Messing with hue shifts changed how I paint skin tones

Gray Adams · 2026-03-07T14:56:25.799668+00:00

I used to pick colors that made people look washed out. Adjusting the hue slightly in shadows made a big improvement. How do you handle color variation in your portraits?

riley555mo ago

My art teacher used to say skin is just a rainbow you're too scared to paint, lol.

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the_sarah6mo ago

Oh man, I feel this so hard. For the longest time, my portraits just looked off, and I could not figure out why. My people either looked vaguely seasick or like they were made of plastic. Turns out I was using basically the same color for everything, just lighter or darker. I finally figured out that adding a tiny bit of purple or orange in the shadows, depending on the light, made it look way less weird. It was a total game changer for me, idk why it took so long to get it.

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piper5586mo ago

Why is it that everyone's first attempt at painting people looks like they're recovering from a bad flu? I definitely had my zombie phase where every shadow was just straight up gray or brown. Took me forever to get that shadows aren't just darker, they're actually a different color hiding in there. It feels so obvious now, like you just have to trick your brain into not picking from the same little strip of color on the wheel.

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