It took a long time to realize my mistake and understand that white will never be the decisive color when mixing flesh tones. In fact, over time, I've learned several ways to bring portraits to life - and none of them involved Jaune Brilliant, Burnt Umber, or White paint, which I have valued so much over the years.
If you want to achieve a Caucasian skin tone:
- Cadmium Red
- Yellow Ocher
- Cerulean Blue
The flesh tones are much more complex than the pink tones I thought I could get out of Jaune Brilliant. In fact, the creation of skin tones is based on a combination of red and yellow pigments. By mixing Cadmium Red and Permanent Rose together you can create a stunning flesh tone, which can be used to depict highlights, and the shadows will become deeper when adding Yellow Ocher. If you find the resulting shades are too warm for your taste, you can always add a drop of Cerulean Blue to make it a little cooler.
As an alternative...
- Cadmium Red Light
- Cadmium Yellow Medium
- Dioxazine Mauve
Mixing Cadmium Red Light and Cadmium Yellow Medium also helps create an elegant base shade. To create shades, add Dioxazine Mauve.
If you need to depict skin dark shades:
The last palette used mostly colors in the orange/violet spectrum and it produced some really great results, I think the first palette which mixed Cadmium Red and Permanent Rose is much more versatile . Moreover, it is precisely this that can be easily turned into dark shades.
- Cadmium Red
- Permanent Rose
- Burnt Sienna
- Raw Umber
Instead of Yellow Ocher or Blue Cerulean, use Burnt Sienna to create darker skin tones. If a dark pigment is desired, add Raw Umber until you are happy with the final result.
Adviсe:
- There is no place for white when it comes to drawing a portrait! If you think the color is too dark, you may be tempted to add a little white to lighten the tone. It is the addition of white that results in uneven color and makes the portrait look flat. It is much better to add a little water until the desired shade is on the paper. If you have already applied paint to your brush and suddenly feel that the tone is too dark, take water, a brush and a cloth towel to gently remove the paint from the sheet.
- Use a piece of testing paper to avoid unwanted color. Cadmium Pink mixed with Permanent Pink looks quite dark on the palette, but on paper it looks like a completely natural tone. It is not difficult to forget that watercolor paints become lighter as they dry. It is for this reason that it is very useful to have a sheet of test paper on hand. Make sure the test paper is exactly the same quality as the one you are painting on, as the quality of the paper plays a major role in the final color.
- Work on your painting in layers. Skin is made up of many colors, rather than one color for the shadows, another for creating the undertones, and another for the highlights. The power of watercolor lies in its ability to create almost transparent layers, giving the opportunity to create layers of deeper shade. Gradually layering the colors will also save you from ruining the entire design, which you spent about two hours on to apply a thick layer to the paper, which you may later regret.
- Don't forget to add white when drawing the eyes. When you start painting the first translucent base coat of the portrait, don't be afraid to apply white in the eye area. There is no such thing as a pure white eye - in fact, it only appears that way in photographs. The contrast between the eyes and skin can be increased when undertones and details are added later.
- Be aware of your surroundings. If you draw an image of someone near a red wall, then there is a chance that the skin will be redder than that wall. Why? The light illuminating the depicted object is likely reflected from the red wall, absorbing the color. Try it yourself; Find a piece of colored paper or a piece of plastic and stand in front of a mirror in direct sunlight. The closer a colored object is, the more of its pigment is reflected on your skin.
Selecting the right shade in watercolor often seems quite difficult, but it is not, and just like in other types of painting (for example, oil), it is created by mixing different colors. This also applies to how to get skin color from watercolor. In this article we will try to sort this out.
To begin with, let's mention important feature watercolors. Unlike oil, where white is used to lighten the color, in watercolor, paper is used for this purpose, which is visible through the paint layer, as well as water, which dilutes the paint. Therefore, in order to make flesh color with watercolors, it is not at all necessary to use white paint.
How to get skin color with watercolors
First, let's prepare watercolors, water and brushes. As a palette, you can use a paint lid, cardboard, or watercolor paper itself - any surface that will not immediately absorb paint.
Next, we apply red color to our palette, and then ocher (or, if it is not there, mix yellow and brown). They can be mixed in equal quantities or with a predominance of ocher, depending on the skin tone.
To make the color less saturated, dilute it a little with water (but do not make it completely pale, given that watercolor often loses its brightness when drying). We apply the resulting shade to areas of the skin - this way we will create a “tint” that will shine through the upper layers and set the overall tone.
It’s okay if at this stage you can’t exactly hit the desired shade; it’s much more important now to set the desired tone. The tone can be warm or cold; in a living person it is usually warm, even if the skin is very pale. Therefore, in order to accurately convey skin color in watercolor, it is not advisable to add cold colors at the first stage. To show the lightness of the skin, just dilute the paint with water.
Further work process (layers)
When applying further layers, you can use other colors: brown, blue, green, earthen and their various variations. Cool colors are often mixed with warm colors (brown, ocher, yellow) to create shadows, sometimes they can even be used in pure form to contrast with warm fragments. In order to paint skin more accurately, you should carefully look at the person’s face, photograph or drawing from which you are writing.
Skin tone chart
To make it easier for you to choose the right shade, we have compiled an approximate table of color relationships. Of course, there are many more shades, but using the example table you can get a general idea of the patterns of color mixing. In addition to the flesh color characteristic of Europeans, the table also includes others that are suitable for writing the skin of representatives of Asian, African and other races.
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20% brown/ochre (can be orange) diluted with 80% water |
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20% red 80% water |
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20% - brown, blue and yellow colors mixed in equal proportions 80% - water |
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80% - brown and yellow mixed in proportions 1 to 1 20% - blue |
 |
100% - brown and yellow (1:1) |
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60% - brown and yellow 40% - blue |
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60% red 40% brown |
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50% brown 30% blue 20% yellow |
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80% - brown and red (1:1) 20% - blue |
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40% brown, you can add a little ocher or yellow 60% blue |
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20-30% brown 70-80% blue |
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100% - red and blue (1:1), you can add a little brown or ocher |
 |
30% red 70% blue |
| 100% - blue and brown (1:1) |
As we can see, to obtain a warmer shade, colors such as red, brown, yellow, ocher should predominate; for a cool shade, blue is most often used.
We hope this article has given you a good enough idea of how to create skin color in watercolor. Good luck with your creativity!
Instructions
Flesh color represents a whole group of human skin tones. Therefore, in each specific case you may need your own version of the flesh tone. You need to clearly understand what color you need to get or see the model in front of you. It is quite difficult to reproduce this wind, but it is possible.
Prepare a palette for applying paint and a clean brush. First, build on the base to create a nude color. To do this, mix a small amount of yellow gouache and red. Red paint must be added very little at a time to achieve a bright orange color.
To get the color very light skin, place a small amount of white gouache on the palette and add just a little bit of the orange base prepared in advance. Add base until desired shade is achieved. If you add a little more base, you can get a flesh color suitable for medium skin tones.
Place some base on the palette. Add some red gouache, turning the orange into a reddish color. Dip the tip of the brush into blue paint and add to the color you received earlier. After thoroughly mixing the paints, you should get a dark flesh-colored skin color.
To create a dark skin color, mix the base color with even more red gouache than in the previous step. Add a drop of black paint and mix the gouache thoroughly.
Flesh color on French sounds like "carnation". Later, this unusual term began to refer to painting techniques aimed at obtaining a shade suitable for depicting human skin. In this case, receiving desired color occurs not only by mixing paints on the palette, but also by multi-layer application various shades on top of each other to obtain the desired color.
If you are taking your first steps in working with color, then mixing different colors may raise questions for you. However, everything is not so difficult if you have a basic understanding of the color spectrum and its three main components. These primary colors are impossible by mixing any other colors in the palette. Having at your disposal art materials of only three colors (yellow, blue and red), you can get any colors and shades that exist in nature.
You will need
- Palette for mixing paints; yellow and red paints or pastels; work surface (pastel paper, watercolor paper, canvas, etc.), brushes and thinners (if necessary).
Instructions
How to make orange if you need it, but don't have it in your arsenal? You should go back to the basics of painting and color palette. You can make orange using the two colors yellow and red, which are the basis of the palette's "color wheel". Squeeze yellow and red paint onto your palette and then mix them using a brush or palette knife. If the colors are taken in the same proportions, then, when shifted, we will become the owners of the classic orange color. If you take yellow color more than red, we get a yellow-orange or golden-orange color. If you take more red, the orange will turn out more saturated and red. To make the orange color softer and more muted, it is better to add white to it. To make the color darker, it is better to mix it with dark gray color. Black color is worse in this sense, since it not only darkens, but also steals part of the color spectrum.
If you need a color in dry pastel, then you can mix the same two colors. Apply them in layers on top of each other, and then rub. The shade of orange will depend entirely on what color was in the top layer. If upper layer was red, then you will get a red-orange color. If the top layer was yellow, then the orange will be a light yellow-orange.
In order for a pictorial portrait of a person to turn out alive and natural, the artist must be able to compose well the flesh color. Every painter has his own secrets, but still there are general rules and patterns, knowing which, you can easily create any shades. Let's learn this art together!
Let's say you decide to paint. What paints do you need to have on hand to make a person out of them? Firstly, you need to stock up on whitewash, but you will need to delicately mix other paints in small portions. Healthy is always a gentle warm shade, because everything is ours. skin covering penetrated by a tiny network of blood vessels. To experiment, take a sheet of white paper, apply it to the face of the palest young lady, and you will see how strikingly different even the lightest flesh color is from the lifeless white paper sheet.
So, white paints must be accompanied by such paints as ocher, red and, perhaps, sienna or umber may also be useful. But the latest paints can only be used when applying shadows and very carefully. Squeeze a little white from a tube onto the palette, dilute it with a solvent and add a little ocher, red and yellow to it. In this case, more ocher should be used, and, naturally, less other colors.
Different shades of flesh color
There are no ready-made recipes in painting different shades, it all depends on the artist’s intuition and, of course, on the complexion of his model. After all, if you draw a person with dark skin, then his flesh color will differ significantly from the skin color of an untanned, pale person.
Then you need to know that women's skin There are lighter and more delicate tones than those of men. And the flesh color of the torso, arms and legs is also darker than the skin of the face. Different parts of the body may differ in color. In painting there is such a thing as reflexes. This is the reflection on the surface of objects of color spots that are nearby. For example, if your model has a red cap on her head, then a warm reddish glow will certainly fall on the face you want to draw. All this must be taken into account when working on a portrait.
How to achieve flesh color when drawing
With watercolor everything is much simpler, but some may find this material more difficult than oil. The fact is that when working with watercolors, the role of white is performed by the White background paper. After all, watercolor is transparent, and it should be applied very lightly so that the lower strokes can be seen through the upper ones.
Now let's start composing the flesh color. Take a plastic palette and drop some water on it. Then take a soft squirrel brush, wet it well and lightly, with the very tip, smear it on the red watercolor paint from the box. Then stir this brush in the palette with water, and you will get a faint transparent pink color. Add a little yellow there, just don't overdo it, you only need a little bit. And you can start painting a portrait.
Examples of portraits with perfect flesh color. Photos of these paintings
In the history of Russian painting there were many artists who painted portraits beautifully. Rokotov, Levitsky, Bryullov... Take a reproduction of portraits of any of these painters and examine them carefully. With what skill they managed to convey the most complex bodily shades!
Here, for example, is a portrait of Maria Lopukhina by V. L. Borovikovsky. What a wonderful complexion this woman has and how skillfully the freshness and youth of her skin is conveyed! Try to unravel the artist's secret. What paints did he use to achieve this result, do you think? The best way to try to figure out the secret of the great master of painting is to sit at an easel with a palette and brush in your hands.
Drawing is a hobby that I have loved since childhood. You can draw landscapes, still lifes, portraits, etc. But the hardest thing is to draw people. And the main problem when drawing a person is how to get flesh color. Let's talk about it.
flesh color
Flesh is a color that has the hue of human skin. This usually refers to the skin of representatives of the white race. Flesh is considered one of the most difficult to reproduce in painting.
Getting flesh color
If you don't know how to make a flesh color, then mix ocher with white, yellow and red. Moreover, there should be the most ocher, very little red, and the tone depends on the amount of white. You can also mix white and pink, adding yellow or beige to them. Or you can use white to dilute brown paint until you get the desired shade or to a mixture of yellow and purple flowers add white, the amount of which will determine how much lighter the color will be. In any case, body paint can only be obtained experimentally.
Shades of flesh color on different parts of the body
On different parts bodies and skin color varies greatly from person to person. Men's skin is usually depicted as darker than women's. The main color is in the chest area, and below the tones are darker and ruddy. The skin on the arms, legs, elbows and knees is darker and redder than in the very center of the chest. Fleshy areas of the body have warmer tones than bony areas. Dark skin contains more blue than light. And in the sun it has more red shades than blue. Ruddy skin has many purple tones. Medium-tone skin contains a lot of gold. The face is usually divided into 3 zones: from the chin to the nose - cool tones, from the nose to the eyebrows - red tones, from the eyebrows to the hair - golden tones.
Now that you know how to get flesh color, you can safely paint pictures with people present.
