skin paint

in this video you will learn how you can createsuch a soft looking skin with watercolors. you will learn how to mix your own skin tones,chose the right paper and which techniques you need, to work on delicate gradients likethese. >> laovaan: using watercolor to color skinis one of the harder subjects, especially if the skin should look realistic and clean. because with watercolor you can only go fromlight to dark, mistakes are hard to undo and we need to be certain of what we are goingto do. the key is to use the wet in wet techniqueat the right time, that is: when to work on wet paper when applying color.

but before we can do that, let’s have alook at the skin tones. mixing skin tones from scratch requires 4different components: red, ochre, brown and white. instead of ochre you can also go with yellow,but the key is to get the right mixing ratio. since there is no single skin tone, it isup to you. if the color seems too reddish, add more yellowand vice versa. use brown to darken it and white to lightenit. the benefit of mixing your own tones is thatyou are free to change even the tiniest nuances which makes it useful for any character youwant to color.

the disadvantage on the other hand is, thatit’s really hard to get the same tone every time, so you might also want to work witha fixed tone for skin. my favorite tone for this is naples yellowreddish. when you are using a fixed skin tone likethis, it’s a lot easier to focus on combining your tone with other colors for various typesof shading. you don’t have to mix your base tone againevery time you want to try out a new variation. it will also be a lot more consistent whenyou can always rely on the same base tone. an important aspect when mixing skin tonesand the matching shadows is to not limit yourself to only 2 or 3 different fleshtones.

depending on light situations you can addall colors to your basic skin tone to match with the overall scenery. a sunset would obviously require a differentpalette than a rainy day. giving our skin more variations than justbrown tones is important to give our image atmosphere. so i made a color wheel to give us a littleoverview. on the left i put the spectrum of fleshtoneswithout any other added color but brown. i chose a base tone, in my case naples yellowreddish, to use as an example for the rest of the diagram.

of course you can use any other color forthis. on the very right i used just the color itselfand dulled with black. in the middle i mixed all the other colorsin to get an overview of my possibilities. personally i really like the purple shadow,because it goes with a lot of different sceneries, adding more vividness to the skin. to pick the right colors for your drawingjust experiment, for example by practicing with using movies or photos as reference. a tip for darker tones: use an acrylic foundation. the color won’t lift off of the paper theway watercolor does and that makes it more

comfortable to paint shadows and highlightson top. you don’t have to worry about the whiteof the paper shimmering through while shading. last but not least the choice of paper willhave an impact on your painting. i recommend strong paper, because for thetechnique that i am going to show you we are going to push the colors around a lot. the texture of your paper will also have aneffect on the appearance of your painting. there is rough paper and there is paper withalmost no visible texture. let me tell you right away: both kinds ofpaper work, as long as they are strong enough, but they do have different benefits.

rough textured paper will make your picturemore grainy and your painting clearly identifiable as a work of watercolor. but it is also easier to hide tiny flaws,since they can merge with the texture. compared to that, on fine paper every stainor edge stays visible like on a plate and it’s very unforgiving. nevertheless, choosing paper that has no textureenables a more softly rendered and 3 dimensional look. it conceals the typical watercolor look completelyand makes it appear almost like digital art. before i start painting i look at my sketchor lineart and divide it into tiny pieces

in my head that will need individual attention. skin, lips, eyes, neck, hair, background etc. then i plan the order that i am going to workin. keep in mind, with watercolor you can onlywork light to dark. so start with the light areas. occasionally the face is covered by darkerhair. when that’s the case you can paint overthe lines with skin color without any regret, because it will be covered by the darker colorof the hair afterwards. so the order of this piece will be:skin of the face, lips, white of the eye,

eyes, eyebrows, neck, hair, background, beanieand clothes, hand. it won’t be that strict and i most probablywill jump around between the steps when i am not satisfied with details, but this isthe rough plan basically ;) with this painting i work with a digital referencei made previously. you can use the color wheel to help you choosethe right color. in my case i can find the base tone aroundthe orange/red spectrum, the darker ones seem more in the reddish brown area. first i wet the area of the face. normally i use plain water for it, but ifthe painting is darker, you can already add

a tint. the neck will follow up later, i only careabout the face at this point. i am going to wet it with a brush thoroughly. we need to wet the surface because soft colorgradients can only be achieved when the area is wet then i start placing a mixture of naples yellowreddish and saturn red to determine the basic light situation. this mixture is going to be my base color,because it covers most of the face. carefully put the base color down.

as long as the paper is wet we can push thecolors in the right direction. don’t paint where the highlights are supposedto go. once covered they would be hard to lightenup again. because the highlights aren’t plain whiteas well i applied a light wash of rutile yellow to mute them down a bit giving the skin awarmer appearance. once everything really dried down the grainytexture has disappeared. the colors are now set and should be fixedwith the paper. we can now carefully add another layer ofwater,without lifting any color off of the paper.

so we wet the whole surface again. we will repeat the process of letting thepaper dry and wetting it all over again every time we add another layer. when the surface is carefully wetted, i applyanother layer of my mixed base color. (naples yellow reddish + saturn red). it’s about deepening and refining the shadowswe previously did. again i avoid using the base tone on the highlightsso they stay light. the damp paper will help carrying the color,so we can softly blend it with the first layer. let it dry

time for the next layer. i carefully wet the paper with clear wateragain. this time i add the brown shadow tones witha mixture of (burnt sienna mars brown and naples yellow reddish). these are not placed on the whole face buton the areas where there is the least light. first i carefully draw a line with the shadowtone and then blend them with the rest. a tissue helps to regulate the colors thatare left in the brush. this way you can work with the color on thepaper without adding any new color to it. this is the key to smudging the already placedcolor and to create soft shadows.

here's a tip: if you painted over lines ,wherethere is no possible darker color to cover the mistake, you can take some water and yourbrush and try to lift them off by carefully rubbing it off with your clean brush. once again let the colors dry completely andwet it again. this time we are going to deepen the shadowwith the next layer and also we add a more saturated tone compared to our base color.(naplesyellow reddish + transparent orange + saturn red) this will be our transition tone that definesand blends the places where the shadow and the base tone meet.

this makes the painting more vivid and interestingbecause now the skin looks like it consists of more than just a highlight a base and ashadow tone. i add more depth by adding more layers ofcolors the way we did before. i defined the nose and the nostrils by usingeven darker colors on the wet paper (green umber, mars+brown) and lifting it off witha clean brush at those places where i want harder shadows i have ignored the lips so far, because idon’t want them softly blended in to the skin just like the shadows. so this time after everything dried, i won’twet the face all over again but carefully

paint the basic shape of the lips. i used potters pink + mars brown and burntsienna. at this point we don’t want to paint overthe line. it would ruin the soft skin, since we couldn’tlift off spilled color without lifting off the color of the skin. so be very careful with this part. when the lips are wet i fill them with shadows. i let the lips dry down completely and thenwet the whole face again. at this point i try to blend parts of thelips with the skin, so they won’t look like

sticked on. also i used the occasion to add more shadowsto the lips. time for the eyes. i wet the area of the eyes with a light greyto give the white of the eye some shadows, making them appear like a sphere. when it dried down we can start with the restof the eyes. just as with the lips i am very careful, becausei don’t want to paint over the lines when drawing the lash line or eyebrows . i used phthalo sapphire blue and indigo for the eyes.

because the face is almost done i start workingon the neck. it’s just my personal preference, so youcan do it differently. but i feel the neck and the face fit togetherbetter when they are done directly one after the other. nothin much to say on how its painted. it works just like how i did the face, wettingthe area, placing colors, letting it dry and repeat :). back to the eyes. at certain points i feel the need to use apencil for single lashes, when brushes give

me a hard time to draw delicate lines. so i really recommend switching media whenit’s for the benefit of the picture. if the pencil stands out we can also wet itand add color again. this way we can merge everything togetheror add more depth. last but not least we add highlights on eyesand lips with a covering white. this is what the picture looks like when everythingelse is done. you can see that the areas where we paintedover the lines are covered by other details like the hair or her shirt for example. there will be a full video of this picturevery soon on my channel, so make sure to subscribe

so you don’t miss it ;) also tell me in the comments what you wantme to cover next. thank you very much for watching and i hopeto see you again next time. if you are interested in other videos thatfeature a soft rendered skin click here. if you are interested in more tutorials watchthe playlist here.