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  • #464285
    therise
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        I’ve been having difficulties finding a mixture that will produce darker shadows on caucasian skin tones. Most granulate, which doesn’t work that well when painting skin. I’ve tried many combinations, with little success. Does anyone have any advice?

        #722414
        Watercollar
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            Welcome to the forum!
            It will depend very much on your scene lighting scenario.
            Generally you’re looking at darker valued, mid saturated purple to scarlet pigments to form the basis of your skin shadow mixtures. Have a look at : PR179 Perylene Maroon, PR206 Quinacridone maroon, PR175 Benzimidazolone red, PR171 Benzimidazolone Maroon, PV29 perylene violet – as base dark valued pigments. PV19 quinacridone rose or red, PR122 quinacridone magenta, PR242 disazo scarlet, PR254 pyrrole red and PO73 scarlet to boost mixture chroma and blue and green Phthalos to cut down chroma or insert cool colour passages into the shadows when needed.
            You don’t need all of these of course but whichever you choose will be lightfast, transparent and mix good skintone darks.

            Sebastian.

            (C&C Welcomed.)

            #722412
            briantmeyer
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                The issue is skin tones require mixing. This means they are in the middle of the color wheel – so orange require blue, purple requires yellow, red requires green. At the same time they are diluted with water to get the correct lightness – that is what makes what is going on hard to understand.

                The easiest are granulators.

                Burnt Sienna PR101 by Winsor Newton is a bit more saturated, if diluted it does wonderful caucasion tones. Some Yellow Ochre and Transparent Red Oxide ( another PR101 by Daniel Smith ) let you adjust the specific color from red to yellow. The thing you have to realize is it’s just orange mixed with blue.

                To darken – Burnt Umber is a good solid color, it is technically a red/green axis mix.
                Also Caput Mortum ( another PR101 i think ) is also very good, it’s a purple leaning ( yellow to purple axis ) which gives natural results.

                And I always include Ultramarine blue in this since it tones burnt sienna perfectly – the “janes gray” is a term for the black this mixes.

                With this set of colors, since they are already almost skin tones, you can use them as is. The only color missing is viridian and you have a color wheel.

                I would suggest playing with these, for me this was a foundation which I use even though I am using other colors.

                So how do you get the above to work as non granulating?

                What I do is using my staining colors, and mix up pans with premixes which are these colors. Since I focus on figurative work, this really helps me focus on the painting.

                My staining colors are
                Benzi yellow (PY154)
                Pyrrole Orange RS (PO73 )
                Pyrrole Red ( PR254 )
                Phtalo Green ( PG7 )
                Phthalo Turquoise ( PB16 ) and/or blue ( PB15 )
                Diox Violet (PV23)

                So get some pyrrole orange, mix it with just a touch of phthalo blue – don’t try to mix a skin tone, rather try to match burnt sienna – remember we have trouble mixing tints with white, we tend to only understand the mass tone color. But if you know burnt sienna works well, you know this works well. This is really hard to do since phthalo is so strong, but what I do is premix it into a base color which acts just like burnt sienna.

                Another option is permament brown by daniel smith ( this is actually benzi brown ) and mix that with some Benzi yellow, this gives me a base color, again the same color. Since it is a benzi too, it works well with this palette.

                A base color is a convenience mix you use as a home base, since you use it so often, it’s easier to have a set color in a tube or larger pan, which makes it easier for you to vary this color constantly. You don’t use it as is, rather you constantly adjust it as you go.

                —-

                But you don’t have actual skin tones, since skin is a bit opaque.

                But we are using watercolors, not gouache, so the point here is glow – I try to focus on the staining colors for “power” and value, but use opaques on top to give it a little obscuring opacity. Opaques by their nature dull and deaden color, if you understand negative painting, and apply those concepts to color, this can make a picture pop.

                That being said, this is probably the most accurate combo of colors I have found. Note this handles all races, not just caucasian.

                My Opaque palette

                Naples Yellow Deep – by Da Vinci
                Venetian Red – by Winsor Newton
                — a base color mix of the above two colors, to match the WN version of Burnt Sienna
                Caput Mortum – darkening purple ( yellow purple axis )
                Burnt Umber – darkening brown ( remember it’s red/green axis )

                —–

                For further information, look up darkening neutral on this site, or via google.

                #722413
                therise
                Default

                    Thank you for such thorough information,. I’m going to take this advice and start mixing and playing with skin tones.

                    #722415
                    Pthalo White
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                        Thank you for such thorough information,. I’m going to take this advice and start mixing and playing with skin tones.

                        I find that’s the best thing to do, because it’s very easy to mess up skin tones. Also, you may want to make notes of the “recipes” for your mixes, and archive them for future use. Just an idea.

                        Also, if you go to the Pantone Colour website, they have a whole chart full of paints for skin tones for every human on the planet. That may help you. Good luck!

                        https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=pantone+color+chart+skin+tones&qpvt=pantone+color+chart+skintones&FORM=IGRE

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