Oil Painting Tips || Color mixing, mediums, etc

[Music] hi in this video I put together a couple of clips from the videos I post on my patreon page I'll talk about color mix in portraiture share my thoughts and give you some painting tips hope you'll enjoy it the question I get asked almost daily is how to mix colors for portrait painting or how to mix skin tones and even though I've covered this topic many times I want to go in depth one more time and show how I do it so as you may know I used this five main colors burnt umber ultramarine blue cadmium red cadmium yellow pale and titanium white now when I have this colors on my palette I'm gonna premix skin tones I start with mixing darker tones first for darker tones I add a lot of burnt umber and ultramarine blue to the mixture and the lighter the tone gets I add less and less of these colors and mix in more titanium white keep in mind that there are many ways to achieve lifelike flesh tones and we're not limited to this one method but this is what I do and what works for me you'll see me adjusting the colors a lot adding a pinch of this color a bit more of that colour and so on until I'm satisfied with the tone and I'm satisfied with it if it's close enough to the color that I see on the reference picture or if I'm painting from life to the color I see on the models face in front of me overall I'm going to mix about 6 stones from the dark ones to the light darker tones are the colors you see in the shadows mid-tones are the most neutral medium colors and lighter tones are the colors that you see where the light hits the face excluding the highlights this is pretty much self-explanatory but I thought I'd mention it anyways I'm sure you are familiar with a caller will and if you aren't I'm gonna explain how you can use it at least in this one way if you feel like the color you're mixing is too red for example all you have to do is to add the opposite color to make it less red the opposite of red as we can see on the color wheel is green so you have to add a little bit of yellow and blue to the mixture to tone down the redness let me give you another example if your color is too blue you need to add orange so you add red and yellow which together make the orange and do a great job of toning down the blue I understand that this can be a bit confusing to some of you but once you get a grasp of it you know it's a pretty simple concept that can be quite useful [Music] as you can see I leave this clean leftover colors here on the palette and that's because I'm still gonna use them and add some of those colors to the main mixes to create more variety here is the palette that's what it looks like and in a moment I'll show you what it becomes later [Music] okay here it is it's way Messier now and this is how my palette looks like in the process I keep shifting the hues here and there to make the portrait look more lifelike and real and that's all there is to it [Music] for the sake of simplicity of this demonstration I'm gonna put the reference right here close to our painting surface [Music] now it's time to draw the outlines of the eye those outlines are going to serve as a framework for our painting all that we need this initial sketch for is to give us the idea of the proportions and sizes of our subject matter [Music] now when we're done with that let's start painting first of all we will establish the darker tones and then we can go from there [Music] you see me using different brushes and that's not only predicated on the fact that sometimes I need a smaller brush sometimes I need a bigger one but also let me give you an example when you paint some darker tones and then you want to go lighter even if you wipe this brush with a paper towel it is still very hard to get all the dark pigment out of it it's still gonna stay there in the bristles and then it's very easy to pollute the lighter color because the brush is not completely clean so to avoid it you can just switch between different brushes that you have and you can even use some of the brushes for only darker tones some of them for the lighter tones or some of them for like very saturated colors I don't know like find what works for you all I'm doing is giving you the suggestion I'm using the smallest brush I have for this work in a size of zero zero and I'm painting them very lightly with no particular order what I mean by that is some people especially beginners like to paint every eyelash in the same direction same way like they're all twins or something and that turns out looking kind of fake so don't make this mistake [Music] lower eyelashes are usually lighter so I'm using some brownish colors to paint them [Music] so first of all I use standing sit oil as a medium I like liquid as well but I only use it when I want to speed up the drying time for backgrounds obstruction and things of that nature I never use it for portraits because in this case I want my pain to stay wet for as long as possible stand in seed oil is not the most slow drying medium out there but it works great for me so I stuck with it I don't add any medium or paint thinner during the color mixing stage simply because the brand of oil paint that I use has a great consistency to begin with it's creamy and not too stiff most of the professional or rather artist grade oil paints will be like that gamblin oil colors Scapa Leitrim which i use etc etc you might have noticed that I have been painting on frosted acrylic panels this painting is not an exception these panels have a pretty smooth surface which I love but it is also frosted so it has some roughness that helps to create a stronger bond between the paint and the surface what else can I say about it I will also mention that if you are transitioning to painting on smooth surfaces aka wood primed paper some kind of panels etc from ruffling and canvases you will probably miss that texture that canvas keeps you at first that is what I felt when I first tried working on primed paper I believe it's it's been a while though I do love the effect frosted acrylic creates and that due to its transparency I was able to paint some of the background on the other side even before starting the portrait is just interesting and new to me I realized that it's not a very common practice among oil painters but I had this idea and I wanted to try it I'm glad I did thanks to everyone who is a part of my little community on patreon I really appreciate your support I hope you found this video helpful let me know what you think have a wonderful day and I'll see you later [Music]

Channel: Daria Callie

Views: 791,939

Rating: 4.9592943 out of 5

Keywords: oil painting, painting, painting tutorial, oil painting portrait, oil painting tutorial, painting timelapse, painting time-lapse, portrait, how to paint, painting a portrait, how to paint a portrait, oil painting for beginners, portrait painting demo, portrait painting demonstration, portrait oils, oil painting tips, mixing skin tones, mixing flesh tones, mixing colors for oil painting, eye painting

Id: K43ajokf0p8

Length: 10min 9sec (609 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 24 2018