. The canvas I am using is 1000x1000 pt at 144 dpi for this example.

Now, we will do the shading. I chose a warm, peach tone for this. Using the default G-pen or another brush you prefer, draw the line of where you want the shading to go. In this example, the light source is straight-facing the face directly, so the shadows should be to the side. I will draw the shading 'guide lines' on the edges of the face and shoulders, under the face at the neck, to the side of the nose, around the eyes, etc. Since things like the head will cast a shadow on something beneath it (the neck), we put shadows there. Place the shadows where you would on any object and please pay attention to the light source you chose! Think about where the light comes from and where shadows would be cast. :D

Now, fill in the areas with your shading colour based on the guidelines we have drawn, as seen in the picture below.

If you are aiming for a clean, simple, cell-shaded art style, and you are happy with how it looks here, then it is finished. This is mainly for projects like animation or comics. If not, please continue with the next steps.

 

Next, using a small blending brush, we will blend the shading to make it softer. I used the default blending brush in Clip Studio Paint but you may use another one that you prefer. In this example I used a 25 pt size. You can adjust this according to your canvas size. Please refer to the previous tips about blending. Blend it until you think it looks soft enough to your own liking.

Now, we are going to add a second, darker shading in the parts that should have most shadows, such as directly beneath the neck. This gives the feeling of depth.

 

You can choose a colour of your own preference, but I chose a greyish-purple to give cool shadows. If you want warm shadows, choose a darker shade of your first shading colour. If you want cool colour shadows, use purple or blue tones, but not black or grey. Elsewise, the colour will look dull, so be careful here! Refer to the example on where I applied the shadows.

If you do not want your character to have make up or blush, you can stop here and continue to the next part of the tutorial :D

 

Now, to apply blush or other makeup colour such as lipstick and eyeshadow, we will use a large airbrush. Please do this on a new layer so you can adjust the opacity if needed. Firstly, lasso the part you would like to place the 'make up'. Such as the cheeks or eyelids. This will keep the colour from going somewhere unwanted, like onto the eyeball or hair parts!For the makeup, you can choose any colour you like. I wanted to go for a natural-looking look so I chose a light peach pink. After airbrushing onto the cheeks/eyelids/etc, remove the lasso.

 

You can use a light colour to draw highlights if you would like to. Draw it in the shape of a small dot or a 'wavy' line. I put highlights on the cheekbones, eyelids, lips and side of the nose. I will go into the details of how to paint makeup without it looking weird later in this tutorial, in the 'makeup' section!

Finally, I will put colour on the line art. Set the line art layer to 'lock transparent pixels'. This allows you to only add colour on the lines. Use any brush of your choice to colour a brighter colour onto the edges of eyelashes, lips and other lines on the skin that you would like. This adds some colour onto the line art, which makes your art more lively!

Now we have completed colouring the skin in an anime style! Now, let's put the focus on makeup. When painting skin, how does makeup look? How can we paint bright and dark colours of makeup without it looking strange and unnatural? I think this is a very important part of learning to paint skin, so let's begin!

Is there a way to paint bright coloured makeup like shocking pink or dark red and still make it natural? I will show you the step-by-step tutorial on painting makeup in an anime style! The end result should look something like the picture below :D

Firstly, colour the skin as we have learned before. Now, choose the colour you want for the makeup. You can choose any colour that you think looks good! I have chosen bright pinkish-red and another lighter pink. Using the default G-pen in Clip Studio Paint, apply a line of colour above the eyelids for eyeshadow, and around the mouth (but not the full lips) for lip makeup as seen in the picture below! I also applied a little under the eyes.

Next, in the same way that we would blend the shading outwards, blend the makeup. Using the default blending brush at a small size, I blended the eyeshadow up the eyelids and the lipstick out to reach the whole lips. Blend it until you think it looks soft. If you wanted a second colour on the makeup, then lock the transparent pixels of the layer and colour over it with a soft airbrush. I added some lighter pink to part of the eye makeup.

 

Since I want the eyeline to be more visible, I traced over it in a darker brown. This makes the eyes pop out more.

Next, we will draw the eyelashes in the same colour we used for the eyeliner. I used the opaque watercolour brush at a small size (3 pt). Flick the lines outward in a soft curve. I will first draw some thicker eyelashes then add some small, thin ones. The eyelashes below the eye are smaller than the ones above the eye.

 

If you are having trouble drawing eyelashes, you can find a tutorial in Clip Studio Tips. I won't go into much detail as the main focus is the skin today :)

In the 'skin' painting part, we talked about painting blush using the lasso and airbrush. You can paint blush like this. Then add a small dot of a light colour on the cheekbones as a highlight.

Now, use a small brush to add highlights in a light colour. Draw a 'zigzag' shape for the eyelids. On the lips, draw small lines that go from the mouth to the lips, as you can see in the picture below. This makes the makeup look shiny. If you want a matte look, you can skip this step.

The makeup is complete! Now, let's talk about a few points of note before the tutorial ends!

 

The examples that I have shown here are mainly on the bust-up area of the human body. The method of shading other body parts are the same, by cell-shading, then blending, then adding highlights. However, you may be unsure of where to place the shading. Remember, you should place them where shadows are cast, depending on the light source. Reference photos will really help with this :D

 

In the artwork below done by me, you can see how the shading is placed to the opposite of the light. I am using characters in swim suits to show the example as we can see skin (that's today's focus!)

Another tip is that, when you are colouring skin under different lighting, you still need to keep it soft. For example, in a dark environment, instead of using harsh highlights, choose to use an airbrush or a softer brush. In the example, I used a light-pink airbrush set on the Add (Glow) mode for lighting.

Next, skin has texture and pores. In anime style, we usually paint the skin very soft, but if you would like to add texture, you can make use of the 'Perlin noise' filter in clip studio paint. I set the noise layer at multiply and turned down the opacity. Around 5% to 15% opacity will be enough to give slight texture to the skin. The example below demonstrates a noise filter at different opacity.

If you want to use the same noise filter as in the example, the download link is below.I recommend it as it is in pastel colours, which can also add atmosphere and tone to your art. It is a material from Clip Studio Assets. Another noise filter of your choice is also fine to use.

A final note is how your skin painting can change the age and look of the person. Using the same line art, I have coloured it to look old. The change is adding some more fine lines and making the skin more dull using the colour correction tools. This gives the art a grey undertone. I also airbrushed a greyish-brown around the eyes. This shows us that how you colour something can completely change the way it looks. Feel free to experiment with your colouring!

That's all for today's skin painting tutorial! I have touched upon some basics, colour choices, and makeup techniques. I hope you learned something here today :D

 

If you would like to see more of my art work, my instagram link is below! I also work on a webtoon sometimes for fun, so check it out if you are interested.