ART: Iron Man (Tony Stark)

[glockgal]

Subject: Tony Stark (racebend)
Fandom: Iron Man
Rating: general
Media: photoshop
Notes: I only have a bajillion arts I need to post, but I read this fic today and the fangirl in my took over. This is Vietnamese-American Tony Stark, based off the unbelievably amazing fic horns of a deer, feet of a tiger by softintelligence

Comments

[scarletscarlet]

Oh hiya, Tony, you are made of quite hot thar <3.

So, like, warmth of skin tones is one thing I wonder about - it can be hard from photos cos of lighting n stuff and if the figure/s in the pic aren't big enough to have lots of subtle contour or if one is being a bit quick n dirty.

The typical recommendation I've seen is, for all skin types and colours, to use varying amounts of a dark, very saturated red and purple in the shadows. Which makes a certain amount of sense, cos, well, blood is pretty colourful and skin is translucent no matter how much melanin's in it. But what if my light isn't a plain white light, or a warm light...

Actually, I'm not even sure where I'm going with this, so it might not be a *question* as much as bemoaning inadequacies :). If I'm drawing someone with a cool skin tone but I don't want them to look like a dead thing... problems, I have them.

This is something I have trouble with whether the skin is very pale or very dark - getting *contrast* and *contour* without screwing up the "main colour". Like, if I'm drawing someone with very dark skin (like the model in this rather large photo) and I don't want her to look particularly shiny and don't want to make her look lighter... how would you approach colouring her skin? That photo has fairly diffuse lighting in it, so she doesn't have huge quantities of visible contour. Skin that is mid-to-light seems to be easy to make dramatic - boom, eyebrows, eyelashes, all standing out dark and strong against the background. Seems like I might need to find a different focus on someone whose brows/lashes are so close in colour to their skin, maybe. I don't particularly want to shade skin with black cos pure "000000" black is pretty flat, though I guess I could lay some translucent colour *over* black. Argh.

A lot of it I know is practice and finding references, but any tips to jumpstart that process a bit would be v handy :).

[glockgal]

WHY DID LJ TAG YOU AS SPAM *holds you close*

If I'm drawing someone with a cool skin tone but I don't want them to look like a dead thing... problems, I have them.

That IS a really good question!

And yesss lighting I think has a lot to do with it. We as media consumers are so used to lighting meant for paler-skinned people, that when we try to apply that subconscious lighting to paper with darker-skinned characters, it becomes really confusing when trying to use photo refs!

Thank you for making all these points, they are GREAT and very helpful!!

[scarletscarlet]

LJ thought I was spam? *sob of LJ rejection*

The thing is that a lot of fancy fashion photos for folk with particularly dark skin get crazy-dramatic on the lighting and go high-gloss for skin and you get this very artsy fetishy strangeness which is not at *all* handy for drawing someone with their feet up watching telly :/.