How Vermeer Mixed the Girl With a Pearl Earring
Scientists looked inside her paint in 2018. What they found is thick in the light and thin in the shadow.
Most painters look at the Girl with a Pearl Earring and assume Vermeer skin tones came from a secret. A lost recipe, colors no modern shelf can give you. So they go hunting for special tubes, or they decide that kind of skin is out of reach.
Well, this face was painted more than 350 years ago, and for centuries nobody could see inside it. Then in 2018 she was taken off the wall, and scientists looked into her paint, layer by layer. Her skin comes down to five main pigments. Four of those five are on my shelf right now. For the fifth, I use a tube you can still buy today.
I made a video that follows the research through her face in three parts: the lit side, the shadow side, and the little lights. At the end I mix her skin from today's tubes and hold it up next to the painting.
How Vermeer built the painting
Before a single skin color went on, the canvas was covered with a warm light gray. On top of that, Vermeer laid in the picture with dark brown and blacks, in big, quick strokes, with a few thin dark lines for the shapes.
Then he painted from the back to the front. The background and the skin first, then the jacket, the scarf, and the pearl at the very end. My order is a little different. Most of the time I paint the background, then the clothes, and the skin last.
The lit side of Vermeer skin tones: cream, then pink
The lit side of her face is painted in two layers. The first is a cream color: lead white, a yellow earth, and a little red lake.
A red lake is a transparent red. His was probably made from cochineal, a tiny insect. Today I use scarlet lake for it.
When I mix that first layer, it is lead white and yellow ochre with just a little of the red. It is not pink yet. It is a warm cream, almost the color of the light falling on her.
On top goes the second layer, a vivid pink of lead white and vermilion, a little red lake, and a little yellow. On the lit side there is more vermilion than yellow.
And it is thick. The scientists measured the lit side at about four times thicker than the shadow side. All together, it is about as thick as a sheet of paper.
The same heart as my everyday skin mix
My own everyday skin mix is built on yellow ochre, vermilion and lead white. So more than 350 years later, the heart of the mix is still the same: a white, yellow ochre and vermilion.
The light on her face is thick, warm, and in two layers. The shadow side is the opposite. It is thin, almost like a breath of paint, and it is where the black is.
The shadow side: thin, over a warm gray
In the shadow, the paint is so thin that the warm gray of the canvas still works through it. The scientists found three very thin layers, together about a quarter of the lit side.
In the halftones, between the light and the shadow, there is a gray or brown layer underneath with a thin layer of skin color on top. So the darker layer underneath does part of the work.
The layers underneath are dark ones: bone black, red lake and vermilion. So yes, there is black in her face. Black with two reds, so the shadow gets darker but stays full of red. That is a good lesson for us. A shadow doesn't have to come out of a brown tube.
On top of the dark, the last shadow layer is what painters call a scumble: a thin light layer over a dark one. In her shadow it is lead white, a yellow earth, red lake, vermilion and a little bone black, with more yellow and less vermilion than the lit side.
For the scumble I take very little paint on a dry brush and drag it over the dark. Not to cover it. Just enough to soften it.
The scientists think he blended the edges by softly dragging the wet paint with a dry brush. They even found brush hairs stuck in the paint.
No green earth in her face
You may have heard that Vermeer painted his skin shadows with green earth. In some of his later paintings, he did.
Well, in her face the scientists found no green earth at all. Her shadow is black, a yellow earth and reds.
Black and a yellow earth are the same pair I use for what I call army green. But in her shadow they are never alone. They are mixed with two reds, so the shadow stays darker and warmer. That is how I paint shadows in my studio too.
The little lights: her lips, her eyes and the pearl
Her lips were built in four steps. First, a red-brown layer with red lake in it. Then a dark pink of vermilion, a little lead white, red lake and a little earth. Then a lighter pink. Last, a few small dots of white, probably once the rest was dry. The red lake shows up more strongly in her lips than anywhere else in her face.
For lips, on my palette, I use Indian red, white and a tad of viridian. The same idea: lips are never just a bright red and white.
In her eyes, the colored part is a circle of dark brown earth with a thin light layer over it. Around the eye, the skin is a soft pink of lead white and vermilion. Each little light is two small dots of white, put on in two stages, probably on dry paint.
The pearl, the most famous thing in the painting, is two brushstrokes. No outline, not even a hook to hang it from her ear. First, a thin light layer of white over the shadow of her skin. Then one thick dot of white for the highlight. That's all it took.
All three follow the same idea. The brightest lights go on last, thick, on top of paint that's already dry. Wet paint on dry paint always keeps its edge, which is part of why that little dot looks so sharp and so bright. Put a highlight into wet paint and it melts into what's under it. Wait until the paint below is dry, then put the light on top.
Her skin from today's tubes
This is how I mix her two sides from tubes you can buy today:
For the lit side: lead white, yellow ochre and vermilion, with a little scarlet lake.
For the shadow side: bone black with scarlet lake and vermilion, and a little of the yellow and the white.
I don't always paint in separate layers like Vermeer did. These days I work more freely, and the skin mix is on my palette from the very first layer. But you can use this idea, thick in the light and thin in the shadow, whichever way you paint.
At the end of the video I hold both mixes up next to her face. It is not a copy of her face. It is the same idea, with today's tubes.
What to do with this
Try it on one small study today. Lay a thin shadow of bone black, scarlet lake and vermilion over a warm gray. Make the light thick and warm with lead white, yellow ochre and vermilion. Then wait until the paint below is dry and put the brightest light on last.
I hope this helped. Which master's palette should we open next? Tell me in the comments under the video - I read every comment. The next one is how I paint the lit side and the shadow side on a real portrait. 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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