Question for Garth Herrick

[Brenda Ellis]

Garth,
I just found your painting, "Human On My Faithless Arm" and was astrounded.
The skin tones are exactly what I have been wanting to paint.
Could you please tell me what you used to get those beautiful tones? I've been afraid to try skin tones without some peachy color as I've worried about making everything look like it's made of clay.
But you have done it so masterfully. I hope you will indulge me and post the palette that you used for this skin.

[Garth Herrick]

Dear Brenda,

Thank you so much for your complimentary remarks! I am flattered.

Human on My Faithless Arm is a painting on a birch panel I painted ten years ago exactly to this week. I was much younger then.

Since I no longer have the painting, I will try to recall what I used at the time for colors, from memory.

I know at the time I had premixed and tubed four basic custom flesh colors from a very light to a very dark value. I don't use these any more, but they probably figured as a foundation for the painting, over which I did quite a lot of glazing with earth colors like raw umber and Mussini Bohemian Green Earth. There is probably some Rose Dore glazed in the pinker areas. In the end all the color adjustments were made according to observations from life. It was not formulaic. The quality of natural daylight that fell upon me as I gazed in the mirror did not call for any bright peachy colors (like those you fear), and the mirror like most had a slight greenish cast to it which had some influence upon the interpretation of color as well. I would say in the end the color development in the painting was on the cool umber-y side with a hint of green from the mirror, and slightly understated. I am pretty sure I had earth colors like Raw Umber, Caput Mortuum Violet, Terra Rosa, Raw Sienna, Yellow Ochre, and Bohemian Green Earth. I probably used some Flake White, and some Brilliant Yellow Light. as well.

Those four custom tubed colors are reproduced for you below, as best as I could. I scanned the wet paint from the tube with a Gretag-MacBeth Eye-One-Photo color spectrometer. Depending on your monitor calibration, the colors should be reasonably accurate to the wet paint samples at my side.

My recommendation though is to not be concerned about these arbitrary colors, but to closely observe color effects and nuances yourself from life.

Rather than use premixed basic colors like I did ten years ago, I now mix flesh tints from scratch on the palette.

Thanks again for your compliments and palette question. I hope this can help.

Garth

[Brenda Ellis]

Thank you, Garth.
I will continue to observe from life. I'm trying to find out what colors I need to create what kind of look. Thank you for sharing your info. on this painting. You were that good ten years ago??? I am humbled.

Caput Mortuum Violet, Bohemian Green Earth, Flake White.....
At some point in the future, I'll probably be like Chris Saper and have a closet full of tube colors I don't use. But how will I know what works for me without trying them all?