You can see the reference photo here: oncubanews.com/mundo/ee-uu/florida/eeuu-florida-supera-los-2-millones-de-casos-de-covid-19/ I did this study to practice color mixing for skin tones. Usually, I am much more intentional with brushstroke making, but here I allowed myself to be sloppier and just focused on color mixing. In nature, you can rarely see pure colors. Most of the colors in the surrounding world are muted because every object is affected by multiple light sources, shadows, and the ambient light. The sky, no matter how blue it may seem, cannot be painted with just a blue and white color mix. Its color is much more complex, containing reds, yellows, greens, and purples, depending on the time of day, the season, and the weather conditions. Grass is never just green either. Its color often contains browns, reds, and purples. In the same way, skin tones can’t be painted with just red or yellow mixed with white. They always contain greens, blues, and purples. That’s why on my palette you can see how for every shape in my painting, I mix a neutral color that leans towards a certain hue. The warm shadows are painted with a neutral leaning towards red, the skin tones in the light lean towards red, yellow, or purple. Even the colors that I used for the sea were mixed with a combination of blues, greens, and the warm yellows and reds that I had on my palette. The only times I used pure colors were when I painted the sunlit parts of the bikinis. This is how my color mixing always is. Whether I paint a still life, a figure, or a landscape, I use my palette to mix neutral colors with different lightnesses, hues, and saturations. A neutral color always contains all three primaries: yellow, red, and blue, which means that all neutral colors harmonize perfectly with each other. Using them in painting makes it easier to capture the beauty of nature. To paint the figures, I used a Raphael Precision 8524 brush no.2, and for the background, a no. 4 brush from the same line. If you want to learn about the colors I use on my palette, I've listed all of them in my free PDF guide to gouache available via the link provided below: color-mastery.com/guide-to-gouache
Anyone who wants to learn how to use gouache should watch your videos-you are the best teacher out there. It was amazing to see how many skin tones you created. BRAVO!❤
Thank you for this video Lena. I learn so much every time I watch you paint. Your intuitive color mixing informed by many, many hours of painting and observation, never fails to fascinate me.
Awesome as usual! I just started with gouache and already have your PDFs. However, I'm wondering if you wouldn't terribly mind sharing your exact current colour setup? I figured out few colours myself, from the top left, starting with Cad yellow lemon, then YO.. or cad Yellow light? Marigold? ... I purchased this 24 well palette and would love to order the exact same colours you are using, in the same order. At least to get started, til I get a bit more confident with colours as well as mixing! Please help! Appreciated, thanks!
I listed all of the colors that I use in that pdf that you have downloaded. The only color that I added recently to my palette is Naples yellow from W&N or Titanium Golden Ochre from Schmincke Horadam (the same pigment). If you want to know the exact order of the colors in my palette you can see that in this pdf supply list. All of the colors in my palette are numbered in it: color-mastery.com/s/ColorMasterySupplyList.pdf
You will find the answer in this video: How to keep Gouache from DRYING TOO FAST - How to keep gouache moist longer ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-vGEnHB2Eq10.html
I don't get it. You're using a tremendous amount of paint and you're doing layers with opaque media? Is there a method here beyond "add paint until you get the color you want"?
Agreed, though I use a similar method of mixing a starting flesh tone then adding blue, green, red, yellow, etc. as I see the color shifting as the light moves across the body. With oils I premix at least 3 flesh values for cool/warm, but the gouache dries too fast to premix piles of color. Lena appears to be making the adjustments as she goes along, working intuitively. It would help to see the reference photo to compare her painted colors to those in the source image. I think that’s where everyone sees it differently, but if you can get a sense of whether the color starts leaning towards purple, blue, pink, yellow, then you can just start in one area of the shadow or light and work your way across, comparing each stroke to what it is next to. I hope that makes sense and I have no idea if Lena would agree 😂. Just writing from my experience.
You need to download my free guide to gouache. I added a list of all my colors in the order they are located in my storage palette to it. color-mastery.com/guide-to-gouache
