How to Mix Dark Skin Tones in Oil (The Mistake Most Painters Make)
Dark skin is not a dark tube. It is the same four jobs, with more melanin.
You have a sitter with dark skin in front of you. The skin is dark, so you go looking for a dark tube, and most of the time that tube is burnt umber. When painters set out to mix dark skin tones in oil, that is where most of them start.
I understand why. The skin is dark, the tube is dark, so it makes sense. Well, the answer to which colors make skin is not in a painting guide. It is in a scientific article, and that article says four pigments give our skin its color.
Four pigments. And every one of them has a tube on my palette.
I made a video about it. I go through which tube does the job of each pigment, the mistake almost everyone makes with dark skin, and two very different people painted from the same palette. At the end of the video I mix dark skin two ways, side by side.
Four pigments give skin its color
Earlier in this series I showed that every color on my palette has a job. This time the question is a different one. Why these colors, and not other ones? Why are these the ones that make skin?
The article I use is Everett, Budescu and Sommers, "Making Sense of Skin Color in Clinical Care". It names four pigments. Melanin. Carotene. And the blood, in two kinds: blood rich in oxygen and blood low in oxygen.
There is one more line in that article worth reading twice. The closer the melanin is to the surface of the skin, the darker the skin looks. Keep that in mind, because the rest of this post comes back to it.
A tube for each pigment
So I put the article right next to my palette and match them up, one pigment at a time.
Melanin is what makes the skin darker. On my palette, that is burnt umber.
Carotene gives the skin its yellow. That is my yellow ochre.
Blood rich in oxygen is red. That is my vermilion.
Blood low in oxygen, the scientific article says, looks a little purple, a little blue. That is the little bit of ultramarine blue I use, only sometimes.
So when I tell you that every tube on my palette has a job, now you know where those jobs come from. Your skin is already doing the very same jobs. I did not invent them. I am copying them.
What about the whites?
The whites are not in the skin. On my palette they do a different kind of work. They control the light and the chroma.
So they sit outside the map. The map itself is simple: four pigments in the skin, and a tube on the palette for each one. Remember that, because the mistake I want to show you comes from forgetting it.
The dark tube mistake
Here is the mistake. When most people see someone with dark skin, they reach for a dark tube, usually burnt umber. It is an easy mistake to make, because it looks logical.
Look at the map again. Burnt umber is the melanin. That is only one pigment out of four. So burnt umber is not dark skin. It is just one ingredient.
If you paint dark skin with only burnt umber, you have painted the melanin and left out the other three. The yellow, the red of the blood, and the blue. Someone with dark skin has all four, just like everybody else.
So hold on to that burnt umber mix in your head. At the end, I put it right next to the real thing.
How I mix dark skin tones
So how do I paint dark skin? I take the same mix from my normal palette, and I just add more burnt umber. That's it.
No new tube. No special recipe that only comes out for one kind of sitter. The yellow ochre is still there, the vermilion is still there, and the ultramarine blue is there when I need it. The only thing I change is the amount of burnt umber.
That is the whole method. It is short because the skin itself is doing the same thing: the same pigments, with more melanin near the surface.
So remember this: dark skin is not a dark tube. It is the same four jobs, with more melanin.
Two people, one palette
Here is how that plays out with two people painted from the same palette.
First, light skin. Just a little burnt umber, because there is very little melanin near the surface. And more of the yellow and the red.
Now dark skin. The same mix, with a lot more burnt umber, because that is where the melanin is. But the yellow is still there. And the red is still there.
Same four ingredients, just different amounts. I do not switch palettes between those two people. I switch proportions. The tubes stay where they are, and only the size of each pile changes.
One tube versus all four
This is the comparison I promised. On the left, dark skin from burnt umber alone. On the right, the same dark built from all four.
Put them side by side and you can see what I mean. The one on the left is just the melanin. The one on the right has the yellow, the red and the blue inside it as well, the way real skin does.
Our skin is the same for everybody. The only difference is how much melanin we have close to the surface. And that is the difference between a dark tube and dark skin.
If you remember one thing from this, remember this: every skin on earth is made of the same four pigments, and my palette has a tube for each one.
What to do with this
At the easel today, mix two small patches of dark skin. Make the first from burnt umber alone. For the second, take your normal skin mix from the same palette and add more burnt umber to it until it reaches the same darkness. Put them side by side and look at what the first one is missing.
I hope this helped. Which skin tone is the hardest for you to mix? Tell me in the comments under the video. I read every comment. The next episode is another lesson on skin tones. 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
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