Head and Skin Tone Studies

I’ve been working on some studies for a personal hybrid 3D and 2D Illustration project I’m doing. The main character is humanoid. I’m still developing the project, there will be non-humanoid characters as well but that is for later.

I have already sculpted and prepared the character for painting but I wanted to do some studies before I started on the work in 3D Coat.

This is something a bit more out of my comfort zone but I decided to make a 3D model of a head in ZBrush first to use as a base for the painting study rather than just drawing it first. A duel learning anatomy of the head and painting exercise. I have stylized it since the character I’m working on is not in a realistic style.

These are renders of the head in different lighting using Blender. The first four images from the top left were made to match the lighting in the reference image I used for the painting study. I did a few other renders to give myself some reference of other lighting on the contours of the face as well.

I decided to use Corel Painter 2021 for the study. No particular reason other than I really like some of the bristle blending and glazing brushes for doing smooth skin transitions. This sort of painting seems easier to do with Painter than Krita for me. I think the ability to pick up colours for underlying layers in Painter is a factor, although Krita does have a similar feature but I keep forgetting how to use it because it is hidden in the brush setting menu (just an observation not a criticism).