Portrait Painting Tutorial Classical Oil Color Mixtures Explained

In this week's episode, we will create this Rembrandt master study using a very simplified yet highly efficient flesh tone color palette inspired by the masters. Welcome to Classical Oil Colors Explained. And here is the original Rembrandt self-portrait. For access to a high quality image, please see Google Arts and Culture. Look up Rembrandt and you will have access to high quality images such as this one to follow along and paint or draw with. And please don't forget that I have some paintings available for sale on my Etsy store. If you go to the description box down below, it will guide you to my store. Also, see the description box for a complete list of the materials used in this video. And so it stands the reason that the description box is a very useful place, Now let's go ahead and start painting. I am going to explain the flesh color mixtures when we get to the flesh color mixtures. Right now what we're doing is we're using raw umber and a little bit of spike lavender, spike lavender oil, and a size 2 filbert bristle brush. Now I know that the flesh colors is the main topic of this video, so we will spend the most time talking about them as we create those mixtures. And you'll actually see me mix those colors with a palette knife. Now this is a real-time, highly edited but real-time tutorial, so I'm going to be guiding you along the entire process of the painting. This is the umber sketch that you're seeing here. And by the way, we're working on an 8 by 10 inch oil-primed linen canvas that has been toned to a neutral gray value using alkyd oil paints, which are fast drying oil paints. And I like to start off with an umber sketch like this because it allows me to get an idea of the placement of the head. It kind of, it's like a rough draft so to speak, where I know the placement of the head and somewhat where the features are going to be, but none of that's really going to be set in stone. We're really going to draw with color for the most part. And remember, the most important aspect of this stage is the placement of the head and a guesstimation of the features. I'm not going to be putting any detail in this umber drawing. I'm not going to be covering all of the canvas. This is a loose sketch that I can build onto. Now the importance of working with a very simplified structure like this cannot be overstated. The important thing about this is that it leaves room for me to go and figure things out with color. And that's a really fun activity to do and you're going to see once we get into those color mixtures, which by the way will be just in a couple seconds. It's a tremendous amount of fun. So now that we've had the head placed and the features somewhat guesstimated, let's start to mix some colors. Now please allow me to list the colors out for you. So we're using flake white replacement, nickel titanium yellow, yellow ochre, transparent mummy, burnt sienna, alizarin crimson, raw umber, ivory black, and cobalt blue. Flake white replacement is not my preferred color to use. In fact, I prefer to use flake white. I only used the flake white replacement because it dries more slowly, which is what I needed for this situation. And the same thing is for nickel titanium yellow. I would prefer to use lead tin yellow, but for the drying time I used those two colors instead. So we're mixing, this is a gambling color, flake white replacement, and that is transparent mummy that I'm using. Next I'm going to go into burnt sienna. So burnt sienna, white, and transparent mummy. Now since this is a classical inspired painting, we are using a classical inspired palette minus two of the colors that are more modern. The gambling flake white replacement is a modern color, and the one right next to it, the light yellow, is a lead tin yellow substitute, which is nickel titanium yellow. Now the important thing about this palette is that it is highly efficient. So mixing white with burnt sienna basically gives me a skin tone. Mixing white with a little bit of transparent mummy also gives me a skin tone, and all I really have to do is tweak those colors a little bit. As you saw, I went right into that is ivory black to cool it off, and there you go. The idea is that you can create a skin tone mixture fast. If I had an even more limited palette, I would have to create a bunch of in-between mixtures to get the colors that I wanted. This allows me to create those colors much much faster. And now the next thing to mention is that I switched brushes. I'm also using a size 2 filbert bristle brush, which by the way, these are silver brand brushes. I really like to use on bristle brushes. Silver brand doesn't pay me to tell you this, but they are the brushes that I really like to use these days. And what I'm doing is with that color that I mixed, I'm not using any medium at all, just the paint on its own, and I'm basically using it to help to delineate the light and shadow shapes. Still not 100% correct, but it's something that I can build and cover the surface with. So the color palette again is very simplified, and you're going to see me explaining those mixtures a little bit more in this video than other ones. So remember those mixtures that I created, I used the palette knife to create them. So this color that you're seeing me use is a color that I will access later on. So let's go into another color mixture. So we're going to mix a darker half tone that leans towards the reddish pink. So that's burnt sienna, white, back to the burnt sienna. As you see, burnt sienna and white actually create a pretty decent skin tone on their own. If you need to tweak those colors, you can. And we'll get into the other colors that we have that we've pretty much explained them all. There's one final color that I didn't quite talk about yet. In the color palette, which is cobalt blue, it's the color all the way to the left. And you'll see me use it from time to time actually just to neutralize some of the heat of the colors very efficiently. It actually turns out that the cobalt blue is more efficient with neutralizing and creating really nice skin tones than ultramarine blue or cerulean blue, in my opinion, of course. So now we're putting in some of these simple half tones and now we're starting to enter in one of the stages that I call the awkward stage in a portrait painting. Awkward stage is what makes portrait painting that much more difficult. And again, it is because we're so used to seeing completed faces, so to speak, as in the form of a photograph or whatever. Whenever we see an unfinished face, it can be kind of scary. Just take note of that. Now we're mixing raw umber with a little bit of burnt sienna and now we're accessing the cobalt blue. Again, cobalt blue is the only blue that I have there other than ivory black, which you can consider to be a blue, but cobalt blue is making a very nice cool neutral color, a cool neutral brown that I can use now for the shadow tones. Now switching back to the drawing brush, I'm using a little bit of that mixture now for the shadow tone. Now notice with every color mixture I'm using the palette knife and that actually will enable me to access those colors later on. Now as this is a pre-recorded video that's voiced over, I'm not going to be speaking at the same pace all throughout, so at this point I'm going to slow down my rate of narration. As you're seeing, all I'm doing is just covering with that shadow tone. Now as you see, the tone of the canvas actually really plays a role at this point because it is a neutral value, it is a neutral color, so I'm not fighting the tone at all. I'm actually using the tone as something I can build on. Now I will tell you with this Rembrandt in particular, the likeness is not really met that early on. It actually takes a while for me to get the likeness. The painting goes through various different stages of different likenesses, so you're going to be seeing how I basically build towards that point. So now we're mixing a lighter color using the nickel titanium yellow, which is the substitute for lead tin yellow, and the flake white replacement. Going in with the transparent mummy, which again, transparent mummy is pigment PR-102 transparent red oxide, which is a very, very useful color for skin tones. In fact, lead tin yellow and iron oxide red were definitely two colors that would have been available to Rembrandt, as would have been raw umber and a lake red such as alizarin, and of course he would have had bone black, which is basically similar to ivory black, and of course he would have had lead white. So he would have had access to pretty much all of these colors minus the cobalt blue. Back in those days they would have had a lapis, a genuine ultramarine blue. Now we're using a mixture of the transparent mummy, alizarin, and one thing you'll notice that has been taken off of this palette are the cadmiums. So there are no cadmiums. If I want something to be a bright red, for skin tone purposes, you seldom need the brightness of a cadmium red. Oftentimes I spend a lot of time dulling down my cadmiums, so that's another reason why I've created, or not created, but why I've combined these colors, because I don't have to spend any time neutralizing the colors minus maybe the cobalt blue or the alizarin, but on their own these mixtures are very very efficient. So now I'm mixing up a kind of a light pink and a dark pink that lean towards the orangey, and you might be able to guess what I'm going to use for this, and mind you every time I add a different section of color I'm actually changing brushes. So that is a different brush right there, and it's in an effort to minimize the amount of time that I spend cleaning off the brushes. So as you would have guessed, that reddish pink color is being used for the lips. Now at first the lips will be painted to red, and then they will be adjusted little by little. The surface that you paint on is also highly important. This is fine textured Klassen's brand oil-primed linen. I highly highly suggest that you invest in a roll of linen if you do like to create long-term painting projects that are in the classical style or in a realist representational style. And there you go, the lips are too pink, and of course I'm going to adjust it now. But in any case, I really really suggest that you invest in the linens. I personally shop at Jerry's Artarama in the US. If you are in the UK, I believe they use Jackson's. But wherever you are, if you can invest in the linen, it's a really good thing to do because it does save you some money over time as you do stretch your own, and you can basically save space as well by having all of that linen in one roll. Or just get panels if you don't have access to linens. Panels work pretty well too. So now we're mixing white and black, which gives us a nice neutral gray that leans towards the bluish. Now Gamblin Flake White Replacement is a relatively slow dryer compared to Flake White, so I will actually work on this wet on wet for the entirety of the painting. You will see in the end it will start to get a little bit rough, but for the most part it's done completely wet on wet because these are slower drying colors. The Gamblin Flake White Replacement is much slower drying than Flake White, and the Lead Tin Yellow substitute, the Light Yellow, is much slower drying than Lead Tin Yellow. So now that we have a nice mixture of just black and white, we're going to change brushes and just a little touch there for the light of the eye, also known as the sclera. Remember the white of the eye is not white, always make it some kind of middle tone. Now the painting that you saw in the beginning of the video is the very same painting that you're seeing here, so you're seeing many different looks, many different appearances that the painting is going to take. So my biggest suggestion when it comes to overcoming the awkwardness of the awkward stage is to trust in yourself and trust in your process. It's the best advice that I can give you, and it gets easier. If you're new to painting it can be very difficult, but if you've been painting enough portraits then you kind of are accustomed to what the awkward stage feels like and how long you'll be in the awkward stage. Now one thing to mention that you're not seeing on camera right now is the number of brushes that I'm using, and it's kind of systematic now. In a way, I'm switching brushes from the light skin tone to the shadow to the middle skin tone, and sometimes actually even using the warmth of the lips, and sometimes accessing the gray. So every single color that I've mixed up until this point, and in fact throughout the entirety of the painting, has been mixed kind of in bulk, so to speak. I've been mixing it with the palette knife, so I'm actually customizing my palette and extending it as it goes throughout the duration of the painting, which is kind of fun because I can access those colors quickly, and I can move through the middle stages very quickly. Now we're just drawing the outside shape. Now the width is going to be off at first, it's going to be a little bit too thin, and then we're going to pull into that later on as the video progresses. And remember, little to no medium at all. In fact, no medium at all. No medium at all was used, and no solvent was used either at this point. And so what you're seeing now is somewhat of an educated mess. So everything that I'm placing down is of the mindset that I'm going to use it to add the specificity onto. There's many different ways to do this. You can go and be very, very meticulous and be specific first if you want, or you can be very loose with it like we're doing here, and then build the specificity onto it. Whichever path you choose is really up to you. Whatever is the most fun for you and what creates the most visually compelling results for you. Now you see when there are more pinkish moments in the skin tones as the bottom of the nose, I'm actually accessing the same section of color that I used for the lips. And sometimes I actually just go and mix right onto the painting by going back and forth between various different pre-mixtures on the palette. And now we've just put in some of the dark accents for the nose using the very same shadow tone. And this is what I mean by drawing with color because now the drawing aspect of it is actually starting to take place. So as you see we're sculpting through the color. So we're using color to sculpt out the planes. So as you saw another plane was added for the highlight of the nose. Beneath the nose is the plane change for the bottom of the bulb of the nose. The side of the nose is also being adjusted. All of these planes you can actually adjust using a mass. Remember a mass is just a word for some kind of shape, some kind of section of color on a painting that has a definitive shape. So with a mass you can adjust the outside shape and the inside shape of a form all at once. Whereas with an outline you're just adjusting the outside shape. You're adjusting the information on the outside. So this in a sense is multitasking. So for the more pinkish moments again it's the same color, the same puddle I'm accessing and using various different puddles on the palette. And we're mixing on the painting as we go. And because the flake white replacement is such a slow dryer and the nickel titanium is such a slow dryer, the nickel titanium yellow is so slow at drying this will be completely wet the next day. So in fact we're going to leave the painting like this overnight in just a few moments and then you're actually going to transition into a different scene with the same color palette using a different piece of wood. So here we go. And same color palette, different piece of wood. I had to switch the piece of wood for a reason but it doesn't matter what reason we're switching the piece of wood. What's important is that you're seeing the same process and in fact beneath the colors are the pre-mixtures from the day before. What I do with my paints is I just store them in the freezer if I'm trying to save them and just access them again. So I'm using those same puddles. I'm also recreating another. So again it's very very simple. Just recreating the same mixtures and I'm going to use this to adjust and build. And this is where we're really going to continue to to build the drawing. So a little more of the transparent mummy which again is just pigment PR-102. That is if not the most important red it must be one of the most important colors to this process. You don't have to get transparent mummy which is a rubloff color. Any pigment that has or any paint that has the pigment PR-102 is going to be very useful for you and burnt sienna of course. In fact all of these colors are very useful. As you see how quick and swift, I combined those two words together for some reason, but how swift and quick these mixtures are. So we're mixing in bulk. We have a light skin tone, a middle skin tone, and a darker skin tone. And now we're going to mix up the shadow tone again. So we're using raw umber, burnt sienna, transparent mummy, and we're making it a touch warmer. So we put a tiny bit of alizarin crimson and a little bit of cobalt blue. Now we're going to have a greenish tone. So cobalt blue and yellow ochre. So now we have a nice neutral greenish tone that we can access. Now we're mixing alizarin with black. So all of a sudden what seemed to be a kind of limited palette at first is now a very broad and extended palette. And we're just going to pick and choose which colors we need and adjust from time to time pretty much using the same brush. So now with a size 5 pure red sable brush by the silver brush brand. Again I'm not sponsored by them. I just like to use these brushes because I really like using sable brushes for the detail work. We're going to now go into the small shapes and this is going to really start to refine the image. Now remember the photo reference has not been shown during the painting footage because I want you to view this as the development of a painting not a photocopy. So please watch this and re-watch this as many times as you like. This video has been edited so that you can view it in a reasonable time frame. Showing only the most important aspects to the painting process. And again we're accessing the same colors picking and choosing whichever colors we need. Very little mixing actually goes into the process now. We're just using those pre-mixtures. Now talk about awkward stage. Of course things are going to look weird when you add more information. So at this point the eye looks massive compared to the other one. The left eye looks completely huge compared to the other one but that's okay. We're adding new information in there. We have to place something down first and then work with it. Now what's nice about this color palette and this approach is that it's so efficient. So there isn't one color on the, I'm going to call it primary palette, that didn't go unused throughout this entire process. Remember you can use whichever white you want but it's white, some kind of light yellow, yellow ochre, anything that's pigment PR102 which is, and rubla is a transparent mummy, burnt sienna, alizarin crimson, raw umber, black, which is ivory black, the one I'm using, and cobalt blue. If you swap out cobalt blue with lapis, the genuine ultramarine blue, and if you use as your light yellow, lead tin yellow, and as your white, lead white or flake white, you have a palette that would have been available in the 17th century, which is pretty cool if you think about it. And you can see why these colors were so important to painting skin tones. And I believe with this palette you can mix any skin tone of any complexion under most lighting conditions. Now if you have a model placed in a bright electric blue halogen light or something like that, or not halogen, but you know like if you use a blue light filter or a pink light filter or something to illuminate your model, then obviously this color palette wouldn't work. You'd need a more modern color palette. But for most circumstances, say painting under natural light or very gentle artificial light, this color palette is, in my opinion, even better to use than probably even the Zorn palette. Because with the Zorn palette, the four color palette, it really teaches you how to mix with palette knife or mix with brush or whatever, but you really have to work for it to get the skin tones. With this color palette, something as simple as burnt sienna and white gives you a skin tone. Something as simple as, you know, your transparent mummy or any color with pigment PR 102 mixed with white gives you a skin tone. And then you just tweak it. You use black to cool it off or you can turn it towards the green with lead tin yellow and cobalt blue. You can do anything you want to it. You can make it as complex as you want. But the idea is to achieve a skin tone, very simple, very efficient, and then have it accessible to your paintbrush so that you don't have to mix all the time. And you basically just mix on the painting. It's very efficient. And when you mix on the painting, you inevitably put more paint on your canvas, which allows you to have a much, I'd say, richer appearance to your end result when more paint goes into it. And as you see, we're just drawing a little bit of a dark accent for the eye to our right or Rembrandt's left eye. And we're just using it now just to draw and draw and draw. So not a lot is going to happen in a long period of time. And that's a good telltale sign that you are in the middle stages or the upper middle stages of your process. And this is one of the tedious parts when it comes to portrait painting. And I usually tell my students, portrait painting sometimes is the story of how a bunch of little things either made my day or ruined my day. So what that means is that you have to be just as observant of the big picture as you are the little picture. All the little tiny details and the big shapes, everything has to communicate. Everything has to work all at once. So that's why we've transitioned into the smaller shapes built off of the larger shapes. And again, I'm going to slow down the rate of narration. As you saw at that very moment, I went from the dark color of the eyes and then I switched into one of the dark mid-tones of the skin tones using the same brush. Very much just using the same mixtures. And now we're going to make a light light mixture using white and transparent mummy, which I know I've said it a lot, but at this point I know you've memorized the pigment PR 102. Very important pigment. And we have a very nice light pinkish skin tone. As you see the palette, I've barely done any mixing with the brush. I'm just taking right from these pre-mixtures. You can use any palette you want, either a glass palette or a wooden palette or whatever your preference is. But the important thing is how you use it, what you mix onto it. And now you see I'm taking from those two mixtures. It's actually a fairly loaded brush. So what we're going to do now is basically weave the paint onto the surface. So this is the part of the painting where we're adding bulk to the mixtures. And we're doing that by mixing right onto the painting. So what we're doing is we are revisiting the areas that we painted in before, but now with a much heavier mixture of paint. This is a lot of fun. This is very much like sculpting with paint. I highly suggest that you don't do this with titanium white. If you're going to avoid lead, which is perfectly fine, use the one I'm using, which is Flake White Replacement by Gamblin. And I'm not sponsored by them. Not sponsored by anyone. I wish it was, but not sponsored by anyone. So I'm telling you things based on my own opinion. But I encourage you to experiment with whatever you want. And this also goes to show you that you can create a very old master looking painting without using any of the lead pigments. Though, if the timing wasn't an issue, then I would have definitely used my Flake White. In most, or I guess almost in every circumstance, I will use Flake White. But again, you don't have to. Whatever your preference is. So as you're seeing, with a very loaded bristle brush, you're basically adding more information when need be. And we're just reiterating information that was already there. Just feeding it thicker paint. And at this point, I should state that the canvas texture is very important to take note of. This is a fine textured oil primed linen. Not the smoothest, but it's still fine textured, which is again something that I can build onto and create a very smooth finish like this. So we're essentially just weaving and taking from the palette, though you can't see it, you're noticing that the value is changing from brush stroke to brush stroke. And I'm cleaning the brush by wiping off paint onto the paper towel. Not using any solvent at all. And as this was the second day, and I was using the slow drying Flake White replacement, everything is still wet and easily adjusted. Some areas, such as around the side of the forehead, have started to stiffen a little bit. And if you have paint that's in between drying, you can work on it, though be a little cautious with it. You can work on it, just add even more paint. And I encourage you to work this way with no solvent and no medium to obtain the leanest initial paint layers possible. Now you're seeing a very thick application of paint there. And if your painting has less than five layers or so, you can build it like this without any worry. So now we're going to mix black, that's Ivory Black, and Raw Umber, a little bit of our Burnt Sienna, Transparent Mummy. It's a party now. So we have all of the kind of warm and dark colors. We're going to mix them together with a touch more of the red. Now that's a lot of paint that we've combined. And now we're actually getting ready to use a little bit of solvent. And I'm only going to use it in the background. And it's only going to be a couple drops at a time, literally. You'll see. That was probably just one or two drops of Spike Lavender Oil to get the paint to thin out a little bit. And I will only use this for the background, not for the skin tones. And like magic, there you have it. The background has been completely covered. And we're actually going to paint into the background using Alla Prima techniques. So we're going to be painting wet on wet, which, believe it or not, Alla Prima is also a very classical approach to creating painting. It's just been modernized with different techniques these days. But it's still a very classical technique. And you see it in a lot of old master paintings where they've painted wet paint into wet paint. You see it a in paintings such as Rembrandt's, of course, and Vermeer's. And painting wet into wet, we're going to be putting the light of the color. Now, once you cover the background, the painting really starts to take on the final form, so to speak. It starts to take its appearance. The awkward stage at this point is definitely gone. And now we're just going to add a few little brush marks to the background, differentiating the hat, but just very lightly. And a little bit for the shoulder. And a few more little brush strokes. And that should be about all we're going to do on this one. That being said, I really hope that this week's YouTube video helps you out. And this painting, of course, is going to be available for sale soon on my Etsy. I usually sign it with my name, the year, and then after the painter that I did the master study from. And remember, if you would like to take classes with me, please go to patreon.com slash upariartist, where we have over 50 plus lessons with new lessons added weekly. The lessons and the class begin at only $10 a month. And of course, if you want even more benefits, such as viewing the lessons streamed live in the live stream tier or painting with me camera to camera on Zoom, those are also benefits offered on my Patreon account. That being said, I wish you all the very best in all of your artwork. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you on the next one.