Lips Are Not Red - Do This Instead
A red, a white, and a tad of green. The green is what makes it look like lips.
When you get to the lips in a portrait, you probably reach for cadmium red and white first. Most people do. That is how most of us learn how to mix lip color: the mouth looks red, so you take a red tube and lighten it with white until it looks about right.
Well, put that mix right next to her mouth and look at it. It's pink. Clean, bright, and nobody's lips are that color.
Lips are not red, and they're not pink either. Besides the white, you need a different red, and a green you would never think of using on a mouth.
I made a video about it. In it I mix lips from a red, a white and a green, and show what each one does.
The pink you get from cadmium red and white
I work next to a print of the portrait I'm painting. That way I can put every pile I mix right next to her mouth and judge it against the real thing, not against my memory of it.
So the first thing I put next to her mouth is cadmium red and white, the mix most people make when they get to the lips. And it fails the test right away. It's pink. It's clean and it's bright, and it doesn't look like a mouth. It looks like paint sitting on top of a face.
It's not just a little bit off, either. It's the wrong kind of color. You can't fix it by getting the amounts a bit better, because the red is wrong for the job and something is missing.
So I start again from scratch. Each tube has one job, and I add them one at a time so you can see what each one does.
Tube one: Indian red, not cadmium red
Let's start with the red. Most people grab cadmium red here, like I did a minute ago. For lips, I use Indian red instead.
Indian red is a deep earth red, and it's the base of the lips. It gives the lips their color family. Everything else I add after this point is there to adjust it. Nothing I add later is there to replace it.
That is the first decision, and it's the one most people never stop to question. They have a red mouth in front of them and a bright red tube on the palette, and the match seems obvious. For lips, I start from the earth red.
One tube down, two to go.
Tube two: titanium white for the value
Next, the white. The white controls how light the lips are, so I add titanium white a little at a time.
I put just a little on the knife. It's always easier to add more white than to take it back out. If you put in too much, you have to chase it with more red, and the pile keeps growing while the color wanders. So go slowly.
I add a little more, and I mix it until it's one even color, with no streaks. Don't judge a streaky pile. Until it's one even color, you can't tell what you've actually got.
Then I put it on the print, right next to the first pile. The value is close now. But look at it. It's still pink.
So the red is right, the value is right, and it's still not lips. This is where most painters get stuck. They've done the first two steps correctly and the mouth still looks wrong, so they reach for more red. There's one tube left, and it's one most people would never put on a mouth.
Tube three: a tad of viridian
Now we need to quiet that pink down. For that, I use viridian. A green.
Just a tad, on the very tip of the knife. Viridian is strong, so go easy with it. You are not trying to make the lips green. You are trying to take the pink out of them.
Watch the pink while you mix. It quiets down and gets a touch darker. It's not bright anymore. This is the moment it stops being pink and starts looking like lips.
The change is not slow. One moment you have a pink that looks like candy on the print, and then, with that tad of green mixed through, you have a color that sits on the face like part of it.
How to mix lip color: the side-by-side test
So now we have two piles: the pink, at the right value, and the new one. In the video, I put them both next to her mouth to see which one looks like lips.
On the left is red and white. On the right is the same mix with a tad of green. That one is lips. You don't need me to tell you which is which. Put them side by side next to the mouth and your eye decides.
That's the whole recipe:
Indian red, for the color family
Titanium white, for the value
A tad of viridian, to quiet the pink down
It's the green that makes it look like lips, not more red. If a mouth on your canvas looks wrong, adding more red won't fix it. Look for what's still pink.
Keep a bit of your first mix
There's one habit in this demo that I want you to take to every mix, not only lips.
I kept a little of the pink aside before the green went in. That's how you can see the two side by side at all. Without it, I'd have nothing to compare the final color to except my memory of what it was a minute ago.
It's a good habit. Always keep a bit of your first mix, so you can see exactly what the last tube did. When you add a tube and something changes, you want to see what changed. Sometimes the last tube is the one that made it work. Sometimes it's the one that ruined it. Either way, the pile you kept aside will show you.
What to do with this
Next time you paint a mouth, skip the cadmium red. Mix Indian red with titanium white, a little white at a time, until the value is close and the pile is one even color. Set a little of that pink aside. Then take a tad of viridian on the very tip of the knife, mix it in, and watch the pink quiet down. Put both piles right next to the mouth and see for yourself which one is lips.
I hope this helped. Tell me in the comments under the video: which part of the face is the hardest for you to mix? The next episode is my skin palette. You are welcome to subscribe to the channel.
Visit the Color Mixing Book Library. The recipes behind my own portraits and the old masters' faces, written down recipe by recipe. See the library
Additional topics worth reading:
Comments