How to Oil Paint Flesh
Perhaps one of the most challenging things to paint is human flesh because there are so many ways to do it. Well-seasoned painters avoid using paint named Portrait Pink, which is found at art stores. Instead, they use a mix of usually four colors to achieve the color of flesh, using any more than this can start creating a muddy look on the surface of a painting. There are more colors listed to give alternate choices, though minimizing the palette is always useful.
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Things You'll Need
- Primed canvas
- Palette knife
- Rags
- Charcoal or pencil
- Paint brushes
- Turpentine
- Linseed oil
- Raw sienna oil paint
- Lamp black oil paint
- Titanium white oil paint
- Burnt umber oil paint
- Yellow ochre oil paint
- Cadmium red oil paint
- Ultramarine blue oil paint
Instructions
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Mix colors to tone the ground of the painting. Two suggestions to set off the flesh in the painting are raw sienna or a blue-grey mixture made with titanium white and a tiny amount of lam black. Mix your chosen color with turpentine using a palette knife until it achieves a watery consistency.
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2
Rub or paint a thin veil of a neutral color over the entire canvas. Let this layer completely dry, which may take several days.
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3
Draw out the composition using a hard pencil or lightly pressing with vine charcoal. Or begin painting outlines directly onto the canvas with a brush and burnt umber diluted with turpentine to resemble the consistency of watercolor.
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4
Correct the drawing as needed by rubbing out lines with a rag. The majority of time is spent creating this process to get all proportions and information correct.
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Apply shading using diluted burnt umber with a big soft brush. The darkest areas will still appear transparent and thin at this point. Stand back often to look at the painting, and do not apply details.
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Choose key places to darken for the darkest shadows, continuing to keep the paint thin. Burnt umber is recommended, though it can be mixed with a tiny bit of ultramarine blue to create a lush black color.
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Apply the midtone areas using thicker paint with a mixture of either raw sienna or yellow ocher mixed with white. Where appropriate, add a tiny amount of cadmium red, which is a very strong color.
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Paint the light areas using the same color mixture for your midtones mixed with more titanium white. Gaps revealing the background color may show at this point, which should appear a tone lighter than the shadows and a tone darker than the light areas.
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Paint on the brightest highlights as thick as you wish with titanium white.
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Tips & Warnings
If cadmium red appears too orange, consider quinacridone violet, which is a substitute for rose madder.
If smoother blending is desired between colors applied and underpainting gaps that show, use a dry brush to scumble or blend the shapes into one another.
Creating a base of cool color as a wash on the canvas will create contrast with warm skin tones. The rule of oil paint is fat over lean, meaning that the first layers of paint on the canvas are very liquid and thin, paint mixed with turpentine, slowly building up the surface to paint directly from the tube and eventually adding oil to thicken the paint on the final layers.
Paint slowly and make sure to always look at the canvas from a distance as you work.
