Painting black skin can be quite tricky, at least for me. Dark skin gets highlights in a completely different way from White or Asian, and can go all the way to white. It’s difficult to get it right.

I started this painting a couple of days ago, as nothing more than a doodle. I had just finished a freelance assignment, and after the incredible amount of refinement and detailing I had put in it, I just wanted to paint something just for fun, as loosely as possible.
So I randomly got a sketch from the series I posted a while ago and started to develop it a bit further.
Then I got stuck, I had just painted an Oompa-Loompa.

I started again, and managed to paint someone with an orange artificial fake-tan. I was getting close.

The third time I removed most of the reds and got the base colour almost right. After that, most of the work was done. By looking at reference pictures I noticed that dark skin bounces back a lot less light than white skin (duh!), apart from some areas around the eyebrows and nose, which are more reflective.
Painting the rest was just fun, and since I kept the layers I also exported a gif of the process.

I couldn’t help noticing that most of the creative part (the fun bit) is done in the first two-three frames, the rest is pretty much polishing.
I must ponder on that.

Towards the end – hey, all this took less than two hours, that’s unlike me – I felt the urge to think of a more creative name than “untitled1.psd”, and I just didn’t want to call him “Black Guy With a Fuchsia Headscarf”.
So I painted a few tacky ornaments on his head and there you go, a Shaman.

by Paolo Puggioni

4 Responses

1. Sara Lando says:

   May 24, 2012 at 09:46

   It blows my mind how you can go from “random color splotches” to “holy cannoli awesome shaman dude” in no time (because OF COURSE your .gif is in real time, right?).
   It’s like those tutorial on how to draw a face: draw an oval, draw a straight line, draw the freaking fantastic face in!

   In photography the thing with darker skins is that it’s all about specular highlights to describe tridimensionality, while if you usually work with lighter skins you use shadows to do that, so it’s a bit tricky at first.

   Reply
   • Paolo Puggioni says:

     May 27, 2012 at 14:07

     Yes, I’m starting to understand!
     Also, while looking into “painting black skin” I learnt that people feel awkward calling it that way.
     Silly politically correctness, what does “ethnical skin” even mean?

     Reply
2. Mr. Zombie says:

   August 20, 2013 at 19:56

   This shaman painting is absolutely breath-taking, I am overwhelmed just looking at it. Your talent is brill. I love it and I am sure that others that have not commented yet love it too. 😀

   I personally think that it does not matter if you say black or dark skin, it shouldn’t feel awkward as it is just how it is. I am dark skinned and I am fine with it, some people just like to overreact about it.

   Reply
   • Paolo Puggioni says:

     September 15, 2013 at 16:24

     Hey there,
     thank you, sorry I just saw this comment!
     As for the rest I honestly hadn’t thought of, emm, the politically correct terms to use, it’s actually not a big deal around here:)

     Reply