So yeah this figure painting was based off this image [link]

I've been doing a few of these for past 3 months to better my understanding of colour, skin tone, light and generally how to paint. I've aimed to do one a day where I can and have done about 80 so far, I'll post them all when I've reached 100. I set a little challenge for myself by painting 100 figures and its been fun so far. I generally don't spend more than an hour or so doing these and I don't focus much on the face. The idea is for me to get the colour and form down as accurately as possible, but I've still got a bit of way to go til I can do it like the pros. Anyway I thought I'd post a tutorial on how I do it and give a bit of a preview of whats to come later on

Step 1: Basically I just do a quick sketch of the figure, I don't use any structural lines or building shapes as I would if I were sketching from my head. Once I'm happy with the line art I set that layer to multiply just in case I might lose track of what layer I'm working on and accidentally start painting on the lines layer. BTW I only ever have 3 layers: Lines, Colour, and Background Colour. After I've done up the background colour I lay down a colour flat of the figure which is just the darker undertone. I find if you want to retain colour accuracy it's good to have a background colour because our eyes perceive the colour of whatever our subject matter maybe by whats around it and vice versa.

Step 2: This is underpainting. Skin tones aren't made of one colour, they vary depending on what body part you're painting and the lighting scenario. Developing a keen eye for the subtleties in skin tone variation will definitely help along the way. But yeah from the photo I picked slightly greener or more red hues.

Step 3: Here I pretty much started to block in the lighter areas, which I'll work up later on. This step is still somewhat of underpainting.

Step 4: Basically the same as step 3, just working on different body parts.

Step 5: Once I'm happy with how the over all underpainting has gone I'll lay in the lighter skin tones which will start to bring the image to life. Again I like to keep a firm eye on colour differentiation, I never use the eye dropper on the original image to sample the colour simply because I'm wanting to train my eyes to see the actually colour that's there instead of having to rely on that tool.

Step 6: Working it further focusing on all areas making sure its even.

Step 7: This is where I'll start to add shadow and define some of the edges that haven't already been defined by line. I should have said this at the start but before you do any painting try and familiarise yourself with the lighting condition; such as the direction, intensity, colour and temperature.

Step 8: Working it some more. I'll also start to add highlights or lightening up areas that need it.

Step 9: Basically this is where I finished any actual painting or got it to a level which I was a happy with.

Step 10: I generally avoid zooming in on areas simply because when I do pieces like this they're meant to be practice but a lot of the time when I've finished the colour is slightly off or more of a different hue than what the image is. Normally I don't do this but in this case I've fixed it up a bit by levelling it out with the curves tool (cmd+M). A lot of digital artists use tools like that in their arsenal to balance or shift colour. But yeah because the painting was looking a little too red, I tried to shift some of that away. It's also a good idea, whilst working on the painting, to have your navigator window open and to zoom way out from time to time so see how the image looks as a thumbnail. I've always thought if its not looking accurate as a thumbnail then it needs more work.

Step 11: Just a fancy schmancy embellishment.

I know theres more accurate tutorials out there than this one but I'm wanting to put this one up for myself just as a reminder that it pays to practice heaps and work through all the mistakes you make!!