Skin only
 

I mix a different palette everyday. If I think I'll only be painting a face or one hand, I'll mix a palette for just what I'm painting that day. To put out colors of paint routinely often means throwing out paint routinely. This is a shot of a recent palette made just to paint one hand.

Tim,

Let's play 'name all those paint colors' please. You go first.

Every color, every time
 

There have been times when I have tried to abbreviate the colors I set out, and it has never worked for me.

I am a big proponent of destaurating colors by adding their complements and/or a neutral of either same or opposing temperatures, but more often the latter. As a result I can't recall a time where I didn't have need for a red-orange-yellow complements.

Not only do I rely on complementary grays, I work hard to convey reflected color where it is appropriate, so I routinely look for ways to identify and incorporate some background or clothing colors into the skin tones, especially in the plane that turn away from the light source. Conversely, I think that using some skin tones in non-skin objects helps immeasurably to unify the color harmony of the entire piece.

If you can make the 'mini-palette' work for you, more power to you. I can't see myself recommending it to painters, though.

But Chris what colors are there?

If I'm painting people I will not use my power colors that I might use with flowers. I would not likely put out 5 quinacrodone reds and purples, nor would I use thalo blue and thalo green.

This palette painted this hand - I think there are more complements on there than you see-I can make some awesome skin compliments with a green made from black and yellows (and do). On the image is ultramarine blue, ivory black and a chrome green. These will do for me.

Ultimately, the final painting is all that matters, and the paintings will endorse or undermine the worth and usefulness of said palette.

Tim,

When I say "every color" I mean every color on one's regular palette; apologies for not being clearer. At the moment I am using sort a modified Daniel Greene palette, and the standard colors I use and put out every day are:

Permanent rose
Permanent Alizarin
Cad scarlet
Raw sienna
Ochre
Transparent earth red
Asphaltum
Raw Umber
Ivory Black
Flake white
Thalo Green
Ultramarine Blue

Even if I know I will only be working on skin for a session, I still set out every color on this palette, knowing I will incorporate most if not all into the skin mixtures. Yes, there is some waste, but I am pretty used to knowing how much paint I will use before the Flake white and medium make it dry out, so I think it's the least wasteful I can do.

I completely agree with you, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, regardless of how you get there.

There we go Chris, that is almost the list I put down above in the photo (no thalo for me here) it scares me and always ends up on my elbow. If I had a person with a thalo blue shirt on in strong light that was throwing that color into my skin colors I sure put it out. My drawer of colors is about 50 but I'll use 12-15 only most days. Seven would work but that would be more work. Some colors are just lovely short-cuts.

Chris,

Can you describe Asphaltum? How can I be as old as I am and not have heard of it??:o

Asphaltum is a Gamblin color, recommended by Bill Whitaker. It is similar to a deep transparent burnt umber, but just a little warmer than my Gamblin Burnt Umber.

Bill has said that he has been experimenting with the Ozog paints, and mixes an asphaltum equivalent from Ivory Black plus Transparent Red Oxide.

A "Search messages" on asphaltum turns this up.

ps You must be younger than you think!

Thanks, Chris.

Asphaltum sounds like such an old-fashioned word, as in 'absinthe'. (I know, not exactly a PAINT). I've been so excited to discover the not cheap Cobalt Violet, which has been my miracle skin solver. I'm sleeping under rocks I tell you!

Daily
 

I've been trying to paint on skin tones everyday even if I'm mostly doing backgrounds so that I stay in touch with the colors. This has helped greatly.

Dear Chris,

I'm with you on the unity of the painting. If for instance, I paint a lady with a blue dress, and the background has lovely oranges in it mostly, then I might add a very tiny pattern of the background orange color, such as tiny little textures into the dress to unify the dress to the background. Or, I might just, instead, paint some of the orange onto the blue dress in areas. And the blue from the dress would show up in the background somehow also.

If I were painting from life, then I would certainly co-ordinate the dress to the background before beginning the painting. That's what they do on movie sets and television shows.

But then again, I'm a big proponent, perhaps misguided, of unity and the dominance of one color and the dominance of temperature being very important also.

Also, when painting portraits on porcelain, then I paint from a full load of colors, but I also keep an additional portrait palette handy (my colors never dry until fired). When I paint portraits in oil, then it's the whole gamut. But Tim has a great idea here. I'll try it. :)

This painting is by Fritz Zuber-Buhler

Skin color palette
 

This is a very informative thread, I'm wondering if it started somewhere else? It seems like a continuation from another discussion?

Dear Chris Saper, I just bought your book and it's WONDERFUL!!! I am the kind of person who needs things explained, specifically skin color, and your book is so helpful. I have spent the last 3 days immersed in your book and I have learned so much. I thought I understood about everything you said in your book, but could you elaborate on the following quote from earlier in this thread please:

"I am a big proponent of destaurating colors by adding their complements and/or a neutral of either same or opposing temperatures, but more often the latter. As a result I can't recall a time where I didn't have need for a red-orange-yellow complements. "

I find I am pretty adept at rendering things but I never had much color theory and I have trouble 'seeing' the warm and/or cool colors in skin tone. I have painted a lot from life, but much about color still is still mysterious to me. As I said, your book has helped me so much. I understand graying a color by adding its complement. But wouldn't there be must one complement, not a choice between a cool complement or a warm complement? Isn't the complement the color on the exact opposite of the color wheel? And what do you mean by a red-orange-yellow complement?

Thank you and again, your book has answered so many questions about skin color!!!!

Joan Breckwoldt

Celeste
 

That Fritz ZB painting has really great use of color repetition in the near plants and the distance. This is subtle stuff and too rare.

Ditto on that Tim.

Unity and the treatment of edges, in my humble opinion, are the two major things that are missing in some of the best work being painted by some of the great painters of today. If they take that final step then it's all glory after that. :)

Thanks for the tip on the skin colors.

Joan,

I will try to answer you briefly. (Ha!)
By red-orange-yellow complements, I am speaking of complements to what I think of as the local color of skin - that is, some type of orange (varieties of either red-orange, orange, or yellow-orange); the corresponding complements would be either be blue-greens, blues or violets.

Yes, there would be only one true complement for any given color, and when mixed together will create a beautiful neutral gray.

Pure colors, though, can also be desaturated be adding neutrals, which is one of the advantages I see in using a palette similar to Daniel Greene's. When I mix up my daily palette (it's the same every day), I mix:

-a warm neutral, consisting of Raw sienna (a color which is already desaturated)+ a little Ivory Black- and then several values of this color lightened with white;and

- a cool neutral, consisting of Grumbacher's Raw umber (cooler that other manufacterers' RU, and like any of the earth colors, is also already desaturated), and several values lightened with white.

Even the addition of my warm neutral to a mixed local skin color will have a desaturating effect. A cool neutral will desaturate the original color even more.

(Wow, I hope this explanation is understandable, it is sometimes so much easier to just show someone!)

A really limited palette
 

Just for the heck of it, I'll often set myself the task of painting (usually just a quick oil sketch) using one of three very limited palettes:

1) Cad red, yellow ocher, ivory black and white.

2) aliz crimson, cad yellow med, prussion blue, white.

3) Raw umber, burnt sienna (or transparent oxide red) and white.

It's amazing what you can do with nothing more than these colors. I usually do this after browsing through yet another catalog with the idea of adding still more exotic colors to my already full "chuck box."

Warm and cool neutrals . . .
 

For Chris Saper:

Chris:

I know those warm and cool neutral mixes you mentioned earlier in this thread. I've long used Raw Umber with varying amounts of white to mix into other colors in order to temper (reduce their vigor) them, such as with cad red or burnt sienna to make a softer, pinker, cooler skin tone, and with Yellow Ochre to make those peculiar greens, and so on.

Would you tell me how you use the Raw Sienna/black mix, and perhaps other of your favorite "tempering" mixes.

This has been one of my most difficult parts of painting flesh tones -- the part about knocking them back. It doesn't take a genius to pile on reds, yellows, or combinations of these when the flesh is bright and fresh, but moving into those subtle and somewhat cooler half tones is sometimes a puzzler.

Dear Richard,

Like you, I work hard to incorporate more subtlety into my sin tone transitions. There are many times when I really use the mixed neutrals as the skin base, and then add small amounts of pure color to them, whether Cadmium Scarlet, Yellow Ochre, Thalo Green, Ultramarine Blue, Permanent Rose,or Alizarin, depending on the situation.