Mixing guide
How to mix skin tones
Skin is not pink. Build it from ordinary earth colors and work in this order: value first, then temperature, then saturation.
There is no tube that does this. Every convincing skin tone in painting is mixed from colors you already own, and almost all of them sit closer to a muted orange than to pink. A tube labelled portrait pink will give you a plastic result because it starts from the wrong family.
Work in one fixed order and skin stops being difficult. Value first: decide how light the plane is, ignoring its color. Then temperature: is this plane turned towards the light or away from it. Only then saturation, which is almost always lower than you think.
The classic proof of this is the Zorn palette — yellow ochre, a red, black and white. Four tubes, and it covers nearly the whole range of human skin. If your mixtures look wrong, the problem is usually value, not hue.
The mixtures
Each one worked out on a real palette with the spectral model. The number after the mixture is how far it lands from the target: under 2 you cannot see the difference, under 4 it does not matter in a painting.
Fair skin, lit plane #E7BC9E
The forehead or cheekbone catching the light. Mostly white with a trace of everything else.
7× Titanium White +3× Yellow Ochre
7× Titanium White +3× Yellow Ochre
9× Titanium White +2× Burnt Sienna +1× Yellow Ochre
10× Burnt Sienna +2× Yellow Ochre +1× Viridian
Very thin wash, roughly 1 part paint to 31 parts water.
Mid skin, half tone #C08E6B
Where the form turns away from the light. This is the color most of a face actually is.
7× Yellow Ochre +2× Titanium White
This palette cannot quite reach that color with 3 pigments in one mixture. What you see is the closest it gets, which is worth knowing before you spend an afternoon trying.
7× Yellow Ochre +2× Titanium White
This palette cannot quite reach that color with 3 pigments in one mixture. What you see is the closest it gets, which is worth knowing before you spend an afternoon trying.
6× Titanium White +2× Burnt Sienna +1× Burnt Umber
10× Burnt Sienna +2× Viridian +1× Yellow Ochre
Very thin wash, roughly 1 part paint to 8 parts water.
Deep skin, lit plane #8A5A3C
Warmer and far more saturated than a shadow of the same darkness.
1× Yellow Ochre
4× Yellow Ochre +1× Ultramarine
9× Cadmium Yellow Light +8× Ultramarine +2× Alizarin Crimson (permanent)
9× Lemon Yellow +6× Burnt Sienna +5× Burnt Umber
Medium wash, roughly 1 part paint to 1 parts water.
Skin in shadow #6E4B3E
Cooler and duller. Resist adding black, which kills the life in it.
10× Yellow Ochre +1× Ivory Black
3× Yellow Ochre +2× Ultramarine
10× Burnt Sienna +3× Ultramarine +1× Titanium White
10× Burnt Sienna +3× Ultramarine
Medium wash, roughly 1 part paint to 1 parts water.
Worth remembering
- Keep the forehead cooler, the cheeks and nose warmer, the chin slightly more yellow. That single rule does more for a portrait than any specific mixture.
- The shadow side of skin is not a darker version of the light side. It shifts in temperature as well, usually towards the cooler side under warm light.
- Use less red than your eye asks for. Red reads as strong in a pile of paint and weak on a face.
- Check your result against the photo in grayscale. Most skin that looks wrong is right in hue and off in value.
Your paints, your photo
These mixtures assume the palettes above. Tick off what you actually own and pick the color straight out of your reference instead.