New Basic Flesh-Tone Palette

New flesh-tone color chart - top

Page from painting journal with notes on flesh tones - center

Pages from painting journal with recent flesh-tone mixtures - bottom

The January issue of The Artist's magazine featured artist Michael De Brito's paintings and the four-color, flesh-tone palette he uses to render his figures. I read with interest and decided to give the colors a test run. The economy of using just four colors seems to break down the process of mixing flesh tones into a basic formula. Since most artists (including myself) struggle to depict accurate flesh tones, I thought De Brito's palette was a refreshing break from all the complicated mixtures I've tried in the past.

So, my palette as seen in the top image consists of Gamblin Flake White Replacement, Winsor & Newton Naples Yellow, and Royal Talens Rembrandt Vermillion and Ivory Black.

Which basically gives me a pretty wide range of colors. Pinks, oranges and dusky flesh tones in both warm and cool variations can be mixed from Flake White mixed with Naples Yellow, Vermillion and Ivory Black. For those elusive cool green tones, a mixture of Naples Yellow and Ivory Black renders a muddy green, the addition of Vermillion warms. For darkest darks Vermillion plus black gives a warm or cool dark, depending on how much black is used.

The bottom two images show the pages from my painting journal, detailing additional mixtures from the same palette, along with notes on their use in recent paintings.

Here's a demo of the four steps De Brito uses in mixing flesh tones.

So far I've used this flesh palette in two paintings I'm working on: Blue Angel and Daydream Believer, both are detailed on my Fan page. I'm happy with the results! I think I'll stick with this palette into the New Year!