Anyway, to make your skin colors easy to mix I use this basic formula for Caucasian skin.
White plus cad red light or orange with a little yellow ochre
I use the same formula for various races with perhaps a little more darker brown or yellow ochre. I've read portrait painting books, taken portrait workshops, and explored all avenues for creating correct skin color and you can get really really complicated while mixing skin color but trust me, if you start with this basic formula you will be well on your way to the correct color. And how do you know that you have the correct color? That's where the baggie that's holding your photo comes in handy. Just dab a little color on the baggie right next to the skin color and test it. If it's not right you just wipe the dab off, mix some more, and try again.
Along with your skin color you'll need to have a nice size blob of white on your palette - not mixable white but a good titanium will do.
With these colors and the shadow that you've already applied (which should still be wet on the canvas) you'll be able to create the foundation of your painting.
A side note here. As you can see from the dates of my blog I've left you dangling after the shadow was applied. My apologies if you were keeping up and now your shadows are completely dry. That's what I love about oil, however. You can just reapply the shadows and then continue to this step. It is IMPERATIVE that these three colors (shadow, skin tone and the white highlight) be wet as you begin to blend or you will have a harder time blending the foundation.
So, apology noted, you can now take a good squinty look at your photo and find all the really light or highligted areas of your photo. Paint these into your painting with white. Don't be shy with the paint. Think of yourself as "sculpting" the portrait and in doing so you need to add a lot of white "clay" so that you can push and shove and mold the face into being. Once you have the whites in place, fill in the spaces left on the face, hand and any skin showing with the skin color that you mixed up. Don't leave any skin with blank canvas exposed.
At this point the portrait, in particular the face is still going to look really strange. Sorta like this:
Up close you can see the divisions so that you can see everything blocked in. At this point there are no gradual shadows, just abrupt color changes. Look at the chin and hands up close. . .
Now that you have plenty of paint to "sculpt" with, take a stiff clean brush and follow these instructions really SLOOOOW. With the brush, blend ONE stroke from a white area into the flesh color. STOP. Clean out the brush. Dry it off real well. Blend again ONE stroke from the white area into the flesh color. STOP. Clean out the brush. Dry it off real well. DO NOT blend back and forth (at least for now). I want you to learn this technique and then once you get used to it you can shortcut however you like but for now, do one stroke at a time. Actually it's a very zen-like move. And as you work you will start to see a blend happening especially if you have plenty of paint. If you start to see white canvas peak through the paint, then you don't have enough paint. Go back and add some more. Once you get all the whites blended into the flesh, do the same thing to blend the flesh into the shadow color. If you accidently go back and forth with you brush strokes here (from the shadows into the flesh instead of the flesh into the shadows) you will see what I mean when I say that you are going to "dirty up" your skin tone. Go from the flesh to the shadow in ONE stroke only, clean out the brush, dry the brush, and do ONE stroke again. You will also notice the shadows start to disappear. You thought you had the shadows too dark but they are disappearing before your eyes. See, I told you not to worry. When are you gonna trust me?
Once you have a nice blend, get out your mop brush. If you don't have a mop brush get the softest brush that you have and start to blend again. You can do the same moves that you did with the stiff brush, cleaning between each stroke, and eventually go (dare I say it) back and forth. Can you see how soft and realistic the skin tone is beginning to look?
In this photo one side of the face has just been blended versus the right side of the face that still has its' sectioned look.
As you work, if you see the need to add more white, flesh, or more cad red light or red for those rosy glows, add the paint, use the stiff brush to blend, and then use the mop brush. If you have enough paint on the portrait you will notice that even if you "over add" or add too much of a color, you can just blend and blend and blend and it will disappear into the skin much like the way that the shadows have disappeared or gotten softer. All of this blending MUST be done in one sitting or these "sections" will stay sectioned off and dry making it impossible to blend BUT the worse that can happen is that you have to reapply the colors. Gee I love oil paint.
You can also see in this step how difficult it would be to do a portrait in acrylic. With the drying time involved it's possible to do BUT you have to do very small sections at a time and you'll need something like a "stay wet" brand palette to keep your mixed skin color from drying out. Whenever my students want to switch from painting with acrylics to oils, I make them do two portraits, one in acrylics and one in oil - you can really feel the difference in the two mediums that way. Try it but don't get to cussing me when that acrylic portrait becomes so frustrating. I'm an oil portrait promotor and my hat's off to you when and if you become a skilled acrylic portrait artist. Seriously, you need to write your own blog to convince me that acrylic would be the way to go.
