How do you paint tattoos on characters and make them look realistic? I've been hunting for a tutorial or something for months and still haven't found anything nor have I been able to produce satisfactory results without aid. Do you have any tips you'd care to share?
Sure, Anon! I’d be glad to share what I’ve done when painting tattoos.
A few things you should remember about tattoos when painting them:
1. The color of the subject’s skin will change the value and hue of the tattoo. The pigment of a person’s skin will always affect the color. There is at least a bit of reddish tint beneath the color from where blood flushes the skin. Thus, with darker skin, the brown undertones tend to darken the colors and make them look more ruddy and less vibrant. Skin with yellow hues will do similarly. Even black ink is affected by skin color.
1st & 3rd refs by Meatshop Tattoo, 2nd by Liz Cook Tattoo, 4th by Amanda Wachob.
2. Tattoos follow the curve of the body. This kind of seems like a no brainer, but I’ve seen a lot of art where tattoos look like flat patterns, making them very awkward and unnatural. Unless the tattoo is on a single, flat plane, you’ve got to account for the body’s shapes when drawing your designs on your figure. Pay attention to the direction of the area’s curves and planes and account for foreshortening and wrapping.
3. The color of a tattoo is affected by light and shadow. Same as how you’ve got to account for light and shadow changing the colors of any surface, making them brighter in some areas and darker in others.
There are probably a bunch of ways to paint tattoos, but here is how I do mine. I’ll show you with the cropped version of a sketch I did not that long ago.
You at least need to color in the base of your characters skintone. I also recommend, however, that you go ahead and put in the other tones (reds, yellows, blues, etc.) It’ll help you see how the colors you choose for the tattoo will lay on the skin. I go ahead and do my shadowing and lighting too.
On top of those layers, I place a layer set to Multiply.
This is the layer I will use for the tattoos. Multiply works great for tattoos because the color you put down will not only include the tones underneath it on your colors layer, but also the values of your shading and lighting as well.
This is the part that will take some experimenting. You will have to choose a color that, when in Multiply mode, will result in the natural color of the tattoo (or at least close to it). Usually, I choose colors that are lighter than the color I will want and a little bit more saturated. Here is the tattoo layer on Normal.
As you can see, to create black tattoos I used a grey with a tint of blue to it. I never use just straight grey when using it in Multiply, because it tends to make the colors beneath look muddled and washed out, so a little bit of color is always best! Once you get the colors figured out, you can paint it in Normal mode to block in the tattoo if it’s easier.
The white areas are from where I used white to erase the insides of the tattoo, because white is masked out in a multiply layer. If you have a part of the tattoo that is faded, or perhaps obstructed by a scar or something, you can use white to blend that portion of the tattoo out.
So, when set to Multiply, the tattoo ends up looking like the first picture I posted. Both the shading underneath and the skintone are blended into the tattoo, making it look much more natural and painted on the skin.
If you want to give more dimension to the tattoo and refine it some, you can always put a Normal layer on top of it and just paint regularly to bring more vibrancy to it, highlight areas where there is a lot of light, and so forth. I highly recommend this, especially painting tattoos that are very colorful. You can also use a Screen layer to put in brighter highlights, light on tattooed skin does appear more shiny or glossy on that area. You can also use this same technique for stripes and patterns on any surface too.
