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mix for skin

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Syd Edward

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What do our portrait artists use as colours to mix for ordinary white peoples skin colour . No sunburn or Real Deal orange or strange pink shade. And are green shadows on the face still the thing. I am all ears( joke).....Syd🐷

David Perry

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Your pig logo reminds me Syd of the time a scientist made a replacement ear from pig skin. He fitted it to a patient and asked how it was. The patient said good, a little crackling but otherwise good. D
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, Napa

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Not generally a portrait artist, but to get the ball rolling - for 'white' skin, I'd use basically a brown-orange (not Trump orange: that would be overdoing it). So, depending on the individual of course and their age, it might be basically white (in oil or acrylic), Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna or perhaps Light Red, darkened with a touch of Cobalt Blue in places and a splash or two of a crimson. Or a brighter yellow (even Cadmium) and a brighter red (also, even Cadmium), with a touch of, say, Ultramarine mixed with an umber or Burnt Sienna. Green is often used, in one of three ways: as an underpainting in oil, in which Terre Verte was the usual choice, mixed into the paint to make darks - eg, Viridian mixed into a crimson - or used straight, so that the painting could be read optically, leaving the eye to adjust matters. All of those can work. To settle on one mix and call it 'skin', though, is always going to be problematic, because we vary so much - my skin is extremely pale, and hardly even takes a tan; my landlord's on the other hand is reddish by comparison, and much darker. It's just the way we were put together ... so you could probably quite convincingly paint me using the three standard Mars colours (Red, Yellow, and Orange) plus white and a bit of blue mixed with the red or the orange - but that might be hopeless for many other people and give a completely misleading impression.
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Lewis Cooper

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This is a brilliant idea for a post. I like to paint people, for me everything else is background...so why didn't I think of it? I'm doing one now with five people in it, all 'white', and I always try for different skin tones. My way probably doesn't count, because I mostly do cartoon style. My start point is lemon yellow + permanent rose + plus a touch of cerulean blue. I vary it by doing the same mix but with different yellows reds and blues...and I see what happens. I've also used a watery orange. I shall be watching this post with interest.
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, Napa

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You'll get a generally cool skin tone with that mix, Lew - in this case, oddly enough, the cerulean blue might even warm it up a bit because of the yellow component it 'carries'. It's working very well for you, anyway - and here, you've got two more or less transparent colours (the Lemon Yellow is usually semi-transparent, the Permanent Rose should be completely so) and a quite opaque blue: you could vary the mix here quite significantly, to get different facial tints - which no doubt you do.

Keith Orange

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Syd, about four years ago I started using a limited palette of yellow ochre, cad red, black and mixing white for flesh tones and hair. It's called the Zorn palette after the artist who used it. Since then I've not used other combinations of colours when painting portraits in oil. http://michaellynnadams.com/zorn-palette/
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Jim Morris

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I am certainly no portrait artist so have no standards to maintain. Because of that fact I never even think about what skin colour to use. Since we aren't photographers and what we turn out is about the artist not the picture (surely that's what art is?) , does it really matter? I probably start with a light brownish orangish pinkish drop-in and add whatever I feel like from then on. ( I may even start with green or blue ) My portraits, if anyone is in a kind enough mood to call them that, are very unstudied and quite rapid and I suppose this is mainly because I'm not painting from life or getting paid for commision work (I think I'd still do the same thing if I were). The painting/portrait or whatever, has to be the artist's idea of what they see or why even bother? I truly believe if a person wants a perfect mirror image they should have a photograph taken. For what it's worth I use quite a bit of acrylic white, but that's a personal trait. In an age where facial tattoos and puce peach eye shadow with moustache eyebrows are high fashion, who's going to do a colour check on paintings? ps, I realise the question is a genuine one so my views really matter little anyway. Do as you will is my dictum..😆

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by Wanderer69