Its not really a tutorial .. it's just the .psd file of the body of the new drawing i'm working on.

i'll borrow the explanation i gave of how i work on skin from another of my posts:

"her skin is actually a bunch of layers mixed together.

- 1 base layer where 90% of her skin is (on gray tones)
- 1 layer of "fixes" (i often had a lot of issues with making multiple layers of skin, since if i wanted to erase something i had to erase each layer individualy ... so now i simply make all the layers to be a "clipping mask" of the base one)
- 1 layer with her base color ... it's really tricky to get a realistic human tone .. this layer is set as "Color"
- 1 layer with her "saturated areas" .. it's a layer on "Overlay" where i paint the pink/purple/red tones of the skin, for example her belly, chest and breast .. i also use this layer to highlight or shadow some areas if i want
- 1 layer with texture .. i have some brushes that i use to emulate the small "pores" that make skin, skin .. and not a playboy model plastic skin (also on "Overlay")
- 1 layer with reflexes and things like that .. in this case, the sweat.
- 1 layer i use to add freckles, skin marks, scars etc
- 1 layer to add cloth shadows, or simply "deform" the body .. for example, her top cloth kinda make pressure on her breast, so to give that idea, you make a small shadow in the areas with more "pressure" and highlight a little on top of that .. kinda to give the same idea of what happens if you press your skin with your finger ..

It's not the case on this drawing, but i also have 2 other layers that are often used as "blood" and "dirty" .. which are kinda self explanatory, what i use them for.

Given that i have 2 separated layers for her skin color and saturated hues, i can edit all others freely with gray tones. I simply turn the color layers off and sample the gray tone i want from the image .. so i dont have any conflict between the layers. And on top of the entire drawing there's a secret layer that adds the "noise" in the drawing. "


In the drawing, you'll see that every layer have their name, with a simple "switch on/off" you'll be able to see what they are in the drawing.

- The "skin" layer i do with default round brushes (and the smooth versions) with opacity = pen pressure.

- The skin texture is actually a brush that i have that i got from [link] .. amazing brush set, the one for this texture in particular is the "99" size (the one above the last brush) ..

- The "noise" layer on top is a magic trick from [link] - there's a detailed explanation there on how to create that layer.

One thing to keep in mind is the "size" of the grain .. i try to keep them small, or else you'll notice them on the image .. to do that simply select the layer, Ctrl T and resize it .. then duplicate it some times to fill the entire image ... but that really depends on the size of canvas you usually work with. (my images are around 6k x 4k size .. so i often have half a dozen noise layers merged together to get the size i want)


Any question .. feel free to ask.

And yes, while i dont add unecessary details, i usually draw the naked body and then cover it with cloth/gear .. I find it better to work that way to have a whole body .. and not "several parts tied together. And in case i decide to change the clothing, the body is already there