How To Get The Color Scheme Right In Your Portraits
When working on portraits, it can be tricky to constantly achieve the right balance for skin, eye, lip, and hair color tones. The fact that colors often differ also increases the complexity of devising a definitive guide to getting the right color scheme for your portraits.
Check out the following tips to boost your chances of success.
How Do You Lighten, Darken Or Grey Your Portraits?
If you find it hard to achieve a specific desired tone, a decent rule of thumb is to start with any color combination and then lighten, darken, or grey it out until you get the desired effect.
Consider adding white to hues like cadmium yellow light, Naples yellow hue, zinc yellow, or cadmium orange to lighten. If you want a darker tone, use burnt sienna, burnt umber, ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson, or a combination of these colors, with a touch of black. If you want to give a grey tone, you may add one or more of these colors: chrome oxide green, cerulean blue hue, cadmium orange, cadmium yellow light, or white plus ultramarine blue. A complementary color should also be added — for instance, green may be added to a red tone or purple to a yellow one.
You should also remember the many delicate color changes in the crinkles and curves of the ears and nose. The tops of the ears are often red due to blood flow, while nose tips can also be red.
When working on the eyes, you should be aware that the white portion of the eye is not pure white. Account for this by mixing a bit of skin tone and an ultramarine blue into the white. This mix should be warm but light. Also, don’t forget to climax a small area on each of the iris’ sides with a spot of pure white.
Have Fun With Your Portrait Painting!
It’s a good idea to buy empty paint tubes and identify your colors for oil and acrylic. However, you can invest in cheap empty pans or tiny plastic containers with watercolors.
