How to Paint Realistic Skin Texture in 3 Simple Steps

One of the struggles I hear often from digital portrait artists is about rendering the skin realistically.  The skin either looks unnaturally smooth or airbrushed with no texture or brushstrokes, or it looks dirty and over-textured.  They want to learn how to paint realistic skin texture without spending forever on it!

Skin texture is where tools can really help.  Using different size and shaped brushes can make adding pores, freckles, lines, and moles quick and easy.  Brushes are so important to this part of my process that I’ve created my own set of Portrait Brushes and I use them every time I paint- and you can download them below if you’d like to try them out yourself!

Watch this video to see how I take my latest portrait from flat and not-quite-finished to perfectly-textured, in 3 simple steps, using the Paintable Brushes.