We needed to determine a basic skin tone for our picture. Below shows a chart I made once in a workshop. Each block has a mix of two basic colors (such as raw sienna and permanent rose), then shows what it would look like with a third color (sometimes a fourth) charged in. Sorry these really don't show up well.
For example, the first square is raw sienna and permanent rose with Janets Violet charged in. Second in top row is naples yellow + permanent rose with Janets Violelt. Third is coral + green gold. Last in the top row is quin burnt orange and green gold. So experiment with colors - usually one from the yellow family+one from the orange/red family+a surprise, like veridian, hookers green, Janet's Violet, or verditer.
Think of it like this. If you are baking, you can take four ingredients: flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder, for example. From this BASE you can make a number of things--muffins, bread, cookies, cake, donuts--OK I'm making myself hungry. But you get it. We simply add more or less of one of the ingredients and sometimes other ingredients to make what we want. But the base is pretty much the same.
So make a BASE color that seems close to the skin tones. Then add more of the red family for rosy areas, the addition of a cool for shadowed areas.
For my BASE I chose new gamboge and coral. For other colors I chose quin burnt orange and cerulean blue. Just experimenting.
Some are doing darker skin tones. A golden dark skin tone can be achieved using quin burnt orange or quin burnt sienna with raw sienna and cobalt violet to darken. Less golden could use a base of quin burnt scarlet with burnt umber, shadowed with carbazole violet or even turquoise.. You have to experiment and WRITE DOWN the color choices so you don't have to wonder what you did later.
This is using Fabriana Artistico 140 pound paper. I wet the entire face and hair area and applied the base color to all skin plus a little in the hair line. While wet, I put some blue in the shadowed part of the hair and some on the shadowed side of her face. I did more than I really wanted to, but it's OK. It really will turn out just fine, even though it looks a little weird right now.
After I had skin tone on everything, I could work on the eye. For details in painting the eye, please see the following blog dates: May 2017 and Aug 2018.
Also, for a good youtube on DRAWING the eye, see:
It is pretty long, but very realistic.
OH, and the name of the portrait book I showed in class is Painting Watercolor Portraits that Glow by Jan Kunz.
I am still finishing up the hot press version that I am doing grisailles method. Hope to post that soon.
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