Tone Mapping? Whaaaaat???

I have found the craziest thing that artist Renee Chio did on Deviantart.

So in order to show different depth to the face and to make the face appear more life like and put together, tone mapping is used.

The general idea is to look at the face and put a primary color undercoat to the face before applying the skin tone color. This idea by Renee Chio is normally done with digital art but being a watercolorist I wanted to see if I can make it work with the same amount of tone seen here.

Also to note, I don't use the peach color that comes in watercolor sets(even expensive sets)

For skin tone, you use standard yellow and reds with blue tones to neutralized the pigment.

So I really had no idea how this was going to turn out.

The idea is neat so I was like welp, just need to try this.

Here is a painting I did in January of 2016.

So with this in mind I really have been wanting to approve, so I try the tone mapping.

Blurry phone picture but you can see the idea.

Yellow and white brow,  red cheeks and nose, teal/blue chin and a grey 5 o'clock shadow.

and more in depth detail, blue/teal under the eyes, desaturated nose bridge (which I forgot and just put lighter red there), blush cheeks, pink lips and yellow labii inferioris (bottom corners of mouth.) I also threw some grey on the neckline.

Now this looks insane. I was not optimistic at first for this. But then I went over my skin tone as I would normally. I still added even a little more yellow and pinks as I went. And this already looks crazy with the amount I had.

You can still see the blue on the chin and under the eyes. I first thought that maybe I had added too much blue to the chin but I kept going anyway. 

This is when I started to love the idea of this weird tone mapping thing. I still felt that I may have added a little too much blue on the chin. I also felt I should have added a little more yellow to the neck. 

When I started to add the hair and added shadows from the hat, I felt that the blue actually did work out and added to the painting. This tone mapping is amazing! It's not just one tone that takes the whole thing, it's added to different pieces. This made me feel accomplished and I felt excited about future projects. 

Still unfinished but I love it. I can't wait to try it will green skin or any other cool fantasy skin tones that I can come up with. 

Last years work with no tone mapping.

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I will try to post a new blog every Wednesday.

Comment below on what you think about this new technique and if you've tried it I would love to see them! Post any neat pictures below.