Tidal Pool redux

Awhile back I had a photo taken of me in a tidal pool where I liked the angles, the rocks, the coloring but it was severely out of focus. I deliberately smeared it more and it was improved into a kind of abstract.

Recently I got to wondering if I could turn it into a digital painting. Attempting it brought up one of my greatest problems in digital paintings of humans. I have an older paint program from Corel that offers about 100 colors with three of them being pinkish 'flesh' tones, but none that really look like flesh.

If I paid for a more advanced program, I probably could get skin tones I would like better. Besides the cost, my old computer couldn't handle a program needing that much operating memory (I have tried a few others with unpleasant results). I like this program in every other way but would love the capability of making some of my own colors.

Part of the problem is skin is actually translucent and paint is not. With oils, you do a thin wash but with digital, that's more difficult as even semi-transparent color 'washes' are solid pigment dots. In bigger digitals, I get around it by adding other tones that aren't flesh colored but capture that feeling of underlying layers. With a small one, that isn't an option. It is an ongoing challenge which sometimes is helped by copy-pasting in a color from another photograph, setting it somewhere I can easily later cover it up; and then using it as a clone to get the impact of a wash... kind of.

There is also the option of doing value and color adjustments after the 'paint' has been laid down. That is a plus that oils don't offer.

When I am feeling down, not a lot of energy for other things, raining outside or cold, this kind of creative play is about my level. The meditative advantages it gives me are a major part of its appeal. When I am not working on something arty, I tend to think all the time. When I am doing something like this, I only think about it. It's a welcome break.