PSA: A comment about my color palette made me rethink my whole process

I posted a fantasy portrait here about six months ago, and someone pointed out that my skin tones looked a bit flat and 'samey' across all my characters. They weren't mean about it, just said something like, 'Your lighting is cool, but maybe think about subsurface scattering for different ethnicities?' I had to look that term up. It made me realize I was just picking a base skin color and adding a single shade, which does look fake. Now, I spend way more time on my color layers, adding blues and reds under the skin and really looking at reference photos for how light passes through ears or noses. It added maybe an extra hour to each piece, but the difference is huge. Has anyone else gotten a piece of technical advice that completely shifted how you handle a specific part of your art?

3 comments

3 Comments

quinna891mo ago

Oh man, that's so real... I read this thing once about how you should paint shadows with the opposite color of the light, not just a darker brown. Like, if your light is warm, make the shadows a little cool. It sounds obvious now but it blew my mind back then.

the_mary1mo ago

My art teacher in high school said that rule is a crutch for beginners. She made us paint shadows with just black and white for a whole semester to really see value first.

wren6381mo ago

Totally get that, a similar thing happened to me with fabric. Someone pointed out all my cloth folds were just gray lines and it looked like plastic. @quinna89 is right about the color thing too, it's all connected. I started actually looking at how light hits different materials, like silk versus wool, and mixing in those reflected colors. It felt like learning to see all over again and my stuff looks so much more real now.