Drawing EVERY Skin Tone with ONLY 3 COLORS *5 Colored Pencils*

I'm going to go through the only three colours or five pencils you need to create any skin colour you want, so that your limited supplies don't have to hold you back. Because it really is possible to create any skin tone with just a few colours. You see, foundation comes in a range of light, medium and dark flesh tones, but all of the different shades are actually made up from only yellow, red, white and black. And all they do is change the amount of each colour they put in to create all of those different shades. And this same principle can be applied when you're drawing with coloured pencils. Because if we think about what skin colours actually are, they are normally more of a peachy or beige tone. The more red you add will give you more of a peachy skin tone and the more yellow you use will give you more of a beige skin tone. So the three colours will be yellow, red and brown. But you can use black if you don't have a brown to darken up your shading, but brown will give you a more natural and rich looking skin tone. As well as the yellow, red and brown, I will be using a bit of white and black to lighten and darken my shading when I need to. Now let's dive in to creating some basic skin tones using these three colours. I am going to start by creating a light skin tone that has more of a peachy undertone to it. So I start by adding a base layer of the lightest colour, which is that yellow, to the paper. And I keep my pressure really light when doing these first layers of shading, especially when I am drawing light skin tones, as you don't want the skin to look too saturated and vibrant. The next colour I layer in is the red. Layering that yellow and red gives you a really nice basic flesh tone and if you are light enough with your shading, the colour should look more like a light peach than a saturated orange colour. For the shadows and toning down the vibrancy of the colours, you can then layer in a bit of brown. As this is a light skin tone, you won't need to add lots of brown, just enough to mute the colours. This skin does have more of a red pinky undertone, so I am layering more red than yellow. And this combination would work well for many different portraits, as this is one of the most common types of skin tones. Moving on to the second skin study, I'm going to do another light skin tone, but this time I'm going to create more of a beige undertone to the skin. Once again, I start with a layer of yellow, still keeping really light pressure. But this time, when I add the red shading, I'm not going to layer as much as before, so that the yellow is the more dominant colour. You still need to add a bit of red to create a really convincing beige skin tone, but you don't need very much of the colour at all. And I found that you need to be extra careful when shading with red, as a lot of pigment can go onto the paper, even with really light shading. Then you can add the brown to darken up the shadows and mute the skin tone a bit. You can use white to help blend the skin to make it smoother, and you can also go back in with more of the yellow and red after adding that brown, if you need to make the skin tone a bit more accurate to your reference, or you need to make it more vibrant. So keep layering and tweaking until you are happy with the colour. Next we'll create a warm, medium skin tone. I wanted the skin tone to be darker and have a warm, tanned glow to it, so this time when I layered the yellow and red, I applied a heavier application of the colours, so that it would create a darker, more vibrant orange colour. As this is a darker skin tone, I layered a lot more brown than with the other two studies, and I alternated those layers of yellow, red and brown until I had built up a rich, smooth colour with very little graininess left. You can use the white to smooth out some of those lighter areas, but be careful when you're blending darker skin tones, because if you use the white too much, then it will wash out those colours and make those darker skin tones too light. For the final skin sample, I chose to try and create a cool, dark skin tone. This meant that more red would need to be used than yellow to make it that cool undertone, and as you can see by now, I always start any skin tone by just layering the yellow and red. And for this, you can see that I really am adding a lot more red and using more pressure than I would for those lighter skin tones. Because this skin tone is really dark, I will be using both the brown and black to create that correct value for the skin. I create an even layer of the brown all over the skin, and then use the black to indicate where the shadows are. You want to be careful when using black for skin, try not to use too much, and always layer other colours over the top of the black to help tie the black in with the rest of the skin. So I'm going to go over the black with more brown, and then layer more reds and yellows until I have a really nice dark skin tone that looks really realistic and vibrant. So as you can see, all skin really can be made from just using these three colours, red, yellow and brown. And you can use the two shades of white and black to lighten and darken your shading. Now sometimes you'll see other colours on the skin, and these other colours are more to do with the environment that the person is in. For example, if they're in a room with blue lights, then the skin might have more of a blue hue to it. But you now have the basic colours you need to make any skin tone you want, and you can choose to layer in some other colours if you need to reflect that lighting situation that your portrait is in. But mastering picking the right colours for your skin is just one part of being able to draw super realistic skin for your portraits. You also need to know how to create convincing skin textures, and that is why I've created a new free guide on drawing skin in Colour Pencil that contains everything you need to start drawing amazing skin with your Colour Pencils. Not only will you get access to my step-by-step methods for how I create the four most common skin textures, but I also give you my secret colour recipes for nine different skin tones. So I'll leave a link to that free guide at the top of the description and in a card up above. But now let's go through how you can use those three colours to draw a full skin study on a Let's jump into it. This is the reference that I'll be following, and her skin tone is fairly light and on the more peachy side, so I'm going to be following a similar process to what I used for the first skin sample we drew. For the base, I shade my yellow pencil everywhere apart from the brightest highlights on the skin, and I really try to keep my shading as even as possible so I can end up with a smooth skin tone. Because if you're messy with your shading, you will have some yellow lines that are darker than others, which will make it really hard to get an even skin colour, especially when we're doing lots of layering. I then go over the yellow shading with the red pencil, and I try to hold my pencil further back and only use the side of the pencil lead to create that lighter, more even layer of shading. And holding your pencil in this way can really help you to create light washes of colour, especially when you are using those really vibrant pigmented colours like red. Now that we have the basic flesh tone established, we need to give the face more structure and more dimension by shading in all of the shadows and contours with the brown pencil. As the skin is a light tone, you don't want to add too much pressure to the pencil, so keep your pressure really light, and for the darkest shadows, build up the intensity of those shadows using multiple layers of shading, rather than by adding more pressure to your pencil. For this portrait, I work on adding in the shadows around the eye, and especially the eyelid, and I also work on adding shadows to the side of the face. You can also add a light wash of the brown to any area that looks a bit too vibrant and needs to be muted, and I actually ended up doing a lot of shading with the brown pencil, not to darken up the skin, but just to tone down the saturation of the skin a bit. I create some shadows around the chin, but make sure not to shade any brown on the highlighted areas of the skin, as we don't want to make them too dark. Next, I work on shading in the neck. Now this area is in a lot of shadow, and the brown pencil alone won't be able to create a dark enough value, so I also add in some black shading on the sides of the neck to help get the area dark enough. The darker the value, the more pressure I apply to the black pencil, but I always make sure to layer over the top of that black with another colour, so that the end result doesn't look flat. I then move back to the face and work on shading in all of the shadows and structures for the nose, and the nose can be really tricky to get right, because if you do the shadows in the wrong place, it can completely transform the shape of the nose, so it's really important to spend some time observing your reference and adding the brown shading in the correct places. Once I established the shadows in the face, I went in with more yellow and red and layered this over the top of the brown shading and the rest of the skin to bring more life and vibrancy to the skin, as it was looking a bit dull. Adding another layer of the yellow and red also helps to mesh the shadows in with the rest of the skin. The red in particular really does look nice over the brown, and it brings a nice healthy glow to the skin. Now that the majority of the shading has been done on the skin, the rest is just about tweaking the details and values, and smoothing out any graininess that you need, and also creating that skin texture for your reference. So for this portrait, I used my stick eraser to re-establish some highlights, and I also used the brown pencil to darken up some shadows, and also add details like the eyebrow hairs. I made sure my pencil was really sharp when working on the details, like the eyebrows. I then used the white pencil to smooth out the skin, and I used more pressure for the lightest areas, and then slightly less pressure for the darker areas, so that the skin wouldn't look too washed out. And if any areas do become too light, you can always go back in with your pencils and layer some more of that brown or the red and yellow to fix anything that you need. But the white pencil really does do a good job at meshing all of the layers of colour together to give you a really realistic skin tone that you wouldn't think has been done with only three colours. And then the final thing I needed to do to finish this skin study was add in the freckles. And adding in freckles is actually one of my favourite skin textures to draw, as I think it can easily add a lot more realism to your drawings. So to create the freckles, I start by lightly sketching out where they are with the brown pencil. And it's important to do the freckles different sizes and shapes, and to follow the natural curves and contours of the face when you place them on the paper. For the lighter areas of skin, create lighter freckles. And for the freckles that are in more of the shadowed parts of the skin, you can add more pressure to your pencil to create darker looking freckles. And then once I have drawn in all of the freckles, I shade a bit of red and yellow over them to give them more of a slight orange tinge. And I use the white pencil to blend over the freckles so they don't look too harsh. And blending over freckles is also a great way to make them look more part of the skin, so that they look more realistic. Finally, I'm just going to draw the bits of hair that are overlapping onto the skin. And that really is it for the skin part of this drawing. Now I'm just going to finish off the study and show you the final result. Here you can see the final drawing, and in the end I only actually used another two colours to complete this whole drawing. I just added in a bit of green for the leaves and the eye, and a bit of blue on the blurry flowers. So this entire drawing was just done using the pencils included in the smallest set of 12 Polychromos coloured pencils. So next, make sure to check out my free guide on drawing skin, so you can learn my favourite tips and techniques for drawing any type of skin you want. And I'll see you in my next video. Bye everybody!