Making a skin..

I'm making my first skin. I'm not using photos or anything just drawing it by hand. I was hoping some ppl that do skin might have some feedback on her face. I feel like I'm leaving something out somehow...something just seems odd. So far all I have been working on is the face, so that's all I'm asking about. I have been staring at it for hours and can't figure out what it is that is throwing her off to me...but I figured it would help to get some other ppl to look and see if they could give me some tips on what might be throwing it off.

thanks

I don't make skins (yet), but I teach drawing and painting IRL, so I may be of some help.

The skin tone looks too beige and too smooth, it looks like a woman with too much foundation . I don't know HOW to do this, but the best skins I own have imperfections, slightly irregular skin tones, like in real life.
It looks like your shadows and highlights were done with black and white airbrush strokes. This always looks unnatural, real life shadows and lights are never pure black or pure white. In a "real" painting, adding white or black to light or darken a paint makes the color muddy or washed out, we use complimentary colors for shadows, and brighter paints for lights. In photoshop, the easiest and best way to light/shade a painting is with the dodge/burn tools. If you don't want to "hurt" your base drawing, you can use a 50% gray overlay to draw your shades and highlights.

The eyeshadow is too strong and bidimensional, and it seems you haven't drawn the eyes behind it. Even if you really want dark black eyeshadow, I think you must draw the eye folds and make subtle highlights to add dimension to the eyes. Blacks are never a pure, zero light, unsaturated black. If you look close to a good painting (even a photoshop painting), you'll see they're more like dark grays with some warm ("brownish" or cool ("blueish" undertone.

A good point: I think the lips are very well drawn . They still look a bit too bidimensional for me, but just a little highlighting on the right places would fix it

When you're drawing from scratch, if you plan to have realistic results, it helps a lot to have some reference. Ideally, IRL, a live model . But it may be a picture, or even a mirror.

I'd like to see a picture took from the side of the face. And I think it would help if the skin was on an shape with smaller lips. You have lovely lips , but I think it would be easier to judge the skin quality with a more average sized avatar.

edited because my english sucks

Thank you for the reply. All the things you said will be helpful and I will take into mind when I work on skin again.

I will work on getting another angle shot. I can tell you that I do have pretty big lips on my avatar so you were right about that heh heh.

I do want the eyes to look more realistic too. What I was thinking to do is to add tiny dots of different colors over it. I also think the black is just too black even for my tastes when I look at it today. I also plan to try and add some ammount of shading and highlighting on the eyes, but I haven't started working much on it. *also i should add that the eyelashes are the pure black parts. I didn't do anything but throw a black box over the eye lash area so that I could see how it would turn out. I suppose I should have removed them before taking the picture.

When I started doing the highlighting I thought to myself I should use dodge and burn tools, but I always shy away from it from a lack of being able to go back and fix something if it doesn't turn out good in the end as easily. I keep each highlight and shadow layer seperate. I don't know if that's odd or not, but it's how I prefer to work.

Anyway, thanks again.

Sae> Check out the Photoshop Tricks & Tips topic stickied at the top of this forum for information on how to do non-destructive dodge and burn as well as other great info.

One very basic trick for adding imperfections is the 'Noise' filter in Photoshop. There are also Photoshop brushes available that are suitable for adding skin texture. Add noise or fiddle with a brush on a seperate layer and adjust transparency for desired effect.

There are a ton of skin tutorials that turn up on a Google search. Remember, just because the tutorial isn't specifically for SL doesn't mean you can't use it. Any skin texture tutorial that uses Photoshop or similar program can be useful whether the skin is destined for SL or some other 3D game model. Even painting tutorials for 2D art are helpful.

Ok I tried a few things that were suggested. I'm still not done, but wanted to post the photos..
I tried the noise thing a couple of different ways and took away the black/white lights and shadows. I think it is looking better already.

It definitely looks better.

The lips are just really weird. Try making them smaller and more realistic, that will help A LOT