Tags
beginner, brushes, color, painting, palette, photoshop, portrait, skin, swatches, texture, tutorials
The effect of a massive amount of reference available ends up making me overwhelmed. And by the time I am starting something, I almost give up trying to learn from others and just do it on my own. Well, that’s wrong. I guess students weren’t hanging out in Rembrandt’s workshop for nothing. You need to learn from the masters. And while the digital world and techniques may allow you to learn a lot without even leaving the house…I guess you should find your masters. I am trying now to perfect my portrait painting skills. And here are some pretty neat things I found:
Lauren has a longer tutorial that I found to be less amateur than a lot of things on deviantart.
This is from brazilian artist Amelia Woo. Click the picture to check out her tutorial. I prefer going a different way, but I think I will steal a bit from here too. I like that her palette is going to some crazy hues like blue, which I know is usually a good idea, but I tend to be too chicken to try. 
This is from a website I just discovered through deviantArt. It is a group of artists under the name of ConceptCookie. Even though most of their best resources come for a paid membership, I did find some useful free images (like closeups of how to paint face details). Actually considering to try out their membership. Here, it was useful to realize you can add details also with a more concentrated speckled brush (first one) 
I would follow this one only to pick some swatches and maybe the texturing part. I detest using the Smudge tool for skin and think it’s the amateur way out. 
How offensive to dismiss a technique as “amateur” simply because you don’t like it. You obviously have very little experience beyond the digital realm, if you think smudging is amateurish.
Smudging or blending is an accepted method of creating smooth gradients, that has been used for centuries, especially amongst pencil, charcoal, pastel, chalk and watercolour artists.
I suspect that is something that only non-amateur artists might know though. Unless you think you are better than history’s great artists that is… as if.
I did not end up disliking it for no reason. It may be used very nicely in different media, but when it comes to digital painting, you will see a lot of beginners out there who think smooth skin comes simply from smudging to death a couple colors instead of studying the light, the surfaces involved, what is beneath the surface and what may be seen through, reflections etc. I have a decent amount of experience with both traditional and digital. Enough to know that people who may be looking for tutorials on painting skin are probably beginners and smudging is not the place to start for them. Blending is a different thing that can be obtained through brushwork and I was here referrering simply to the smudge tool itself in Photoshop.