What’s the key to painting lizard skin?
Gabrielle Tindler, US
Answer Don replies
Painting the shiny texture of lizard skin isn’t very difficult if you approach the task in a logical manner. The first thing I do is paint the scales. This is easy to do with Corel’s Painter X3, using custom Paper textures.
I select a scaly looking paper texture from a custom Paper library that I created earlier, then choose a brush that interacts well with the paper texture. The Variable Chalk brush, which is a variant of the Chalk and Crayons brush category, works really well. I start by filling the canvas with a mid-tone green colour.
Next, I create a new layer for the dark areas between the scales and paint this with a darker green than the background. Then I create a second layer for the top part of the scaly texture. I invert the paper texture, select a green colour lighter than the background and paint the top areas of the scales.
I then drop the two layers onto the canvas. I choose the Glow brush from the FX brush category. Picking a very dark green colour, I lightly paint over the areas that I want to appear shiny. I vary the colour to give a chameleonlike feel to the scales. Usually, I would make the highlights follow the contours of the creature; however, in this case I just paint across the scales.