hi everyone, i am getting set to mix someflesh tones for a portrait i am working on and just thought i would go ahead and recordthis for those who are interested. i wrote a blog a little while back about mixing fleshtones and included several still shots, but thought i would go ahead and do a video tomake it easier to see as well. a lot of times i get asked, "how do you mix flesh tones?"there are several different ways of doing that but, basically, i'm going to go aheadand show you how i start out. this isn't the only way to start out, of course, but it'smy particular way of mixing flesh tones. and each portrait is different, each paintingis different so that all depends as well. the portrait i'm going to be working on todayis an outdoor portrait which is a very high
keyed portrait which means the value rangeis very high. so, instead of going all the way down to my darkest value, i'm actuallyusing half the scale. basically, three-quarters of the scale i would say. instead of usingmy darkest dark, i'm using more of a middle dark value range, using those values up, soit all depends. if i was doing an indoor portrait i'd obviously mix darker values as well anddarker colors. to go ahead and get started here, i'll show you what colors i have laidout here on my palette. these are all winsor newton colors. what i have here is raw sienna,gold ochre, cadmium yellow pale, cadmium yellow, cadmium orange, cadmium scarlet, cadmium redand cadmium red deep, and then permanent alizarin crimson, and then this color here, this sortof flourenscent green color is cadmium green
pale. i have a sap green, a prussian green,i have viridian, manganese blue hue, and a french ultramarine blue. and then down herefor my white, i have titanium white. the way i organize my palette is based on temperature,so basically the warm colors are over here, it moves from warm over to cool colors. butthen also, within each of these different color families i have a warm and cool version.like a raw sienna is cooler than a gold ochre, the cadmium yellow pale is warmer than thecadmium yellow, the cad orange is warmer than the cad scarlet and so forth. the reason theyget cooler is because they are moving towards the cooler side. so say i have a cadmium yellowpale. the reason cadmium yellow is cooler is because it has more red in it, so it getscooler in that respect. and that's basically
how i lay out my palette. i don't use blackon my palette, not to say that i don't use black. occasionally i will, but i use it formore of a blue, actually. if you mix an ivory black with a little bit of white, you'll geta bluish tint. there's nothing wrong with using black at all, john singer sargent usedit very well and was able to incorporate it into flesh tones, but he used it as more ofa graying agent, as more of a bluish color. but, anyway, let's start mixing colors here.basically when i'm mixing colors, i'm using some warm mixtures to start out with. i liketo use a gold ochre and then sometimes i'll mix the gold ochre with a cad scarlet andmix those two together. i'll add some white to that and then basically i get a warm colorto start out with which is fine because later
on i can add the cooler colors into it, particularitythe complements. you get different values here by adding different degrees of white.it's interesting to note that the more white you add to a color, the cooler it actuallymakes that color. ok, that's cad scarlet and i could do the same thing if i took cad redand mix those two together and add some of that white in there and you get a slightlydifferent version or variation because it leans towards the red side, whereas the cadscarlet leans toward the orange side. it's actually in between a cad orange and cad red.you can see the difference here if i lay them side by side. this one definitely has morered in it. anyhow, i'll move it back here to keep it over in it's family. now i'll goahead and mix a lighter value as well. the
reason i put so much white on my palette herethan any other color is because i go through a lot of white when i mix flesh tones. talkingabout palettes, this palette is actually just a piece of glass that i've laid over top apiece of foam board. and basically what is does is it provides me with, i prefer to startout on a white canvas, there are some artists that work on a toned canvas, which means youput a light wash like a burnt umber or some sort of an earth tone on there. some peopletone their canvas grey. it all depends on how you work, but the way i like to work ison a blank white canvas. so by putting a white piece of foam board underneath, it just givesme, allows me to judge colors a little bit easier. and i've done this for so many years,i'm just used to working on a white palette.
joe bowler, an artist from hilton head, southcarolina, a fantastic portrait painter, got me started using a glass palette back wheni was in college, and i've been using one ever since. actually, this whole color schemehere, the way that i set up my palette, is basically joe bowler's palette as well, giveor take a few colors. you don't necessarily need all these colors. as an artist, a lotof these are convenience colors, meaning that you don't have to mix every one in order topaint. when it comes to working with color, you really only need the three primary colors,a very limited palette you could do it with a yellow, a red, and a blue, and then whiteas well, and mix a huge variety of colors that way. but for me, i just like to use theextra colors. it just makes it easier for
me. and that's pretty much the reason whyi have so many colors here. another thing that i'll mention here is that the paletteknife that i'm using is a larger palette knife. it has a larger trowel shaped handle whichmakes it easier. there are some that come with a straight handle, but when you mix paintyou end up with a big glob of paint near the handle, so it makes sense to me to use a trowelhandle. it's a good size for mixing a lot of paint. so, let me go ahead and mix somemore paint. i've got some warm colors to start out with and then i'll introduce some of thesecooler colors, too. i'll do a blue, a french ultramarine blue, which is a beautiful blueand doesn't take a whole lot to change the color when you use that french ultramarine.we'll go with a darker value here. when i
talk about value, i won't go into detail now,but value refers to different degrees of dark and light that are measured on a scale fromblack to white. so every color has a value that is automatically assigned to it whetherwe realize it or not. as an artist, it's very important to realize that so you can workwith color more effectively. value sets the stage on which color performs. in other words,color can't survive without value, everyone of these colors i'm mixing has a value, whetherits a lighter value or a darker value, but it's going to fall somewhere on the valuescale from black to white, somewhere in there. the reason i use the black and white scaleis just for the fact that it's easier to measure. sometimes color can trick you, especiallywhen using reds.a lot of times when i'm judging
values, i notice, for myself, that reds sometimesplay a trick on your eyes. sometimes i think they're lighter than they actually are. ifyou take a photo, or a black and white photo, or convert your photo to black and white,you'll notice you get the true value relationships. a lot of times that is what i'll actuallydo when i'm working on a portrait. if i come across an area that i'm having a difficulttime determining whether the values are too light or too dark because i'm working in verysubtle skin tones, very subtle values, i'll take a picture and convert it to black andwhite on the computer or on the camera and take a look at it just to see what the actualvalue is compared to the other values in the painting. anyhow, back to my demonstrationhere,. i tend to go off on rabbit trails quite
often. also to let you know, my children justgot home from school not too long ago and they may barge in. if so, you'll know thereasoning behind it, but hopefully they won't. so what i'm going to do is mix some frenchultramarine and what i want to do is mix a little bit of viridian as well. viridian isa very cool green. the reason it's so cool is because here you can see the sap greencontains a lot of yellow in it. it leans toward the warmer side. the further up you go, youget to viridian which has a lot more blue in it. because there is so much blue in it,it leans more, it's a lot cooler in comparison to say a sap green. it takes a little moreviridian though. it doesn't have the same tinting strength as french ultramarine. wheni say tinting strength, i'm talking about
the ability to change, the ability to tinta color very quickly, meaning it takes more paint, more viridian to get the same valuewhen you mix it to white than it would if you mixed the french ultramarine blue withwhite. let's get a little more of this white over here. when i start out, i like to geta bunch of different values of warm and cooler colors just so it makes it easier. it's lesstime consuming later on. it takes a little time in the beginning, but you actually savetime later on because i don't have to go back and mix all these things and i can just startdipping into each one of them. the reason i do the different values is because i'm tryingto get similar values over here with the warmer colors and get the similar values with thecooler colors as well. then when the time
comes, which i'll show you in just a few minutes,when i do want to mix a couple of these colors together, instead of changing the value everysingle time before i add it to one of these values, i can add a similar value, almostthe same value and just change the color without changing the values, which is very important.if i wanted to add more of a bluish, more of a blue to this color down here, just tokind of neutralize, kind of make more of a grey color for skin tones instead of addingthis dark blue. if i added this darker blue into this, or even added straight ultramarineblue into this color here, i'm not only changing the color but changing the value, which youdon't want to do. when i'm painting portraits, i like to find which value i need first ofall, and once i determine the value, i can
then mix the color to match that value. ijust find it easier to do that as well. i'm going to take a little bit of this ultramarineblue and this is that permanent alizarin crimson. i use the permanent alizarin crimson. i usedto use just the regular alizarin crimson but i guess they found out that it wasn't quiteas permanent. so now they have some a permanent alizarin crimson. it's a little more expensive,but i'd rather use a paint that is going to last, especially when it comes to a commissionedportrait, because you are creating an heirloom that will be passed down from one generationto another and you want it to be able to last. so what i've done here is make two differentversions of this purple color. i have more of a cool version, which has more ultramarineblue, and i have more of a warm version which
has more permanent alizarin crimson in it.now i can take those and i have to get some more white here, but i can take those andadd more white in them as well. color is a very intuitive thing. every artist sees colordifferently and every artist mixes color differently but it's an intuitive reaction. whenever i'mpainting and put a color down on the canvas, i'm always reacting to it, whether it's toocool, too warm, whether the value is not right, or just in general whether or not i get afeeling of whether or not it works. and if i don't think it works, i'll go ahead andput down another color or i'll adjust the color somewhat and it's that back and forthreacting to color that is very important. it's not a set method every single time foreach painting because every painting is different
and requires different color combinations.and, actually, color itself, when it comes to mixing flesh tones, there is no one particularcolor that is going to make up flesh tones or give you the illusion of skin color. whenit comes to color, one of the keys to painting flesh tones is the combination of colors-how you mix warm and cool colors together and how you get, what i call, grays whichare different mixtures of complimentary colors in different degrees which i'll show you herein a minute. but you can't just have something like this color for flesh tones because thisis just way too warm. and you can't have something that is too cool. if all the flesh tones aretoo cool, it will tend to look lifeless, and doesn't have any life in it, so you have tostrike a balance between the two. a lot of
times when i'm painting a portrait, the endgame of a portrait is really somewhat difficult. it's more than somewhat difficult. i'd saythat it's one of the most difficult parts of the portrait.that is one of the most difficultstages for me because it's at that last stage that i'm trying to balance that color, tryingto get enough warm and enough cool and enough grays in there to balance each other out sothat it gives the illusion of life inside that skin, just like when we see flesh tonesin real life there is a mixture of warm and cool colors. when i talk about grays, grayshappen when the form turns. say you have a light coming down on a subject and it goesaround where the light meets the shadow. in between there, that's usually where graysoccur. for an indoor portrait, it's definitely
more of a grayish color. for an outdoor portrait,it's actually more of a color change as well. you might go from a warm color directly toit's compliment and then switch over to more of a warmer color so that it goes warm, cool,then warms up again as the bounced light is being reflected back into that shadow. butthe way i mix grays, once i get a basic mixture like this, is by taking these cool colorsand warm colors and mixing them together. so over here we had the gold ochre and cadred. so that leans more towards the red side. so if i took a little bit of this viridianand i mix that together, i'm going to get something that ends up what i call grayingdown. it becomes more of a grayish color. see how that works? and that gray is veryimportant because i can take it and and introduce
it into the flesh tones and it helps to balanceout all this warm color that is going on. i can take another, a darker, you can getall sorts of variations, and it also depends on the value. like i said earlier, the valueis extremely important so i try to determine the value quickly at the beginning. now ican take this, the ultramarine blue and mix it into the cad scarlet and gold ochre becausethe cad scarlet leans more towards the orange side. so if i took this and mix it in here,i'll get a different gray. now the reason it's so important to mix compliments is becauseby mixing the compliments, you are always going to get the correct gray. if i was totake black and mix it into these mixtures to try and gray it down, it wouldn't be thesame. even though these two, you see i mixed
the ultramarine blue with this mixture overhere. when i place this gray, i'm not sure if the camera will pick it up, it's so subtle,this gray is different than this gray. this gray is warmer, it's a little different. it'sa different color. now if i took, well, i'll show you what happens if i didn't take thecompliment. instead of taking the ultramarine blue and mixing it into this combination here,if i took a little bit of that viridian and mixed it into this, i'm going to get something different.it's not going to be the same. try to warm it up there, but you see, it's different.you can use this in the flesh tone somewhere, but the reason it's different, it's goingto different than the other two all together, is because it's not the compliment. when italk about a complimentary color, the primary
colors are red, yellow and blue. and wheni talk about a compliment to those colors, i'm talking the compliment to yellow wouldbe more of a purple color. the reason that purple is the compliment to that yellow isbecause the purple contains equal amounts of the other two compliments, blue and red.the same thing with red. the compliment to red is green, the reason why it complimentsred is because it contains equal amounts of the other two compliments, blue and yellow.,so that is why it works. but you can see here, i can mix this flesh tone here that wasn'tthe direct compliment, and you can see we have three different grays. they are verysubtle, but these little variations are very important when painting skin tones. let memove this white out of here. i can take this
yellow, this is a warmer yellow so the complimentto a warmer yellow is a cooler purple. so i'm going to take this purple here, and mixthese guys together. that's more than what i wanted, so let's try a little more purplein there. as i mix these two together i'm going to get a different gray. you can seethis one is different than all three of those. so we have different grays here that happen.let's try a little bit of cad orange. cad orange is the direct compliment to this ultramarineblue. when i say direct compliment, when you have a color wheel, and you have one colorand one hundred and eighty degrees on the opposite side of that color is going to bethe direct compliment and that is what i'm talking about when i'm talking about directcompliments. when it comes to color and values
and all that, the principles of painting iswhat i call them, the foundation, the things that you really need to know. i discuss allthose in my instructional art dvd series that i came out with, so i won't spend time onthat now. this is a different gray. you see all the different grays you get? that is justall from mixing compliments, just simple warm and cool mixtures together. now if i wantedto, let's see. this is just a paint scrapper that you can get at any hardware store. whenyou use a glass palette, it makes it real easy to clean it right up and just scrapeit right off. if i take some raw sienna, a lot of times you can just use this, a straightraw sienna sometimes, if nothing else works. not too much or else it will look fake. rawsienna is a nice color. it doesn't have a
lot of tinting strength. it's a weak colorwhen it comes to using it in mixtures. it doesn't take a lot of white to really lightenthat up. so that is just one thing to keep in mind when using raw sienna. sometimes i'lluse that, and then if there are other areas, like in hair, you can take some of this cadgreen pale and mix that in there. you can use that in blonde hair. sometimes there's another thing thati use. i'll do this one too. another color combination i use. it's kind of strange. it doesn't always work but ,sometimes it does.but basically you just try by putting it down and if it works, then use it. if it doesn't,then scrape it off and try something else. here is manganese blue which is sort of likea turquoise type of blue, kind of like a tourquoise blue. definitely more of a warmer blue thanultramarine blue because it contains more
yellow. but sometimes i'll take a manganeseblue and mix it with a cad scarlet and then after i mix it with cad scarlet, i'll takea little bit of that raw sienna and throw that in there too, and sometimes that worksgood,too, for a shadow area, but it doesn't always work. you have to try different colorcombinations. i will say this though, it's interesting, when it comes to color, thereare times that i go back and forth, warm and cool colors within a value so that i'm basicallykeeping the value the same but i'm changing the temperature within that value very slightly.so i'm changing, i'm going from warm to cool within that value to help turn the form becausei know that if i change the value, let's say if i have a shadow area that i'm painting,if i lighten that value up, i'm going to make
it bounce, make it pop out of there. the valueis going to jump out and that is not what you want. you want it to stay in value butyou want it to help turn the form, and by doing warm and cool color changes, it reallyhelps to give you that illusion as well. but that is just something for you to think about.so as i'm doing that warm and cool thing back and forth, a lot of times i've basically exhaustedeverything that i think that i could do. i've tried direct compliments, i've tried mixingmore of an orange color, more of a red, i've tried basically every combination that i canand every warm and cool situation that i think would work. and when i get in a situationlike that, there are times when i throw everything out the window and basically i reverse theprinciple. so instead of being a warmer color
where it should be warm, i will reverse itand make it cool and sometimes, for whatever reason, it seems to work. sargent did thatquite often, especially on an indoor subject. there are times in drapery or in a women'sdress or something where the light should have been warm because the light source iswarm, where he's reversed it and made it cool and it just works perfectly. so there aretimes where you have to reverse the principle. if nothing else works, then reverse it andsee what happens. and of course if you reverse it and that doesn't work, then don't keepit there. basically, the important thing is to experiment, to try different things. youare always a student, never stop learning, never stop experimenting. that's the thrilland fun of being an artist because you get
to play with this stuff all day. of courseby the end of the day you have to have something done on canvas, but you get to experimentand get to practice and get to apply different techniques and different color combinations,and you remember the things that work and definitely remember the things that didn'tand you don't do them again. anyhow, this is basically how i get started on mixing fleshtones, what else can i show you here? cad scarlet by itself works really nice. sometimesi'll use that with titanium white if i need a cool highlight. i'll add some of that coolcad scarlet because it's not as warm as that cadmium orange and not as cool as that cadred, so it's a nice balance. it seems to work. i don't want to use a straight cad orangebecause you will see it is much warmer when
you compare it to this. this is much warmerthan the cad scarlet mixture. and it's the constant comparison to the warm and cool,that back and forth thing. let me grab a little more titanium white. i'm about to run outof that. and then i'll mix a little bit of that sap green, that warmergreen i was talking to you earlier about. sap green is a much warmer green. you cansee when you compare the sap green and viridian. it's more of a yellowish green. the complimentto a yellowish green is more of a purpleish red, so something in here, if i mix thosetwo together and get a different gray. another thing as i'm mixing paint, make sure you haveenough to mix. don't try to save paint, even if finances may not allow you to buy a tonof paint, because paint is not cheap. but
if you skimp on paint and only mix a littlebit at a time - let's take one of these little palette knives here, and all i do is mix littlethings like this, the thing is, you are not going to get enough paint down because assoon as you dip into that, that paint is going to be gone in one or two strokes and you willhave to mix more. and by mixing more, it's easier to mix a big pile of paint insteadof going back and constantly mixing the same value, the same color and saves you time inthe end. this is a different gray. cad red deep is a beautiful red, let me clear someof this over here. i will use this when i want a cooler red in an area. it doesn't takea lot of cad red to do the trick. when you mix it with white, it looks a little morelike a grayish red as opposed to mixing just
a cad red. cad red doesn't look as gray whenmixed with white, or even alizarin crimson. permanent alizerin crimson. if you are lookingfor a nice pink, a cool pink, permanent alizerin crimson and white, titanium white, is a nice,beautiful pinkish color. i should mention this last one here before i run out of spaceon my palette. let's do this. prussian green is a beautiful grayish green that works reallywell in flesh tones. let's put a little white in there. it's not as powerful as viridianwhen it comes to tinting, but it's a very nice in-between green, between viridian andsap green. it's not as powerful as a viridian but it's not as warm as a sap green either,very nice. you can mix that with some of these colors as well. you'll get some nice results.anyhow, this is basically what i would do.
i wouldn't take this much time at the beginning,but this is what i would basically do before i start a portrait, or before i start paintingon a portrait, just to get some different colors laid out so that when i want to gointo painting, i can take a brush into these mixtues. i have something i can just dip into,if i need to gray it down. there are all sorts of beautiful color variations you can getby using warm and cool compliments and putting them together. anyhow -- i hope this has helped explain a little bit better howi go about mixing flesh tones. this isn't the only way to mix flesh tones and thesearen't the only colors you can get, obviously. you can get hundreds of colors in differentvariations just by doing this all day long. but, basically, it will give you a good ideaof how i start out. and let me mention this
too, the reason i start out with a warmercolor and then add the cooler colors into it is because it's much easier to gray a colordown than it is to get color back into that gray. for instance, you saw how easy it wasfor me to gray this color down, by adding a cooler color. i can gray that down prettyeasily, but if i gray it down too much and then i realize i need to make it warmer andi need to get that reddish color back in there again- so let me go ahead and get the valueright first- then we have to add some of that back in there. as i try to get more colorback in there, it's still becoming gray. it's not as brilliant as when it first startedout over here. it's not as brilliant. so that is why i find it easier to mix cooler colorsinto warmer colors to gray it down. it's much
easier to gray a color down than it is totry and warm it up again. anyhow, hopefully this will be of interest to you. and prettysoon i'll post how you can use these colors on a portrait and how they apply and thatis coming sometime soon. i wish you guys all the best in your studies. take care and i'lltalk to you soon.
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