How to create skin color with watercolor. Flesh color. How to get skin color

07.07.2019

In order for a pictorial portrait of a person to turn out to be alive and natural, the artist must be able to compose skin color well. Each painter has his own secrets, but still there are general rules and patterns, knowing which, you can easily compose any shades. Let's learn this art together!

Let's say you decide to write. What paints do you need to have on hand to get a person out of them? Firstly, you need to stock up on whitewash, but you will need to delicately, in small portions, mix other paints with them. Healthy is always a gentle warm shade, because our entire skin is permeated with the smallest network of blood vessels. For an experiment, take a sheet of white paper, attach it to the face of the palest young lady, and you will see how strikingly even the lightest skin color differs from the lifeless white color of a paper sheet.

So, paints such as ocher, red, and, perhaps, sienna or umber can still come in handy with whitewash. But the last paints can only be used when applying shadows and very carefully. Squeeze a little white on the palette from a tube, dilute them with a solvent and mix in a little bit of ocher, red and yellow. In this case, more ocher should be used, and, of course, less other colors.

Various skin tones

In painting, there are no ready-made recipes for different shades, it all depends on the intuition of the artist and, of course, on the complexion of his model. After all, if you draw a person with dark skin, then his flesh color will differ significantly from the skin color of an untanned pale person.

Then you need to know that women's skin is lighter and more delicate tones than men's. And the flesh color of the torso, arms and legs is also darker than the skin of the face. Different parts of the body may vary in color. In painting there is such a thing as reflexes. This is a reflection on the surface of objects of color spots that are nearby. For example, if your model has a red cap on her head, then a warm reddish glow will certainly fall on the face you want to draw. All this must be taken into account when working on a portrait.

How to Achieve Flesh Color When Painting

With watercolor, everything is much simpler, but for some this material may seem more complicated than oil. The fact is that when working with watercolors, the white background of the paper itself plays the role of whitewash. After all, watercolor is transparent, and it should be applied very lightly so that the lower strokes show through the upper ones.

Now let's start composing the flesh color. Take a plastic palette and put some water on it. Then take a soft squirrel brush, wet it well and lightly, with the very tip, smear it over the red watercolor paint from the box. Then stir with this brush in the palette with water, and you will get a faint transparent pink color. Add a little yellow there, just don't overdo it, you need quite a bit. And you can start painting a portrait.

Examples of portraits in which the perfect skin color. Photos of these paintings

In the history of Russian painting, there were many artists who painted beautiful portraits. Rokotov, Levitsky, Bryullov ... Take a reproduction of the portraits of any of these painters and examine them properly. With what art they managed to convey the most complex bodily tones!

Here, for example, is a portrait of Maria Lopukhina by V. L. Borovikovsky. What a wonderful complexion this woman has and how skillfully the freshness and youthfulness of her skin is conveyed! Try to unravel the artist's secret. What paints did he use to achieve this result, do you think? It is best to fight over the solution of the secret of the great master of painting while sitting at an easel with a palette and a brush in your hands.

It took a long time to realize my mistake and understand that white will never be the decisive color when mixing skin tones. In fact, over time I've learned a few ways to bring portraits to life - and none of them used Jaune Brilliant, Burnt Umber, or white paint, which I have appreciated so much over the years.

If you want to achieve a Caucasian skin tone:

Red cadmium (Cadmium Red)
Yellow Ocher
Cerulean Blue

The skin tones are much more complex than the pinks I thought could be extracted from Jaune Brilliant. In fact, the creation of skin tones is based on a combination of red and yellow pigments. By mixing Cadmium Red and Permanent Rose together, you can get a great skin tone that can be used to create highlights, and the shadows get deeper with the addition of Yellow Ocher. If you find that the resulting shades are too warm for your taste, then you can always add a drop of Cerulean Blue (Cerulean Blue) to make it a little colder.

As an alternative...

Cadmium Red Light
Cadmium Yellow Medium
Dioxazine mauve (Dioxazine Mauve)

Mixing Cadmium Red Light and Cadmium Yellow Medium also helps create an elegant base shade. To create shades, add Dioxazine mauve (Dioxazine Mauve).

If you want to portray the skin of dark shades:

The last palette mostly used colors in the orange-violet spectrum, and besides, this led to really great results, in my opinion, the first palette, which mixed Cadmium Red (Cadmium Red) and Permanent Rose (Permanent Rose), is much more versatile . Moreover, it is it that can be easily turned into dark shades.

Red cadmium (Cadmium Red)
Permanent pink (Permanent Rose)
Sienna Burnt (Burnt Sienna)
Umber Natural (Raw Umber)

Instead of Ocher Yellow or Ceruleum Blue, use Burnt Sienna for darker skin tones. If a dark pigment is needed, add Raw Umber until you are happy with the final result.

Adviсe:

There is no place for white when it comes to drawing a portrait! If you think the color is too dark, you can be tempted to add some white to lighten the tone. It is the addition of white that leads to uneven color, and the portrait looks flat. It is much better to add a little water until the desired shade is on the paper. If you've already got paint on your brush and suddenly feel the tone is too dark, use water, a brush, and a cloth towel to gently remove the paint from the sheet.
Use a sheet of test paper to avoid unwanted color. Cadmium Pink mixed with Permanent Pink looks quite dark on the palette, but on paper it looks like a very natural tone. It's not hard to forget that watercolor paints get lighter when they dry. It is for this reason that it is very useful to have a sheet of test paper handy. Make sure the test paper is exactly the same quality as the one you are painting on, as paper quality plays a major role in the final color.
Work on the painting in layers. Skin is made up of many colors rather than one color for shadows, another for midtones, and a third for highlights. The power of watercolor lies in its ability to create layers that are almost transparent, allowing you to create layers of deeper hue. The gradual overlay of colors will also save you from spoiling the whole drawing, on which you spent about two hours to put a thick layer on paper, which you can later regret.
Don't forget to add white when drawing the eyes. When you start painting the first translucent base layer of the portrait, don't be afraid to paint white in the eye area. There is no such thing as a pure white eye - in fact, it only appears that way in photographs. You can increase the contrast between the eyes and skin when midtones and details are added later.
Be mindful of the environment. If you draw an image of someone near a red wall, then there is a chance that the skin will be redder than this wall. Why? The light illuminating the depicted subject is probably reflected from the red wall, absorbing the color. Try it yourself; Find a sheet of colored paper or a piece of plastic and stand in front of a mirror in direct sunlight. The closer a colored object is, the more of its pigment is reflected on your skin.

Choosing the right shade in watercolor often seems rather complicated, but it is not, and just like in other types of painting (for example, in oil), it is created by mixing different colors. This also applies to how to get skin color from watercolor. In this article, we will try to sort it out.

First, let's mention an important feature of watercolor. Unlike oil, where white is used to lighten the color, in watercolor, paper is used for this purpose, which is visible through the paint layer, as well as water, which dilutes the paint. Therefore, in order to make the skin color watercolor, it is not at all necessary to use white paint.

How to get skin color in watercolor

At the beginning of the work, we will prepare watercolor, water and brushes. As a palette, you can use a paint cap, cardboard or watercolor paper itself - any surface that will not immediately absorb paint.

Next, we apply red color to our palette, and then ocher (or, if it is not there, mix yellow and brown). They can be mixed in equal amounts or with a predominance of ocher, depending on the skin tone.

To make the color less saturated, we dilute it a little with water (but do not make it completely pale, given that watercolor often loses its brightness when it dries). We apply the resulting shade to areas of the skin - this is how we will make a “highlight”, which will shine through the upper layers and set the overall tone.

It's okay if at this stage you can't get exactly the right shade, it's much more important now to set the right tone. The tone can be warm or cold, in a living person it is usually warm, even if the skin is very pale. Therefore, in order to correctly convey the color of the skin with watercolor, it is undesirable to add cold colors at the first stage. To show the lightness of the skin, it is enough to dilute the paint with water.

Further work process (layers)

When applying further layers, you can use other colors: brown, blue, green, earth and their various variations. Cool colors are often mixed with warm colors (brown, ocher, yellow) to create shadows, sometimes they can even be used in their pure form to contrast with warm fragments. In order to write the skin more correctly, you should carefully look at the face of the person, photograph or drawing from which you are writing.

Skin Tone Chart

To make it easier for you to choose the right shade, we have compiled an approximate table of color ratios. Of course, there are many more shades, but using the table as an example, you can get a general idea of \u200b\u200bthe patterns of mixing colors. In addition to the flesh color characteristic of Europeans, the table includes others that are suitable for writing the skin of representatives of Asian, African and other races.

How to paint skin color in watercolor
We will teach you how to mix watercolor correctly to get flesh color when painting the skin of the hands and face. We consider all skin tones of people of different races

Good afternoon, friends and guests of my store! I want to tell you about the interesting experience of Alisa Luchinskaya, which may be useful to you. As when mixing acrylic paints from seven colors, you can get 40 shades.

Russian paints were taken as a basis "Ladoga" of the Nevskaya Palitra plant.

Here are 7 primary colors with their numbers as they are written on the tubes: yellow medium (220), red (331), blue "FC" (500), pink light (2204335), burnt umber (2204408), black (810), titanium white (2204101 ).

1. Light colors

Light colors are obtained by mixing primary colors with titanium white.

2. Dark colors

Add some black paint to the main colors:

3. Shades of green

Obtained by mixing yellow medium paint with black or blue "FC". Asterisks "*" indicate colors that are obtained as a result of mixing - and can be used further to obtain new shades.

4. Violet and magenta hues

These shades are obtained when we mix red or light pink paint with blue "FC". Adding white will give lavender or purple hues.

5. Orange shades

Here we mix red and pink light paint with yellow medium. The two bottom colors are already more complex formulas, so it’s probably easier to stock up on ocher paint in advance

6. Earth tones

All of these colors feature burnt umber. The addition of white makes dark earth tones pastel.

Since the paints are mixed "by eye" - it is rather difficult to specify the proportions to obtain one or another color. Anyway, in the process of painting, you will have to mix the shades, listening to your own feelings “Is this color needed now or a little darker / lighter / greener / redder”, etc. Therefore, if you are not yet good at mixing colors, the author recommends investing one evening in training in mixing shades, according to the formulas above, as well as in your own experiments to obtain new colors. After that, you will definitely never confuse the marsh color with emerald green (as often happens), since you will remember the process of obtaining them from your own experience.

And to make it easier for you: print out for yourself such a blank on A4 sheet:

On it you will sign with a pencil all the colors used and the resulting shades.

Mixing acrylic paints (40 shades out of 7), adaptation
Good afternoon, friends and guests of my store! I want to tell you about the interesting experience of Alisa Luchinskaya, which may be useful to you. As when mixing acrylic paints from seven colors, you can get 40 shades.

The artist will be able to draw a natural portrait of a person only when he derives his unique recipe for achieving a natural complexion on canvas from the general rules. The article reveals the question of how to get flesh color from paints, in what proportions to mix them.

General rules for obtaining flesh color

In order to understand how to make flesh color and paint a portrait in oil, you should look for white in the bins, which are then gradually diluted with other paints.

Science classifies a person's color type into 4 types according to the seasons (depending on the color of the skin, eyes and hair).

On paper, healthy skin is soft, warm beige. Even people with the fairest skin cannot say that their face is white: just compare it with a blank sheet of paper - the difference will become obvious.

In addition to white, the palette will feature ocher, yellow and red cadmium, possibly sienna and umber (only for the purpose of shading, apply very carefully). You will need to put a small amount of white on the palette, dilute it with a solvent, then add ocher with red and yellow. In the latter components, the proportion of ocher in relation to other dyes is higher.

Aspects to consider

There is no perfect recipe for this or that shade - the result directly depends on the look of the artist and the complexion of the sitter.

Primary aspects to consider:

the skin of women is paler and silkier than that of men,
body, arms and legs - darker than the shade of the face,
the reflection of a color spot located near the object is depicted on the canvas (for example, the reflection of a hat falls on the face).

Color combinations

Flesh color in watercolor

With watercolor things are easier, but sometimes it may seem that the material is more difficult to work with than with oil. An alternative to whitewash when working with watercolor is the background of the paper, which will show through the strokes.

Color order:

Take a plastic palette - put a few drops of water on it.
Use the tip of a soft squirrel brush to smear red watercolor.
As a result of mixing a small amount of red with water, a faint pink hue is obtained.
After getting the mixture - add a little bit of yellow.

The consistency is ready to start painting a portrait.

One of the flesh color blending recipes

In the theoretical works of contemporary artists, there is the following combination of colors.

Mix 6 parts of yellow paint with 1 part of red, mix until a uniform yellow-orange consistency.
Add ½ part blue. After manipulation, a red-brown tint will appear.
Add white dye to the resulting mixture. The proportion is not universal - the amount is directly proportional to the desired color: dark or light.

Examples of ideal complexion portraits in painting

Many Russian artists have found a unique balance to portray the face in a natural manner. Their names are known in the world of painting: Bryullov, Levitsky and Rokotov, as well as many of their colleagues. On the reproductions of their works, the hand of the master is clearly visible in the image of the most complex skin tones.

For example, the handiwork of V.L. Borovikovsky “Portrait of Maria Lopukhina”. The artist managed to depict the girl's youth on paper, with her radiant fresh skin. Experimental artists of our day will be able to repeat the result only by choosing a flower combination with their own hands.

Obtaining flesh color by mixing paints
To obtain a flesh color, it is necessary to observe the optimal proportions of other colors. You will need to apply whitewash, dilute with a solvent, add ocher.

There are several ways to get skin tones by mixing watercolor paints. Unfortunately, when I first started painting portraits, I didn't know about these possibilities. I thought I knew exactly how to achieve a skin tone using only Jaune Brilliant No. 1 and No. 2, but I was always unhappy with the results. The Burnt Umber that I used to create the dark and deep hues and added white to it made the final look dull and lifeless. I was stuck and didn't know why.

It took a long time to realize my mistake and understand that white will never be the decisive color when mixing skin tones. In fact, over time, I've learned a few ways to bring portraits to life - and none of them used Jaune Brilliant, Burnt Umber, or white paint, which I have appreciated so much over the years.

If you want to achieve a Caucasian skin tone:

Red cadmium (Cadmium Red)
Yellow Ocher
Cerulean Blue

As an alternative.

Cadmium Red Light
Cadmium Yellow Medium
Dioxazine mauve (Dioxazine Mauve)

Mixing Cadmium Red Light and Cadmium Yellow Medium also helps create an elegant base shade. To create shades, add Dioxazine mauve (Dioxazine Mauve).

If you want to portray the skin of dark shades:

Red cadmium (Cadmium Red)
Permanent pink (Permanent Rose)
Sienna Burnt (Burnt Sienna)
Umber Natural (Raw Umber)

Instead of Ocher Yellow or Ceruleum Blue, use Burnt Sienna for darker skin tones. If a dark pigment is needed, add Raw Umber until you are happy with the final result.

Adviсe:

There is no place for white when it comes to drawing a portrait! If you think the color is too dark, you can be tempted to add some white to lighten the tone. It is the addition of white that leads to uneven color, and the portrait looks flat. It is much better to add a little water until the desired shade is on the paper. If you've already got paint on your brush and suddenly feel the tone is too dark, use water, a brush, and a cloth towel to gently remove the paint from the sheet.
Use a sheet of test paper to avoid unwanted color. Cadmium Pink mixed with Permanent Pink looks quite dark on the palette, but on paper it looks like a very natural tone. It's not hard to forget that watercolor paints get lighter when they dry. It is for this reason that it is very useful to have a sheet of test paper handy. Make sure the test paper is exactly the same quality as the one you are painting on, as paper quality plays a major role in the final color.
Work on the painting in layers. Skin is made up of many colors rather than one color for shadows, another for midtones, and a third for highlights. The power of watercolor lies in its ability to create layers that are almost transparent, allowing you to create layers of deeper hue. The gradual overlay of colors will also save you from spoiling the whole drawing, on which you spent about two hours to put a thick layer on paper, which you can later regret.
Don't forget to add white when drawing the eyes. When you start painting the first translucent base layer of the portrait, don't be afraid to paint white in the eye area. There is no such thing as a pure white eye—in fact, it only appears that way in photographs. You can increase the contrast between the eyes and skin when midtones and details are added later.
Be mindful of the environment. If you draw an image of someone near a red wall, then there is a chance that the skin will be redder than this wall. Why? The light illuminating the depicted subject is probably reflected from the red wall, absorbing the color. Try it yourself, find a sheet of colored paper or a piece of plastic and stand in front of a mirror in direct sunlight. The closer a colored object is, the more of its pigment is reflected on your skin.

How to achieve skin tones with watercolors
It took a long time to realize my mistake and understand that white will never be the decisive color when mixing skin tones. In fact, over time, I've learned a few ways to bring portraits to life - and none of them used Jaune Brilliant, Burnt Umber, or white paint, which I have appreciated so much over the years. If you want to achieve a Caucasian skin tone.

Drawing is a hobby, loved since childhood. You can draw landscapes, still lifes, portraits, etc. But the most difficult thing is to draw people. And the main problem when drawing a person is how to get the flesh color. Let's talk about it.

flesh color

Skin color is a color that has a skin tone of a person. This usually refers to the skin of the white race. Corporal is considered one of the most difficult to reproduce in painting.

Getting Skin Color

If you don't know how to make a skin color, then mix ocher with white, yellow and red. Moreover, there should be the most ocher, very little red, and the tone depends on the amount of white. You can also mix white and pink, adding yellow or beige to them. And you can use white to dilute brown paint until you get the right shade, or add white to a mixture of yellow and purple colors, the amount of which will depend on how much the color will turn out lighter. In any case, skin paint can only be obtained experimentally.

Shades of flesh color on different parts of the body

On different parts of the body and in different people, skin color is very different. The skin of men is usually depicted as darker than that of women. The main color is in the chest area, and below the tone is darker and more ruddy. On the arms, legs, elbows and knees, the skin is darker and redder than in the very center of the chest. The fleshy areas of the body have warmer hues than the bony ones. Dark skin contains more blue than light skin. And in the sun it has more red hues than blue. There are many purple tones in ruddy skin. Medium skin tone contains a lot of gold. The face is usually divided into 3 zones: from the chin to the nose - cool tones, from the nose to the eyebrows - red tones, from the eyebrows to the hair - golden tones.

Now that you know how to get flesh color, you can safely paint pictures with the presence of people.