Paxton vs. cads and shadow help please!

[Joan Breckwoldt]

Chuck,

Thank you very much for replying. I suspect no two people mix their colors the same way, but you have given me a lot of information and I will do some experimenting, as you suggest.

Originally Posted by Chuck Yokota

I first mix up yellow ochre with a little light red to get a sort of brick red-orange, which is my basic source for skin color.

Okay, this is how I get my basic skin color too.

Originally Posted by Chuck Yokota

For the shadows, I take part of this and add ultramarine blue and indian red to get a sort of purple grey. (I take another part of the original mixture and add white for the light skin color.)

I do something similar for the lit side of the face, I use ultramarine blue in the mix but only for the lit side. Hmm, I never added blue to the shadow side because I'm stuck on "warm" colors for the shadows. So that's where I'm getting in trouble, I'm using all kinds of things to get my shadows, but not blue. I will try that, though I'm confused about using what I thought was a cool color? Maybe I'm too hung up on what's a cool color and what's a warm color?

Originally Posted by Chuck Yokota

. . . a black I make from burnt sienna and ultramarine to deepen the darkest shadows.

Hmm, this sounds interesting. I will try this for my deep shadows, though there is that blue again in the warm shadows.

Thanks,

Joan

[Julie Deane]

Hi Joan -

Cool and warm are relative terms in a painting. You can have a cool or warm red, same for blue.

Personally, I like using non cad's for skin tones, but then I use whatever I feel I need for the shadows. Probably the best thing is to get books on the subject like Chris Sapers book on skin tones - she has some good mixes to use (although not cad-free, of course)- I also like "How to Paint Living Portraits" by Roberta Clark. Here are a few mixes for flesh tones and shadows she suggests as a starting point:

white, raw sienna, light red, cobalt blue - good all-around

white, ras sienna, Venetian red, cobalt blue - basic, a bit softer

white, yellow ochre, burnt sienna ultramarine blue - for medium - med. dark complexions

white, Naples yellow, light red, viridian luminous - good for children

There's others for darker complexions, but this will give you a start.

[Joan Breckwoldt]

Thank you Julie for your reply and those sample shadow colors. I will mix them up tomorrow and see what I get. It'll be educational to makes squares of each color.

I do have Chris' book and I realized half an hour ago that I need to pull it out again. Actually, it's open to the skin tone samples page and is lying next to my easel.

thanks again,

Joan

[Linda Brandon]

Joan, I'm not quite at the Paxton palette yet so I'm not sure I should respond to this, but remember that warm and cool are not only relative terms, they are comparative terms as well. If you go cooler in the lights your shadows will look warmer. Spend a day making flesh charts with your paints - experiment with your reds, yellows and a blue or green - and hang them somewhere where you can refer to them.

Stop worrying so much about the color. Concentrate instead on making that head look three dimensional - bring some parts forward, move some parts back.

[Joan Breckwoldt]

Hi Linda,

Thank you for your reply. I have lost some of the head's 3-D quality since I've painted over this so much, which is a shame. I can see that I've lost some of the shape since I've been focusing on the color. I can get that back though.

Are you saying that if the lit side is very cool, then the shadow side can be cool too? But if it's not AS cool, it will look warm? I've read so much about cool and warm on this forum, I thought that was a 'rule'. Though I can hear Marvin saying that once you learn the rules, then you can break them (Marvin, hope I got that right).

Joan

[Joan Breckwoldt]

P.S. Linda, are you saying my lights don't look cool enough? I thought they were pretty cool, but I will take your advice and make a chart with different colors. I didn't know if you were talking in general terms or specifically about the face I painted when you said I could "go cooler in the lights".

Thanks again,

Joan

[Joan Breckwoldt]

I thought I would post a charcoal drawing I did from life to illustrate that I can see the darks, it's just the dark colors that I'm having a hard time with. I had an instructor once tell me that if the world were in black and white I would be great. But, thankfully, the world isn't black and white, so I need to learn this. If I were to paint this guy, he would most likely look A LOT flatter than he does now.

I usually do my underpainting to get the values correct, but then when I start to go over it with paint, the shadows get lighter and lighter because I don't like the dark colors I come up with.

I hope this helps to illustrate my problem.

Joan