Take Off Your Shoes (or whatever you like)

This nude study was painted in Photoshop with a mouse.  I have tried using a tablet, but it does not feel as pleasing as use of the mouse - it almost creates one too many barriers between me and the work.   I am still working on this image but decided to post it because it fits the first full day of spring.  Remember being allowed to pull off your shoes and socks and run through the grass on the first warm day of spring?  I do.  In fact, it is one of my fondest memories of childhood.  I realize that posting this nude study is an adult equivalent.  What could be more liberating than to image the warmth of human flesh reflecting in the radiance of light?  

I have always found the human body to be a most entertaining subject.  I remember art school when we first sketched nudes.  Some guys in the class were making jokes until the instructor gave them one of the best lectures I have ever heard about how the artist does not flinch or judge the subject and to do so is just immaturity.  I can't remember it all, but it certainly shut up the clowns.  After everyone got through squirming, we rather forgot an individual human being was posed before us with no clothing on.  The bodies were sometimes lovely and sometimes not so lovely as interesting, but, either way, the shame of nudity departed with the desire to reproduce or express the image.  I knew then that text would be created on computers in years to come, but it never crossed my mind that one day I would be painting digital skin. 

I found a Computer Arts tutorial on painting digital skin, but I have not yet worked with it.  I look forward to seeing the difference the technique used there will make.  The creative capacity of painting digital skin is rather liberating -  like taking off your shoes and feeling the warm grass beneath your cramped winter-worn feet. 

Below is a variation, more cyan, which I believe to be a most complimentary color for most shades of skin.