Painting fair skin tones a tutorial and information in painting fair skin tones
Painting fair skin tones is a bit harder than painting a person with general skin tones because fair skinned people have obviously a lighter skin tone. This makes painting difficult because we cant see the form as much as we can on a medium or dark skinned person. Here the basic drawing in has been done in pencil and I have started laying in colour broadly and loosely.
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Everything up to now has only been suggested, even the colours at this stage aren't quite correct, don't forget with pastel you can lay colours over colours to get the colours right. A sap green has subtly been added to the left side of the face.
Blending has now taken place and using a circular motion of my little finger and blended all the portraits skin tones leaving the hair. All the basic shadows have been painted in so you can tell where the light is coming from which is from the left and also a grey has been added over the shadow areas. I have started painting in the hair with yellow ochre and for the shadows using burnt umber.
Here the eyes have been made darker with a raw umber over which a medium green has been added, more work has been added to the hair with a highlight of yellow ochre.
More of the face has been painted in here and as you can see the shadows are too red at this point so they need muting down. This painting is being painted from a photograph and was taken outside next to trees and the green was reflecting onto her hair. I painted in a green tone which is a bit too green at the moment and so will be toned down later.
Here the nose and mouth areas have been more defined and I have carried on using the same colour in the face area down to the chest area.