tutorial: skin coloring for clarice ferguson (blink)
Since I've been making a ton of icons for my own Blink in havenmods and delineate was asking me a few questions, I put together a pretty straightforward tutorial about how I do her coloring and markings.





Alright, I started off with a pretty straightforward base. Obviously the less loose-flying hairs, the easier it is to color; on a picture like this, where there are two strands of hair that stick out from the rest, I ignore them. The eye will usually ignore slight inconsistencies like that, and they're too small to color nicely. They'll stick out more if they're done badly than not done at all.



First, I put down my base color on NEW LAYER, on top of the background base. I saved the colors that I use for her skin, her eyes, and her markings in a TXT document for easy access. The hex I decided to use for her skin is #f77cde (it's a little more blue than I ended up liking, but I tend to add some red at the end using curves anyway). I use a large, clean-edged brush for this step, about 45 pixels in diameter. That's the size of the little blob in the corner for reference! The larger the brush, the less bumpy your edges will look, and when you're using a touchpad or a mouse, that'll make a huge difference. Also a round-edged brush can get you some really sharp corners on the eyes. You can color over the eyes and erase the pink later if you want, but I find it easier just to avoid them in this step. And for god's sake, use short brush strokes. If you color half of the base in one stroke and make a mistake at the end, undoing your last move means you have to re-do it all over again.



Set your layer to Color, then 65% Opacity. Voila, skin! The opacity may vary depending on the picture, but I chose 65% because it maintains the purple color -- lower than that and it gets very salmon pink -- and removes a lot of the hard contrast between the dark and light shades. Color is usually your best option for layer settings, because it keeps the underlaying shadows and highlights intact.



New layer for the eyes! Again, use as big a brush as possible, but you'll generally have to work your way down to a smaller brush to get those edges. The hex I use for eyes is #4ffc21.



Set the eye layer on Overlay (Color also works, but Overlay gave me a more 'neon' look that I preferred). I kept the opacity at 100%, though sometimes I lessen it to 90%. Blink's eyes are supposed to be a little bit glowy, which is what I wanted. Usually she doesn't have visible pupils either, but that effect can look really strange; I chose this effect because it appears a little more natural. If your base color on the eyes was a little messy, zoom in and clean it up with a large-brushed eraser tool. Again, the larger your brush, the cleaner your lines.



Now for the markings, which means time for the guesswork. Yay! I do this all by eye, and you can feel free to laugh at me, because doing this on a touchpad is really a pain in the ass. NEW LAYER, hex code #fb0ced. I start with a straight line down the center of her forehead to build the diamond around.



Then I...messily draw the basic shapes and outlines of her markings. They don't need to be clean or sharp, they just have to have enough color in the right shapes. I used a small brush for this, but not too small, about 5 pixels in diameter. Fill in your shapes when you have the outline.



Now that you have the basic shapes, all you have to do is start erasing. Going back to a large brush, use the eraser tool to carefully shave off the excess bits of color. If you take off too much, undo your last move, don't add more color. The more brush strokes you use, the bumpier the end shape will probably turn out.



When you're satisfied with your shapes, set the layer to Multiply (preserves the underlaying shadows!) and lower the opacity to 52%. Yay markings!



Hey look, now you're pretty much done. I went back and used the Sharpen filter on the background layer for a crisper look.



Personally, the very last thing that I do is mess around with the curves. The black shades in photographs are often rarely true black, and when coloring like this, the picture often benefits from added contrast and a general darkening. Pink skin like this shouldn't have the same highlights as normal human skin, etc.



Voila! Save as a non-interlaced PNG for best internet quality.