How to Paint People and Different Flesh Tones

How to Paint People and Different Flesh Tones

Let's take a look at some step by step tutorials and techniques I use to paint people with acrylic paint. This lesson is about painting and does not cover drawing skills or address proportion to a great extent. If you learn to use the correct colors and shadowing techniques on your finished drawing you should do fine.

Accurate Drawing. First, you should start with an accurate drawing of the subject you plan on painting. Some artist use the grid method, while others free hand the initial drawing. One hint that you need to take to heart is this; if you don't have an accurate drawing, do not attempt to paint the person. You more than likely will not achieve a likeness if you don't have a likeness first in pencil.

The color of flesh. Once you have an accurate drawing, decide what color the flesh will be in the painting. Different artists use a different variety of colors. I suggest purchasing a good tutorial book that describes different ethnicities and colors for different flesh.

A common cool light skin tone would be titatium white mixed with alizarin crimson with a touch of cadmium red. For a darker or warmer version of this you would add a touch of cadmium yellow medium for a flesh peach color. I have even added a touch of burnt umber to darken this skin tone.

A common mixture for dark skinned people would be titatium white, burnt umber, cadmium red, and a touch of cadmium yellow medium. To darken this tone, add more brunt umber and cadmium red medium.

Shadows and dark areas. Shadows could generally be warm if the flesh is cool and vise versa. If your flesh is warm and red, your shadows could be the flesh mixture mixed with a little of any blue. Some darker areas of flesh can be the flesh mixture with a little burnt or raw umber mixed. The areas around the nose, eyes, ears and mouth usually have some reds visible due to the fact the skin is thinner and you can see blood and blood vessels.

Painting is a step by step process.

Start by accurately drawing your subject. When you are satisfied with the likeliness of the drawing, use an ink like consistence of burnt umber and outline the drawing. If the subject you are painting is very fair skinned you should lighten this mixture.

Next use a very thin consistency of the main flesh color and block in the entire area of flesh. You will have the main skin color complete. To finish the flesh tones, find areas of shadow and begin adding thin layer by thin layer of flesh color to create shadow areas. You will build the colors up by gradually using several layers. The areas that usually have some sort of shadow are the lower eye lid, the area on the side of the nose and under and around the mouth.

You build the layers that are lighter in color the same way only using lighter colors. The areas that have highlighted or lighter values are the top eyelid, the cheeks, and chin.

Your painting will come to life when you start adding the details of the eyes nose and mouth. Practice using the different colors for flesh tones because to accurately capture a person likeness you need to have the color of their skin accurate.

This article was first published as How to Paint People - Different Flesh Tones - Learning to Paint on Ezinearticles

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