Flesh

Many of you are dealing with painting faces, and many of you are making really good choices in your paintings. I do want to throw out a few notes and jumping off points just in case you desire/need them.
I mean, I know the basic recipe I tend towards when painting a portrait (white + burnt sienna with dabs of cadmium red light, ultramarine blue and cadmium yellow medium), but there are so many recipes out there.
One of the things I know is that if you find a flesh color that you like, and only deal with adding different amounts of white to it to create varying values, you tend to have a painting that lacks complexity and depth.
I also know that for many of you, putting vivid colors in your painting of flesh makes you feel uncomfortable. So what are you to do?
First, I did a quick search for "painting flesh in oil" or something like that, and then started to look at some of the content that came from there. There is so much interesting information out there that is only a search away.
If you find that you aren't getting the color(s) you desire, and you haven't used the books in class as guides, or the chart near the back door in class, or asked your peers, I strongly recommend you visit some of the links in this post.

Cheers!

Mixing flesh tone acrylic painting: How-To from YouTube

Here's a nice little video about mixing some flesh tones.
I think my favorite part is that while you know this is something this artist has done many times, you can tell it's a process. He has to add little bits of this and that in order to make it work.
This is all part of the process, right?!


Note: you can ignore the whole color wheel think with the hole in the middle at the beginning. That will save you some time.

Enjoy