Anyone who has seen my gallery knows i draw my own art then color it with PDN but on my Deviantart page, i get questions on how i choose shades of skin. To be honest, i just randomly pick but here is a more streamlined way i thought up when looking at this tablet/Photoshop tutorial on deviantart
For this tutorial, you will need one plugin. Shape3D
You can get that here------>>>Shape3D
Before doing anything you must install the plugin. how to do that is here.
1. open up a new canvas [size doesn't matter but it must be over 500 pixels all around.] and fill the page with the base color of your choosing using the little bucket symbol on the tool window [aka Paint Bucket]. I use peach for a Caucasian skin tone.
2. open Shape3D [which should be under Effects>Render>Shape3D]and keep everything the same except for these specifications:
Ambient lighting: 0.45
not much huh? but it does produce a nice effect as pictured below.
Just click okay and you're done! Now why did I just make you make these balls of flesh? for shading!
Look at your ball. it has at least 4 tones of skin: shine, highlight, base, shadow. no more hunting for what shadow to use and hoping it's not too dark and such.
and it works for all types of skin from dark to light. as long as you have the base in mind, just use this method and have a ball [sorry, had to make that pun. ^^]
Also, this can be used for hair and other things that need shading. I just use it for skin but as i said above, one plugin, infinite uses.
I recommend saving this file as a resource so you can go back and use it until you either A. make a skin palette of your own like i partially did in the above picture or B. naturally learn how to shade and highlight.
but how do you use this? just click that little water dropper tool [aka Color Picker] and click on the shade or hue you need. that's it.
I hope this helps someone because it certainly helped me.
