Cybernaut

Hey guys, I wanted to share with you how I usually go about painting skin and other things, so I whipped up this quick tutorial!

Step 1: Start with a quick sketch focusing on the silhouette of whatever you're drawing. Contour and the separation of your light and shadow groups should be on your mind. Keep it simple and draw with straight lines.

Step 2: Block in your drawing with a blocky square brush or round brush. This is the same technique oil painters use when starting their paintings. Skin contains a lot of different hues, so I like to use a square brush with color jitter for this step. Be careful to keep the values (brightness) of your areas in light and dark separate! Think big simple shapes for now!

Step 3. Blend out all those hard edges while observing how those shadows transition around the form. If the light is hitting a soft curving form like a tube (or palm of a hand), the edge of that shadow will be soft. If the light is hitting a hard bony object like a finger, then that edge shadow might be a little harder (i.e. blend less). If you're blending over a base with a lot of texture like myself, try to follow the direction of the form with your pen strokes. Think of it like how a river flows into the ocean: just like the water travels down the craggy peaks of a mountain, through the gullies, and winds through the floodplains into the sea, light also flows around the fatpads, skin folds, and bony surfaces of the body.

Step 4. After blending finish up your piece with some juicy highlights and by darkening your core shadows. You might have to go back in a tighten up some edges with a hard brush or adding in some reflected light with a softer brush. This step can be the most enjoyable and the most frustrating so render away at your own discretion, but remember that keep some of the detail lost for a more realistic look!