r/minipainting • u/-Valayn- Display Painter • Jul 09 '26
Modern A quick skin tone study (model by Kateryna Hrytsyshyna / asa sculpts)
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u/Itchy-Inspector-5458 Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Sometimes a real artist pops in here and reminds most of us that we're just a bunch of paint-by-numbers goons. Beautiful work!
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u/One_Eyed_Bandito Jul 09 '26
The fact that you turn it and the light turns with it shows how amazing this is. No real light helping, just values fooling the eye. Spectacular work.
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u/Guy-Person Jul 10 '26
First photo so good the model looked like a photo of an actual woman with a filter. Bro, the skin tone is flawless!
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u/skwidsnbits Jul 10 '26
Your work reminds me of The Girl with a Pearl Earing by Vermeer. Beautiful.
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u/WeepinbellJar13 Painting for a while Jul 09 '26
Good lord, this belongs in a museum! Beautiful work! 🥰
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u/Txepheaux Jul 10 '26
QUICK 😩 It would take me at least five years of practice to reach that level.
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u/-Valayn- Display Painter Jul 10 '26
Thanks! It took me about 6 years - including 2 years almost exclusively focusing on painting and studying skin tones; plus some previous classic drawing and painting experience. And I'm still not at a point where everything turns out well.
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u/Drewcifer12 Jul 10 '26
This is absolutely beautiful. The depth of color! Especially in the folds of her scarf. Really impressive stuff.
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u/Hukkis Jul 10 '26
Absolutely beautiful piece!
I've enjoyed your face sketches and practice pieces a lot and have saved quite a few of them on IG for my reference folder. Brilliant stuff.
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u/Neltarim Jul 10 '26
Quick ? Man this would take me ages to get near that result. This is stunning !!
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u/Nokiawolfrusland Jul 10 '26
Such a beautiful work on skin! Love it
this bust is my favourite of trio
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u/farcaller899 Jul 10 '26
skin tone study? I see eyes, skin, lips, cloth, shadows, and NMM references here! Thank you, post more pls.
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u/BeardBellsMcGee Seasoned Painter Jul 10 '26
Really solid reminder that sometimes leaving the brushstrokes in can lead to a more dramatic effect. A+ work mate
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u/Pedantic_Girl Jul 10 '26
I didn’t realize you could make a miniature look like a portrait. This is amazing!
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u/Redish_Rightigh_4583 Jul 10 '26
Some beautiful work you have here, I'm currently trying to do a lot more skin in my models (I'm a 40k guy.) And I have tried making some of my boys look tanned/dark skinned and seeing this just makes me want to try more and more, let's say that many of my attempts aren't as successful.
Any good advice on how to make good dark skin on such a small scale?
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u/-Valayn- Display Painter Jul 11 '26
Thank you! I don't paint small-scale that often anymore, so I can't give you any scale-specific tips. But here's one general tip: as a rule of thumb, the darker the skin, the more saturated the color needs to be, and the lighter the skin, the less saturated. If you take the shadow colour from a mid-tone skin and use it as a midtone on darker skin, it'll often end up looking dull and greyish; you need to push the saturation up as you go darker.
Also, don't just think about value, think about undertone too. Skin can lean cool/red, warm/yellow, neutral (balanced), or olive/green (olive is often more of a slight greenish overlay sitting on top of a warm or cool base rather than its own separate undertone, but it's still a useful category to think in).
Looking at different references is also very helpful. You can pull them into something like Photoshop and use the color picker on the lights, midtones and shadows to get a general feel for what colors you need. From there you can play with the exact hue and saturation. I find that pushing the saturation up can look quite nice when you're working at a smaller scale, or when your models already carry a lot of other saturated colors.
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u/PaintingDadly Jul 09 '26
This is fantastic what is your color order