I was just wondering if anyone could possibly teach/tell me how to shade skin? If anyone could, it would be much appreciated! Thanks!
~raenboe

What do ya mean shade skin? as in making the skin look real wiv tones or putting areas of shadow on?

both

I could help you. My shading Chi can shatter boulders! HA! Well, sorta... Actually, you just need a proper skin color of Red on 100% of the bar or so, Green on 75% of the bar or so, and blue on about 60% approximately.
Now, after that, you use the watercolor tool to shade using the light patterns properly. You should make the skin color darker as you please using the color bars, and shade each level of darkness with a smaller and smaller brush as it gets darker. Do not use any colors such as black or jet black. After that, do the light. Use lighter shades and make it look as if the lighter parts or parts showing into the light more are brighter. If the skin is shiny (Like some of my characters skin are) then use white in the VERY center of the coloring of the lighter tones.
The trick is to make the colors gradually get lighter/darker and always go in the pattern so lightest is exactly farthest away from dark on the same object.
And if you never understood much of that, then I am very sorry... *isn't good at describing things too well*
Now, see? My shading technique is NEAT, and TIDY, and PATTERNISTIC, and NICE. Isn't it NICE? ^____^ Nice...nice...nice....nice..............nice......... And tidy and neat and ELABORATE! I, in fact, use about 12 different shades of color for each zone (Light and dark) plus the base color, so that makes a total of 25 colors used to shade my objects. now you understand why i like my shading to be as good as I can get it.

...Phew. I hope I didn't sound conceited... o__o

you think there's some kind of special formula to just do it? here's a way to learn: do still life, over and over again, every day. then you can gradually apply the shading to other objects realistically, namely faces. the key is that shadows can be sharp or gradual (gradient) depending on lighting, and there's probably only a few ways to do it "right" or to trick the eye into seeing something as realistic.

look, it's hard to do skin tones no matter what the situation. instead of going all out neon style with bright flares and super shiny looking shit, practice with a greyscale palette. practice practice practice practice practice practice practice. and when you're done with that, practice some more. there are probably tons of tutorials out there on how to do realistic shading, and none of them are going to help if you can't apply the "rules" or "steps" to a particular piece unless you have the experience to do it right. that's all i can say...

Thanx! I think I'll stick with 2d tho! ;P

you cant draw, so who could possibly tell you how to shade skin?

Not to be an ass or anything...but look whos talking darkk! Look at your very-own user board for the answer. Why do you continue to insult everyone?......sheeesh, issues.

yeah. skin is hard. I'm a huge advocate for the dodge and burn tool though . . . :] they keep me alive. I also recommend, when dealing with skin, make full use of the undo feature. And alot of it is getting the right colour to start with, if you get the wrong one, it will look bad once you start to shade, though it might have looked fine when it was still solid. there you go. my (probably not very useful) advice.

Thank you, everyone! You've all been a great help!