Hans Holbein the younger, A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling – Anne Lovell? 1526-28 You’d be amazed at just how dull skin tone can be in portraits when they are isolated. Then you can begin to really see to if it needs to go brighter. The remedy?ĭon’t reach for the brighter colours no matter how strong the urge will be until your background, models clothes etc. In fact, what you end up with is a painting that looks artificial. When mixing a colour, say for a cheek, we have a running commentary to ourselves that goes something like this “that doesn’t look like a cheek colour, it’s too dull, cheeks are rosy, I need a bit more red, that’s better” We have a deep rooted childhood knowledge that skin tone is ‘pink’ and when first trying to mix colours that match skin can be hard to try and disassociate yourself from your prior logical perceptions of what colour should be, rather than how it actually is. Trying to match a skin tone can play havoc with our minds. Micheal Harding – Artists’ Quality oil paints Matching a skin tone Winsor & Newton – Student quality Griffin quick drying oilsĭaler Rowney – Student Quality Georgia oils These are not a full range of colours, I have just isolated the colours most relevant for portrait painting. I always prefer artist quality because of the saturation of pigment. Micheal Harding paints have brilliant saturation, Winsor & Newton are widely available, it really does come down to personal preference. You can intermix brands, but each one will have slightly different properties. Often Student quality paints have less of a range than the artist quality equivalent.īelow are some colour charts from some of the major paint manufacturers. Not all colours are created equal, and not all colour ranges will stock the exact colours above. So don’t get overwhelmed by a whole range, if you have a white, muted yellow, muted red, and a cool colour to tone then down green or black (black mixed with white gives a cool blue hue) you will be fine. He also said, all you need for figure painting is Naples yellow, vermillion, flake white and black. “You will see that the art of drawing surpasses everything else and that the qualities of color and light are only secondary to it.” (All the paints are Winsor & Newton Artists’ oil, the Persian red and red umber are made by Old Holland) The above palette is from the Angel Art Academy in Florence, each school often have their own palette. The raw umber acts as a muted green complement to the red. As you lay colours onto the coloured ground they will look pinker than if you placed them directly onto a white canvas due to the effects of simultaneous contrast with colour. It has a lovely coolness to it which will prevent you going overboard with the pink. Raw umber – often used mixed with white as a toned ground for portraits. Raw umber has a cool, greenish tint so is very handy for subtle toning. The black and the raw umber are used to cool down the ‘pink’ in your mixtures. With this palette, you can mix a base tone with the yellow ochre, white and light red. (I usually use Winsor & Newton Artists’ oil, the Light red and English red are made by Old Holland) Titanium white, Yellow Ochre, Light red, English red, Raw umber, Ivory black There is nothing more tricky than portraits. What would give it the glow I was after? Sleep deprivation, a looming deadline and caffeine guided my decision… a warm orange glaze, now affectionately known the ‘Tom Jones look’. This was a self-portrait for a competition, the deadline was that afternoon and I had been working late into the night convinced that the painting looked too dull, too muted. Vanessa: “You do! Look how orange it is, you look like the freakin’ Tango man” Vanessa: “You do, what have you done? The portrait was looking great last night!” Vanessa: “Why do you look like Tom Jones?” It was a bright sunny morning after a long arduous night painting and I was feeling pretty pleased with myself, I had finally cracked my self-portrait…. Let me take you back several years to the beginning of my experiments with portraiture. John Singer Sargent How not to paint a portrait, a personal tale “Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend” Head Study – After Collins, Oil on Linen, Will Kemp
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