Hi Kati, I think the best thing I have ever done to help me get good skin is to work from the bottom up with earth pigments. By this I mean instead of starting with high chroma paints like cad red, aliz crim, cad yellow, etc. and then toning them down and neutralizing them down, I start with lower chroma earths like burnt sienna, yellow ochre, raw umber, etc.
Then I raise the chroma as needed, sometimes a cheek will need a little aliz crimson, or lips may need some brighter red, but most of the time the earths can cover any skin tone needed and I wind up with much less pumpkin people!
I also think that because skin tones require mostly white, and if only use titanium white, I will wind up with pastel, washed out looking skin tones too. So for skin, I avoid titanium white and grab flake and mixing whites instead.

I think I offered my advice to someone just recently regarding the mixing of natural-appearing skin colors, but I will offer the same “recipe” again.

Most skin colors are not much more complicated than neutral grays, with just enough of a touch of “hue” to identify them as flesh colors. Realistic skin colors are not the orangey, high-chroma, garish colors that many artists believe them to be, but just off-neutrals.

To create a realistic skin color, you only need 4 colors, and they are the following: Ivory Black, and earth red such as Venetian Red, or Terra Rosa (depending upon the brand), Yellow Ochre, and White.

Start with a pile of white, into which you will mix a touch of the Terra Rosa, and a small amount of Yellow Ochre. Darken that mix with Ivory Black. Continue mixing, and adjusting these ingredient colors until you can smear some of your mixed color on your own forearm, and find it impossible to detect where you skin leaves off, and the paint color begins.

I can nearly guarantee that you will be able to eventually match the color of your own skin with only these 4 colors, and it really doesn’t make much difference of your choice of Yellow Ochre, or Black in terms of brand.

To darken, I use such colors as Raw Umber, or Burnt Umber, Black, and any number of other “darkening agents”, such as Asphaltum, Van Dyke Brown, etc., etc.

To lighten, with some higher-chroma colors, I would suggest Cad Red Light, or Vermilion, some Naples Yellow, mixed with a lot of white.

Give that a try as a brief “exercise” sometime, and decide for yourself if it will work for you.

I know of a very good portrait painter who includes Winsor & Newton “Flesh Tint” as part of his portrait palette, as well. It is not cheating to use a pre-mixed color, if it saves you some mixing time.:D

I love “fresh” colours to make a skin tone. Zinc-Titanium White, Ultramarine pink, Yellow ochre, Cobalt blue deep, Cadmium red light, Cadmium red deep, Opaque red Iron oxide with bluish undertone and natural Vine black. Cobalt pink is almost ideal choice for me to tweak yellow ochre color. It is an expensive, but ultramarine pink can’t replace it, because Cobalt makes ideal, fresh rose color, while ultramarine dulls to a violet and makes mud with yellow ochre. Sienna is far not my favorite pigment to make skin, but it is perfect to paint hairs. For eyes I prefer Green Earth. For lips I can use Cadmium red deep, Cadmium red light, Zinc-Titanium white, Iron oxide and Cobalt pink. I hate limited palettes which can limit color gamut.

I just finished watching this video on YouTube and thought you might enjoy it as well: http://youtu.be/qV7Xm3kbq1c

I’ve only been painting people & portraits relatively recently, but I like Alizarin Crimson or Quinacridone Violet + Lemon Yellow as the base mix. Lightened as needed with white. This will allow more chroma than earth colors but is good if you want more color variation for high-key paintings. I will try Nickel Titanium Yellow to see how this works.

Cerulean Blue (or hue) is good to gently darken or grey down. And for the occasional higher chroma place, a bit of a ‘pure’ light red in your mix.

Hi, Patrick!

I have Cerulean Blue Genuine (PB 35) and I also made a few hues with some manufacturer recipes to see how close I would get to it (usually with phthalo blue PB 15:3, a little of Ultramarine Blue, a touch of Quinacridone Violet PR 122, titanium white and filler, to reduce the tinting strength.)

I also tried a few variations, like not adding Quinacridone Violet (PR 122,) and adding more or less white.

My conclusion is that, although you can get close in hue to Cerulean Blue with these combinations, they don’t have the subtleness that Cerulean Blue does. Either it’s the same hue, but grayed down because of the complementary color, or it jumps in chroma, because of the Phthalo in the mix, which is almost absolutely necessary in the “recipe.”

I’ve read about a few people comparing Cerluean Blue vs a professional, out-of-the-tube Cerulean Blue Hue and they usually say that, although it is very close in masstone, it leans more to green than Cerulean Blue does, and that’s a bit more frustrating to get the “soft” mixes PB 35 gives because of the higher tinting strength of the hues.

I think a nice approach to imitate Cerulean Blue (PB 35) if you don’t have it is to paint a less satured object with it (maybe even completely grayed down) and glaze a self-made or out-of-the-tube hue of with a filler (acrylic gel, linseed oil, etc.) If even that is too strong, maybe mixing a little of Raw Umber (PBr 7) to it (or a mixing complement) would help.

Hi Mythrill

Yes – in my experience, the Phthalo Blue-based Cerulean Hues can look the same as real Cerulean in masstone, but are more greenish and chromatic in undertone and in mixes…you could say a bit more ‘artificial-looking’.

I find both are ‘gentle’ in mixes, but the last time I used real Cerulean I was surprised at its low tinting strength. Where you need subtle color gradations, I find that to be a good thing. For mixing darks, I love real Prussian Blue. As an aside, maybe a Prussian-based Cerulean Blue Hue would be closer to the real thing? (less chromatic tints)

If it weren’t for cost, I might prefer real Cerulean, but as always…I find that it doesn’t take long to learn to adapt by adjusting your mixes accordingly whenever you replace a color with a similar (but slightly different) color.

It has been my thorough study of Da Vinci that brought about my interest in portraits. I think the part about portraits that people make the most mistakes on are not color, but value. Depending on your light source, a natural light source will never have a huge variation in value from light to dark. Even the darkest shadows sometimes are only scaled 2-3 shades darker. In most circumstances the biggest value difference will be in the hair color, the orbital structure of the eyes, the iris, and in an evening setting, the shadows of the nostrils.

If abstract painting is your destiny, you might want to use extreme dark against extreme light and vibrant colors (ala chiaroscuro). Again, there are millions of ways to do it correctly, but there are billions of ways to do it incorrectly. Find your style and learn from your mistakes. There have been many helpful tips in this blog for you to start with.