ZBrush Character Creation - Advanced Digital Sculpting 2nd Edition

■ Painting a Creature Skin 173

warm or cool depending on what is mixed with it; red, for instance, becomes warm when
mixed with yellow, or becomes cool when mixed with blue.
Hues that move toward the red area of the color wheel are said to be “warmer” than
those toward the blue, or “cool,” side. By placing two colors near each other with different
temperatures, you create what is known as temperature contrast.
In practical terms, try painting a cool color into recessed areas and a warm color on
raised areas. This contrast helps to emphasize the form as well as create visual interest.

Saturation

Saturation is the relative intensity of a color. You can reduce a color’s saturation by moving
the color picker toward gray. This is called neutralizing the color and helps create a muted
color (Figure 5.13).

Optical Mixing

You can see that the color selections in Table 5.3 are a limited palette, especially when com-
pared to the look of the final painted skin. The power of these few color choices comes from
the phenomenon of optical mixing. Optical mixing refers to a method of creating a secondary
color by placing its two primary components close together. This can be seen in the Pointillist
paintings, where tiny dots of color are used to create the entire painting. For example, with
stripes of yellow and blue placed close together, the hues combine in the eye to cause the viewer
to see green (Figure 5.14). To see this at work in a more practical setting, see Figure 5.15. The
same approach can be seen in painting where a stroke of one color is dragged across another
color. The two colors seen in such a way give the impression of a third color.

Temperature Zones of the Face

Portrait painters have known for centuries that the face can be broken into temperature
regions—areas that have a defined relative warmth or coolness. This is due to the translu-
cency of the skin and the quality of the tissues, as well as the relative closeness of muscle and
bone to the surface. In Figure 5.16, I have broken down the relative temperature relationships
between the regions of the face of the character we’ll paint later in this chapter. In general, on
a light-skinned individual the brow takes on a yellow or golden cast, while the cheeks, nose,
and ears are warm, red hues. The mouth and jawline are cooler blues. In men, this is even

Figure 5.13

Neutralizing a

color

Figure 5.14 Optical mixing Figure 5.15 Optical mixing seen in a
painting by Ryan Kingslien