here is some art for you

Portrait Tutorial: Color, Base, and Layers

So, when you paint or draw or whatever, you do so in layers. Even with the sketch, I do in layer. I like my lines clean.

Before I talk about what colors to use, lemme teach you something about value.

The first thing I learned (once starting to be a serious artist) is that an object starts to look realistic with 5-7 values. Of course, there's nothing wrong with more, but that's the baseline. Because of this fact, I swatch a lot of colors.

For the skin, I take out four colors. I technically use five if you count white as a color. The skin and hair is the most important in terms of realism as it makes up most of the face.

First things first, pull a mid-tone. The mid-tone is basically what color you want the skin to be. For Virgo here, I went a little dark despite the fair skinned model.

Next pull a color darker than the mid tone, and I don't mean slightly darker. It needs to be pretty significant.

The next color we pull will be the darkest the skin will get. Almost completely in shadow. I like the use the darkest color you see on the model, but if that's not suited because you want your portrait to be paler, I'm not stopping you.

And then, we pull the lightest color we see on the model (again, unless it's not suited). Try not to go too close to white, but still make it lighter than the mid-tone.

For the hair, I do something a little different. With the addition of white, I use five colors. Four of them follow the same process for what I pick out for the skin, but you may notice that there is another color.

This is called an accent color, best demonstrated in Gemini's (revamped) portrait. I like the mix in an alternate color (normally the eye color) for some more harmony throughout the piece. For this portrait, I used a yellow to contrast the blue. For Leo, I mixed in some yellow with the red. For Scorpio, I mixed red in with the blonde. So it's not always the eye color, just whatever makes the colors more harmonized. If you need any additional help (I could go on all day) consult color theory. Literally type in color schemes in google images and see what pops up.

For the eyes, you need two categories: the iris (the color part of the eyes) and the . . . um, out side part of the eyes. For the outside, it's so insignificant two colors are just fine. The iris will need three. Normally, this is where we get a little adventurous and our reference may not have the color we are looking for. Just narrow it down to three: a lighter/vibrant shade, and significantly darker shade, and a near black shade. Don't actually use black because black will suck away the power of the eyes. Choose kind close.

Where I circled would be a good spot for any hue for the near black. The light vibrant would be top middle. The middle takes a bit of testing out. If you need help, imagine a diagonal line connecting where the light and the dark are. You'd want to choose in that range of colors.

Last but not least, we have the lips. I always go for the artist chant: mid-tone, shadow, highlight. For the shadow, I pick the darkest color, usually in the inner corner of the lips on the model. The highlight is always the lightest value on the lips (but not white).

If you have teeth, pick out two values like with the eyes.

Oh, you thought we were done for the chapter, oh heck no. We still have one step left.

Color blocking. Use the bucket tool and fill in the everything. It might be kinda wonky, but we can go back and sharpen those lines with one of the brushes. Also, pro tip, we will be using clipping masks. I'll show you later how to activate them (at least in ibis paint pro cuz that's what I use if you dont, im sure you can look it up somewhere or educate each other in the comments).

Because we will be using clipping masks, you will need to do each color in a different layer. It should look like this. (Yes, I did the lips the wrong color and only realized it when I started the lips) For eyes/teeth, use the lighter color.

Then, all you have to do is clean it up. Drop the opacity to 40% for the sketch layer and that should help with see what you are doing and what you should be doing.

So this is probably the most boring part of the process, but luckily, it's the quickest.

I will like the note that, at one point in the drawing process, there might come a point in time where you do not like the color that you chose. That is totally normal and happens to me all the time. Take this portrait for instance. I changed Virgo's eyes because they were too red. I also changed the outer color because it wasn't dark enough. There is a way to change the drawing color entirely, and you can use alpha lock, or in ibis there is a change drawing color filter where all you really need it is rgb color number idk what it's called.

But yeah, that's it for now. Let me know if you have a color question because I not sure if you notice, I'm a huge color nerd. I could go on for h o u r s . Dead serious. I could.

I would also like to thank Greg at this time for some of their advice when it comes to color choosing. Digital art isn't my main medium, so I get lost from time to time. They told me that to pick a darker color, not only should you drag down (in the square thing above) but you should also drag right for more saturation.  *shrugs shoulders* so there you go. Thanks Greg.