Skin tones with a limited palette

Posted by on December 5th, 2014  •  0 Comments  •  Full Article

I’ve been studying a book on portrait painting and decided to try a limited palette of:

  • Naples Yellow
  • Yellow Ochre
  • Burnt Umber
  • Venetian Red
  • White
  • Black

I cheated and used a little Ultramarine and Alizarin Crimson in the background to get a  quicker control of colored darks. But the face is almost exclusively Naples Yellow and Venetian Red. That red is very powerful and must be used in small doses. The muted nature of those two face pigments makes them much easier to use than mixing up from raw primaries like Cadmium Yellow and bright red.

I feel I am approaching real skin tones. Thanksgiving Self Portrait, 11 x 16 oil on board.

 

self portrait

self portrait