Daniel smith colours former portraits

That's a very difficult question to answer as painting portraits isn't a formulaic process - it is very individual to the artist. If you look at portraits by different artists, you will find that they all use different palettes of colours. I tend to use Cadmium Red/Yellow Ochre with perhaps a touch of Alizarin for skin tones, adding touches of cerulean or cobalt in cooler places on the face. However, that is my way and others won't use those colours and will choose something completely different. I think you have to experiment and work out what sort of portrait you want to produce and then work from there. I know when people are just starting out with a subject, style or medium, they tend to want to find a set of rules to follow which they hope will bring success - but in my experience all that brings is frustration as you are working to someone else's ideas and rules. Set your own and be your own artist. Good luck!

I can't, because I don't use them. But even so, I feel a need to comment. If you think that any range of paints is going to help you to produce better paintings, I fear you may be deluding yourself. Yes,use the best quality of paints you can get, but your ability to paint a portrait or anything else does not depend on your choice of paint brand. It depends rather on your choice of colours, and your ability to use them - good paint always helps, but it's no substitute for ability and experience. You seek a range of colours for portraits - leaving aside who makes them, you could try light red; venetian red; a touch of cadmium red (and no more in watercolour, because it's opaque); permanent rose; raw sienna; yellow ochre (also opaque); Naples yellow (very opaque). You could add blues - cobalt, ultramarine - greens - Pthalo, viridian - browns - burnt and raw umber. And indeed you could use so many other colours - Winsor Red, Terre Verte, Manganese Blue, Raw Umber, Indian Red, Indian Yellow, Permanent Mauve. But unless you know how to mix them, and where to apply them, this is just a useless list of colours which, if mixed indiscriminately, will end up with particularly claggy mud. With respect, you're asking the wrong question: there is no one manufacturer who can sell you a perfect range of colours for portrait or any other painting. There are many brands of paint, most of which are as good as any other. You need a few earth reds; a brighter, true red (cadmium, scarlet lake, or vermilion); a transparent yellow - raw sienna usually fills the bill; and something to cool them with, which will usually be a quiet green, or a weak blue. Avoid black - try burnt umber for your brown, and you can mix that with a stronger blue. Or burnt sienna. There's nothing wrong with the Daniel Smith range, apart from its expense, but it offers very little that, say, Daler Rowney, Winsor and Newton, Old Holland, Rembrandt artists' ranges can't. The secret, if there is one, lies in the mixing, which should be kept as simple as possible. The choice of paint brands in whatever medium is something you should come to much farther along the path - especially in oil, where these differences hardly matter when you're starting out, but become more pertinent farther down the line. But the fact that you're asking this question at all in relation to specific brands suggests to me that you're looking for a paint brand to accomplish that which your present abilities cannot - use artists' quality paints, because they have more pigment, but don't waste your money on very expensive paint under the delusion it'll make you a better painter in itself, because it won't.

I was a bit dogmatic there, and made assumptions I had no business making about your level of ability, of which of course I know nothing. Apologies for that, especially as you're a new member and not used to my lovable little ways.... The advice wasn't bad - the brand of paint is of less importance than what you do with it - but the way it was given probably owed a bit to the weekend gin and tonic. It isn't really my mission in life to frighten everybody away from asking questions.

For a basic range of colours I suggest: Burnt sienna Yellow ochre or raw sienna Ultramarine blue Cadmium red Start drawing the structure of the face with burnt sienna. Shadows can be mixed by combining burnt sienna and Ultra blue. The ears, cheeks and nose tend to be redder because the blood vessels are nearer the surface. The forehead can sometimes have a hint of yellow especially in men. You can use a wider range of colours for the clothes the sitter is wearing, but for the face and hair it's simpler to use just the four colours.