A New Way to Render Skin
October 21, 2008I made this last week at work. I tried making another new way to render the skin. There’s only 2 steps in this, here’s how:
Step 1: With a cool brown background, draw and render in black and white on a separate layer. It’s ok if you want to put in some grays too, but if you want to be fast just put black and white in your foreground and background color selection box so you can just ‘X’ (shortcut for switching the foreground and background colors) along the way and save time by not color-picking. You’ll also be more conscious of the light and shadow since color is out of the way.
Step 2: After rendering in B&W, it’s time to color! Woot! Actually this is the easiest part. All you have to do is make a new layer on top of the first layer, set it in soft light with a low opacity, and brush over the skin part using a default Photoshop brush. Click on the above image to see what I mean. You don’t have to re-render, you just have to cover the skin.
Final: This is the finished version, I put an adjustment layer on top for my personal satisfaction, I was feeling an earthy look for this. I also like the dirtiness of the lines so I didn’t bother cleaning it. I used this wonderful stock photo by bobbistock of DA as a reference.
That’s it! Fast and easy right? 
