6 Basic Skin Types

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While there is a vast array of beautiful people throughout the world and a multitude of ethnic backgrounds, I find it helpful to group them into 6 basic skin types in order to approach the process of painting skin tones in a pastel portrait. Here is a chart I've created representing the 6 basic skin types; pale, fair, medium, olive, naturally brown, and very dark brown/black. My portrait palette box is organized to represent all of these skin types so that I'm always prepared for any skin type I may encounter. Samples of each skin type are represented below. 

If you're passionate about honing your skills in drawing realistic and expressive skin tones, we invite you to join our Painterly Portraits Course. In this comprehensive course, we delve deeply into the art of capturing various hair, skin tones, and facial features with pastels to give your portraits the best photo-realistic look.

My Secondary Palette Box

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In my last post I shared how I set up my Pastel Palette for Portraits today I want to dive into my secondary setup.

This is my secondary palette box. This box of six rows is organized by color families from left to right. Beginning at the left and moving right you'll see cool violet/warm violet, red and orange, yellow/warm green,  green/blue-green, blue, and finishing with neutral grays. As always, I've placed light values at the top, and dark values at the bottom. This palette is wonderful for backgrounds for my portrait subjects as well as just about anything else from still life to landscape. My compliments to John Heilman for the great travel box from HeilmanDesigns.com

In our Painterly Portrait course we not only talk about how to create amazing portraits using pastels but we also talk about efficiency strategies such as this to make your painting time fun and stress-free.

My Portrait Palette Box

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This is my pastel portrait palette, organized by value and color, according to the 6 basic skin types. More on that in another post. Along with the rich soft pastels, there are small batches of hard pastels which have been sharpened to a point and organized in groups of neutral grays (far right), cool flesh tones (right), warm flesh tones (center right), and warm earth tones (upper left) within the box as well. I find these very useful for the small details of the face. As you can see, light values are at the top representing "tints", and dark values are at the bottom representing "shades". Neutral values are known as "tones". Compliments to John Heilman for the Original Box from HeilmanDesigns.com.

In our Painterly Portrait course we not only talk about how to create amazing portraits using pastels but we also talk about efficiency strategies such as this to make your painting time fun and stress-free.