How to Mix SKIN TONES with Oil Paint: ONE Tube Color + B&W
Summary
The video demonstrates a simplified palette for mixing skin tones, focusing on a warm-cool color approach. It explains how to pre-mix values and chromas using black, white, and transparent red oxide (Winsor Newton Burnt Sienna). The presenter highlights that mixing black and white creates cooler grays, useful for pushing color notes, and how adding white to transparent red oxide creates higher chroma colors, shifting towards pinker tones in the face.
Key Insights
A simplified warm-cool palette using black, white, and transparent red oxide can effectively create a base for skin tones.
The presenter advocates for a simplified palette consisting of black, white, and transparent red oxide (specifically Winsor Newton Burnt Sienna) as a foundational tool for mixing skin tones. This approach simplifies the process of achieving a range of useful skin tones by pre-mixing different values and chromas.
Mixing black and white creates cooler grays that can be used to introduce subtle blueish tones into skin tones.
When mixing black and white, the resulting grays are slightly shifted towards blue, making them cooler. These cooler grays are valuable for introducing subtle blueish or cooler notes within skin tones, which can add depth and realism. The presenter notes that the perception of color is relative, and these grays can appear surprisingly blue in context with warmer colors.
Transparent red oxide mixed with white creates higher chroma and shifts towards pinker tones as chroma decreases, useful for facial features.
Mixing transparent red oxide with white results in colors with higher chroma (more saturation). As the chroma is lowered by adding black and gray, the color shifts from a more reddish hue towards yellow. This shift is particularly useful for skin tones, as high-chroma areas of the face, such as the cheeks and lips, are often pinker.
Sections
Simplified Palette and Chroma Mixing
A warm-cool palette simplifies mixing useful skin tone base colors effectively.
The presenter introduces a simplified palette approach using warm and cool colors as an easy method to achieve a useful base skin tone mixture. This involves pre-mixing different values and chromas to create a foundational set of colors.
Mixing white with transparent red oxide yields the highest chroma, while black and white yield the lowest.
The concept of chroma (colorfulness) is explained. Mixing white with transparent red oxide produces the most saturated and colorful mixture. Conversely, mixing black and white results in the lowest saturation or chroma. Intermediate mixtures create varying degrees of color saturation.
Pre-mixing strings of black/white, red oxide/white, and their combination simplifies color creation.
To simplify the process, the presenter suggests pre-mixing three main 'strings' of color: one of black and white (for grays), one of transparent red oxide and white (for warm tones), and one of a mixture of these two (for neutralized tones). This provides a range of options for creating skin tones.
In-between values can be mixed directly on the brush if avoiding excessive pre-mixtures.
If one wishes to avoid pre-mixing a large number of color variations, it's possible to mix the intermediate values directly on the painting brush as needed during the painting process.
The Role of Black and White Mixtures
Black and white mixtures create cooler, slightly bluish grays useful for specific color notes.
The mixture of black and white is discussed. The resulting grays are noted to be slightly shifted towards blue, making them cooler. This cooler range of grays is desirable for the ability to introduce certain cooler color notes into a painting, including skin tones.
Using black instead of a blue pigment offers more control in portraiture.
The presenter prefers using black in the warm-cool palette over a blue pigment like ultramarine blue. This preference stems from the belief that black provides more control in portraiture, as the use of blue can sometimes be more limited to specific areas like backgrounds or clothing.
The perceived blueness of grays can be surprising due to color relativity.
It is highlighted that the perception of color is relative. Even though the grays are made from black and white, when placed in context with other warm colors, they can surprisingly appear quite blue, demonstrating the importance of context in color perception.
Specific Pigment Usage and Value Matching
Winsor Newton Burnt Sienna serves as the transparent red oxide (PR101) for this palette.
For the purpose of this demonstration and palette, Winsor Newton Burnt Sienna is used as the stand-in for transparent red oxide, as its pigment index is PR101, fitting the requirement.
Value matching ensures consistency between gray and red oxide mixtures.
The video explains the concept of value as the lightness or darkness of a color. The objective is to match the value of a mixed orange to a specific value on a black and white scale, referred to as 'value five' in this instance.
Value five gray requires one part black and two parts white, while value five red oxide requires more red oxide.
To achieve value five (a mid-value), the gray mixture uses one part black and two parts titanium white. However, to achieve the same value with transparent red oxide, significantly more transparent red oxide is needed in proportion to white, indicating the inherent darkness of the red oxide pigment.
Intermediate mixtures for skin tones are created by combining pre-mixed values.
To create intermediate color mixtures, specifically for value five, a recipe is provided: two parts of the value five transparent red oxide mixture combined with one part of the value five gray mixture. This blending aims to achieve a neutralized version of the orange at the desired value.
The pigment's chromatic shift from reddish to yellowish as chroma lowers is beneficial for skin tones.
An interesting characteristic of the transparent red oxide pigment is noted: when mixed purely with white at high chroma, it appears more reddish. As chroma is reduced by incorporating black and gray, the color begins to shift towards yellow. This shift is advantageous because high-chroma areas of the face, like cheeks and lips, often have pinker, reddish undertones.
Additional pigments like Alizarin Crimson and Yellow Ochre can further refine skin tones.
The presenter mentions that even with this basic warm-cool palette, further adjustments can be made. Additional pigments such as Alizarin Crimson and Yellow Ochre can be incorporated to subtly shift the color even more, allowing for greater nuance and accuracy in skin tone representation.
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