How to get a flesh tone. How to achieve skin tones with watercolors

Every aspiring portrait painter or artist should definitely learn how to create realistic human skin tones. As you gain experience, you will develop your own, convenient for you, color mixing technique.

In general, the ability to correctly select and mix colors is a whole art, because each person has his own individual skin tone. Once you've learned how to create realistic skin tones, you can experiment with surreal images and hues as well. Consider options for how to make skin color.

How to make skin color gouache?

By mixing different shades, you can make the skin color perfectly accurate. But first you need to determine which shade you need, since one or another combination of colors will be used to recreate them.

Create a light skin tone:

• Color matching – you will need to try mixing several colors. In order to get a light skin color, prepare the following colors:
  1. White;
  2. Blue;
  3. Yellow;
  4. Red.
• Mixing colors - paints are most conveniently mixed on a special palette. If you don't have one, any other work surface will do. For example, you can use a piece of thick cardboard. Put a drop of each color on the palette.
• We mix all the colors in equal quantities - using a brush, mix the same amount of blue, yellow and red paint. By mixing the three primary colors, you get a dark base - as it should be, because further you will lighten it.

Important! Before dipping the brush into paint with a different color, be sure to rinse it in a container of water.

• Compare shades - you should have a shade in front of your eyes that you would like to copy. Compare your base to the shade you want to achieve. If you are drawing from a photo, then consider its lighting.
• Lightening - if you need to achieve a lighter shade, then add yellow and white paint. With the help of yellow paint, you get a warmer shade, and with white paint - a colder one.

Important! Paint should be added little by little, and before adding more, mix the colors well.

• Add red paint. If you already have a fairly light tone, but not yet a realistic shade, then you can add a little red paint, but not too much, unless you are aiming for sunburned skin tone.
• Correct the color - again compare the color you have with the one you want to get. If the shade is too light, then you can add a little blue and red. But, if the shade is too different from the desired, it is better to mix everything again.

Important! You can mix several color options and then choose the one that best suits your painting.

Create a medium skin tone:

• Selection of colors of the desired shades. To make a medium skin tone, mix large quantity colors. Prepare the following colors:
  1. Yellow;
  2. Red;
  3. White;
  4. Blue;
  5. natural sienna;
  6. Burnt umber.
• Mixing colors - similarly to the previous instructions, apply a drop of paint of each color to the palette.
• Mix yellow and red. By combining the same amount of yellow and red paint, you get an orange color.
• Add blue. Little by little and gradually add blue paint to the base. If you want to get a darker shade, then try adding a little black paint.
• Compare shades. You should have the skin tone you want to copy in front of you. Compare the foundation you received with the shade you want to achieve.
• Add red paint - red is mixed in quite a bit. It is better to add paint little by little and gradually so that you do not have to redo the base.
• To create a darker olive color, mix equal amounts of natural sienna and burnt umber. You should have a dark concentrated mixture. Gradually add the desired amount of this mixture to the base.

Important! This mixture can be used in place of of blue color. For a darker olive color, add some yellow mixed with green.

• Mix until you get the right tone - combine colors until you have at least five shades that you are satisfied with. From them you can choose one option that suits you.

Important! It is better to use one or two shades.

Create dark skin tones:

• Color selection desired colors- to achieve a really realistic shade, here you have to experiment a little. Prepare the following colors:
  1. natural sienna;
  2. Burnt umber;
  3. Red;
  4. Yellow;
  5. Purple.
• Mixing colors - all according to the same principle as before.
• We make the base. Mix equal amounts of natural sienna and burnt umber. Also mix equal amounts of yellow and red paint. Then gradually add the yellow-red mixture to the first mixture.
• Comparing Shades - Compare your base with the shade you want to achieve.
• Create a dark skin tone. To make the skin color more saturated and dark, you can add a little purple. Here, dark purple is suitable, which can be obtained by mixing dark gray or black with purple. You need to mix until you get the perfect match.

Important! Black paint can ruin the base, so it should be introduced very little and gradually. Try mixing until you get the perfect result.

• Create a lighter shade. To lighten up a little too dark color, use burnt umber instead of purple. Take a small amount of the mixture and see what color you get.
• Lighten up the shade. This can be achieved by adding an orange color to the base. Orange will brighten the base well, giving it a natural look, while white can dilute it too much.
• If you have achieved desired result, start drawing.

Important! To add shadows and highlights, use grey colour. When drawing skin, it is advisable to use several shades at once.

How to get skin color from plasticine?

In plasticine animation, live characters are often animated, so to create their hands, faces and other parts of the body, a color is needed that is similar to the color of human skin. Making a leather color from plasticine is actually not so difficult, you just need to show a little patience.

If you could not find plasticine of the color you already need in the store, then it can be obtained by mixing other colors. To get the color of the skin, we need the following colors:

• White - the whole piece;
• Dark pink - 3-4% of the whole piece;
• Other colors - 5% each.

When you knead these colors into a homogeneous mass, you will already approximately see what color is obtained.

In order for a pictorial portrait of a person to turn out to be alive and natural, the artist must be able to compose skin color well. Every painter has his secrets, but still there are general rules and patterns, knowing which, you can easily compose any shades. Let's learn this art together!

Let's say you decide to write. What paints do you need to have on hand to get a person out of them? Firstly, you need to stock up on whitewash, but you will need to delicately, in small portions, mix other paints with them. Healthy is always a gentle warm shade, because our entire skin is permeated with the smallest network of blood vessels. For the experiment, take a sheet of white paper, attach it to the face of the palest young lady, and you will see how strikingly different even the lightest flesh color from the lifeless white color paper sheet.

So, paints such as ocher, red, and, perhaps, sienna or umber can still come in handy with whitewash. But the last paints can only be used when applying shadows and very carefully. Squeeze a little white on the palette from a tube, dilute them with a solvent and mix in a little bit of ocher, red and yellow. In this case, more ocher should be used, and, of course, less other colors.

Various skin tones

In painting, there are no ready-made recipes for different shades, it all depends on the intuition of the artist 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 what women's skin it happens to be lighter and more delicate tones than in 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 vary in color. In painting there is such a thing as reflexes. This is a 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 Painting

With watercolor, everything is much simpler, but for some this material may seem more complicated than oil. The fact is that when working with watercolors, the white background of the paper itself plays the role of whitewash. After all, watercolor is transparent, and it should be applied very lightly so that the lower strokes show through the upper ones.

Now let's start composing the flesh color. Take a plastic palette and put some water on it. Then take a soft squirrel brush, wet it well and lightly, with the very tip, smear it over the red watercolor paint from the box. Then stir with 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 need quite a bit. And you can start painting a portrait.

Examples of portraits in which the perfect skin color. Photos of these paintings

In the history of Russian painting, there were many artists who painted beautiful portraits. Rokotov, Levitsky, Bryullov ... Take a reproduction of the portraits of any of these painters and examine them properly. With what art they managed to convey the most complex bodily tones!

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 youthfulness of her skin is conveyed! Try to unravel the artist's secret. What paints did he use to achieve this result, do you think? It is best to fight over the solution of the secret of the great master of painting while sitting at an easel with a palette and a brush in your hands.

Technique 2: Skin tones 1 Skin tones 2

All seasoned human artists are increasingly showing an avid interest in creating realistic skin tones. Over time, you will create your own suitable color combinations, but a little help in understanding the right ways to mix colors will get you started.

Steps

Method 1 of 2: Skin Tones 1

• If you add red, the color will look more pink.
• If you add yellow, then the color looks warmer.
• Red and green make brown
• Red and yellow make orange
• Red and green are complementary colors.

Warnings

• Start with as little green as you can, you can always add more. You don't want your skin tone to turn green!
• Don't be afraid to add green. Lighter green strokes will help create more vibrant shadows, and red areas will become warmer. The best way to make colors brighter is to gradually add their complementary colors, even if, at first glance, it seems to be counterintuitive. A brushstroke of green will brighten up the red. A smear of magenta/violet will do the same with yellow.

There are several ways to get skin tones by mixing watercolor paints. Unfortunately, when I first started painting portraits, I didn't know about these possibilities. I thought I knew exactly how to achieve a skin tone using only Jaune Brilliant No. 1 and No. 2, but I was always unhappy with the results. The Burnt Umber that I used to create dark and deep shades and added white paint to it made the final look dull and lifeless. I was stuck and didn't know why.

It took a long time to realize my mistake and understand that white will never be the decisive color when mixing skin tones. In fact, over time, I've learned a few ways to bring portraits to life - and none of them use Jaune Brilliant, Burnt Umber, or White paint which I have treasured so much over the years.

If you want to achieve a Caucasian skin tone:

• Red cadmium (Cadmium Red)
• Yellow Ocher
• Cerulean Blue

The skin tones are much more complex than the pinks I thought could be extracted from 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 get a gorgeous skin tone that can be used to create highlights, and shadows will deepen with the addition of Yellow Ocher. If you find that the resulting shades are too warm for your taste, then you can always add a drop of Cerulean Blue (Cerulean Blue) to make it a little colder.

As an alternative...

• Cadmium Red Light
• Cadmium Yellow Medium
• Dioxazine mauve (Dioxazine Mauve)

Mixing Cadmium Red Light and Cadmium Yellow Medium also helps create an elegant base shade. To create shades, add Dioxazine mauve (Dioxazine Mauve).

If you need to depict the skin dark shades:

The last palette mostly used colors in the orange-violet spectrum, and besides this led to really great results, in my opinion the first palette, which mixed Cadmium Red (Cadmium Red) and Permanent Rose (Permanent Rose), is much more versatile . Moreover, it is it that can be easily turned into dark shades.

• Red cadmium (Cadmium Red)
• Permanent pink (Permanent Rose)
• Sienna Burnt (Burnt Sienna)
• Umber Natural (Raw Umber)

Instead of Ocher Yellow or Ceruleum Blue, use Burnt Sienna for darker skin tones. If a dark pigment is needed, 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 can be tempted to add some white to lighten the tone. It is the addition of white that leads to uneven color, and the portrait looks flat. It is much better to add a little water until the desired shade is on the paper. If you've already got paint on your brush and suddenly feel the tone is too dark, use water, a brush, and a cloth towel to gently remove the paint from the sheet.
• Use a sheet of test paper to avoid unwanted color. Cadmium Pink mixed with Permanent Pink looks quite dark on the palette, but on paper it looks like a very natural tone. It's not hard to forget that watercolor paints get lighter when they dry. It is for this reason that it is very useful to have a sheet of test paper handy. Make sure the test paper is exactly the same quality as the one you are painting on, as paper quality plays a major role in the final color.
• Work on the painting in layers. Skin is made up of many colors rather than one color for shadows, another for midtones, and a third for highlights. The power of watercolor lies in its ability to create layers that are almost transparent, allowing you to create layers of deeper hue. The gradual overlay of colors will also save you from spoiling the whole drawing, on which you spent about two hours to put a thick layer on paper, which you can later regret.
• Don't forget to add white when drawing the eyes. When you start painting the first translucent base layer of the portrait, don't be afraid to paint white in the eye area. There is no such thing as a pure white eye - in fact, it only appears that way in photographs. You can increase the contrast between the eyes and skin when midtones and details are added later.
• Be mindful of the environment. If you draw an image of someone near a red wall, then there is a chance that the skin will be redder than this wall. Why? The light illuminating the depicted subject is probably reflected from the red wall, absorbing the color. Try it yourself; Find a sheet 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.