There is no tube that matches a person, and there is no recipe that matches everyone. Skin colour changes with the individual, with the place on the face, and with the light in the room. A forehead in a warm lamp is not the same note as a jaw in reflected blue from a shirt. The practical route is a small palette and a habit of comparing, not a chart taped to the easel.

A short set of parents

Yellow ochre, a red, a blue and white will carry most studies in opaque paint. Burnt sienna is a useful fifth if the ochre is too mild. The red might be an earth red or a cleaner rose. The blue might be ultramarine. You are not collecting every flesh-coloured convenience colour in the shop. Those tubes are someone else's average, and they fail as soon as the light changes.

A Three-Colour Palette You Can Finish is the wider discipline. For a head, think of ochre, red and blue as the parents, and white as light. Mix a middle note first, the colour you see on a plane that is neither the brightest highlight nor the deepest shadow. Hold it up beside the model. If it is too pink, you added red for the idea of skin rather than for what you see. If it is too green, the blue ran ahead of the observation.

Light before local colour

Name the light in plain words before you mix: warm lamp, cool window, daylight plus a wooden table. A cool light makes the lit planes cooler than memory suggests. A warm light does the opposite. Memory likes a single peach colour. The room rarely agrees. Warm and Cool Colours is the background. On a face the change can be small and still do all the modelling.

Compare planes, not labels. The cheek may be warmer than the temple. The area under the nose may pick up a shirt. None of this requires a theory of types. It requires looking at this person, today. If you are painting yourself in a mirror, remember the mirror can add a slight cast, and the light on your face may not match the light on the palette. Move the palette into the same light.

Shadows are not a darker peach

Taking the lit mixture and adding black is the fastest way to a dirty mask. Shadows on skin are often a step darker and a step shifted in temperature, with some of the local colour still in them. Under a warm light they frequently cool. A bounce from a hand or a collar can warm them again along one edge. Shadow Colour: Studio Temperature Mistakes covers the general fault. On a portrait it shows up immediately, because we are all experts at knowing when a face looks bruised or sooty.

Mix the shadow as its own note. Start from the middle colour, add a little of the complementary direction you can already make, and test again. Too red in the shadow reads as sunburn. Too green reads as illness, even when you only meant to cool the turn. Correct by comparison, in small moves.

Highlights, variety and restraint

Highlights are small and they are not pure white, except on a truly specular point such as a moist eye. A white blob on a forehead chalks the form and destroys the value plan you could have checked with a grey study. Keep the light in the family of the skin, only lighter.

People differ in undertone and in how light or dark the local colour is. Paint the person in front of you, across the range from pale to deep, and do not let one successful mix become the mix you impose on the next sitter. A limited palette still reaches that range if you vary the proportions and the amount of white. Write the proportions in the margin if it helps. Then look again, because the next room will change them.

Frequently asked questions

Should I buy a flesh-tint tube? You can, as a convenience for a single exercise. It will not track changes of light or of person. Learning the mix from ochre, red and blue is slower for an afternoon and more useful for a year.

How do I avoid muddy skin? Use fewer strokes and cleaner brushes. Mud here is usually every parent added in equal amounts, plus white, stirred on the canvas. Mix the note on the palette, place it, and stop.

Is this advice only for oil paint? No. Watercolour asks for the same comparisons, with the paper as the light instead of white paint. Acrylic asks for them too, with less time to fuss. The looking does not change when the binder does.

Steps

Name the light: Say whether the light is warm, cool or mixed before you mix any paint for the face.
Mix a local middle: Make a middle note for this person in this light from ochre, a red and a little blue, then test it.
Shift the shadow separately: Darken and slightly change temperature for the shadow, and compare it with the model, not with a chart.