My entry for the challenge using [link] by

I love cake, and when I saw this stock pic, I knew what I had to do. There is nothing better than a naked, sexy, bald man offering me cake. Mmmm, morfolicious! And I'll tell ya, after the month I've had, I could use about 40 of these.

Wacom Intuos 3
Corel Painter X
About 30 hours work

It would look a lot better if I'd have had more time, but you only get a week to finish these things! It was good practice for me to learn to go faster and quit messing around

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Since I’ve been asked how I do certain things, I thought instead of individual emails, I’d share it on the description. **I’m aware that there are probably faster, easier ways to do things, but I’m a traditional artist using digital tools, so my old ways have really stuck with me.

I work completely in Corel Painter X using the “airbrush” tool set on 4% opacity, 100% resat, and zero for bleed and jitter–unless otherwise noted.

**Skin tone: You have to look CLOSELY at the photo your using as a ref. Most of the time, the photos I’m using are much smaller than the piece I’m working on, so I have to really concentrate on looking at each subtle shade in the skin as well as the skin as a whole. After I choose a base color, on a new layer I block in each section with my airbrush on my default settings (above) from darkest to lightest. On a new layer set to Pick up underlying color I use the “blender” tool set to 14% opacity, 24 grain, 56% bleed, and all others to zero. Starting in the MIDDLE of each section, I move in the direction the skin is pulling (again, look CLOSELY at your model), then around the edges of my sections. This takes me the longest because it’s where I form the highlights, shadows, and basic shape of the muscles beneath the skin.

**Tongue: After blocking and blending the basic color here, I make a new layer and use the airbrush set to “tiny spattery” 3% opacity, 40 spread, 7 flow, and 2.9 feature, with a slightly lighter color than the base and a white background color. I move in the direction of the tongue (here it dips slightly in the center, the sides coming up a bit). Lower the opacity slider for your “taste buds” layer until you’re happy with them. I then go in with a TINY dodge tool (1 pixel) and lighten select buds that would be reflecting the light.

If there are any other questions, please don’t hesitate to ask