How to mix skin tones with Watercolor

Figure and portrait can be a pretty tricky subject to paint. However, mixing the right skin tone is not. Today, I’m going to share with you the way I mix the skin tone, and you might be surprised how simple it is. Painting a nice, clean skin tone in watercolor is quite easy. And here is why: Watercolor doesn’t use white. Unlike oil, acrylic, or even gouache, lighter values in watercolor is dictated by its transparency. So right off the bat, you have one less paint to worry about in your mixture. That being said, there are a few things I want to share with you:

  1. Keep your mixture simple - The more colors you use in your mixture, the muddier the color will be. Now, for me, that’s typically not an issue when I am painting a scenery painting. Because I usually prefer a more neutral and muted color. However, when it comes to the skin tone. The cleaner, the better. It doesn’t matter the skin color of the person; the mixture should always be as clean as possible. That means you should only use 2 to 3 colors for your skin tone. Even if you are mixing the shadow on the skin, it should still be clean.

  2. Keep your mixture transparent - Skin is translucent. So if your mixture is too opaque, it loses the light. This is actually an important concept. When it comes to the value on the skin tone, think “transparency” rather than “thickness” of your mixture. So when you are trying to mix the color of skin that’s under bright light, you make it more transparent for the light to lit through. And when it comes to the shadow, think of it as “lack of light” rather than “add more darkness.” So that means you make your mixture more opaque. One of the mistakes I often see students make is they starting to add too much dark color like Burnt Umber or Cobalt Blue. And that ends up making the skin look dirty. We’ll go over that in a demo later.

  3. Keep your wash clean - The cleanness I’m talking about here is not the color, but the consistency of your wash. Sometimes the issue is not about the colors you use, but the wash you paint. If your wash is dirty with bad edges and too many layers, the skin tone won’t look good no matter what color do you use. I talked about wet on wet and making clean washes before if you haven’t watched those videos, I encourage you to watch those, I’ll put the link down below and at the end. 

  4. Keep your colors relative - If you think about it. The color of your skin is pretty consistent throughout. There might be some area that’s a bit redder, lighter, or darker. But the overall color is the same. Any value and color changes are most likely due to lighting. So once you figure out the local color of the skin tone, you should use that as a base. From there, you can go lighter, darker, warmer, and cooler. But since they are from the same base color, the overall color of your portrait will look more harmonious rather than spotty.

In the video, I am going to share with you these principles in action. I hope this is helpful to you!