How to paint realistic skin tones in watercolour

Hi it's Anna Mason, and in this watercolour tip video I wanted so show you how I achieved
the lifelike texture to this realistic hand holding a brush.
I usually paint botanical or wildlife subjects but my painting technique can work equally
well when painting people - especially when painting in lots of detail like with this
hand. As usual I worked from a photograph so I could see all the detail and
have the lighting totally fixed. I created a pencil outline of the hand including the major wrinkles and fingernails.
The first stage of the painting was to build up the tonal range within the hand.
I started with a super pale wash which was a match to
the lightest highlights within the skin - using my brown paint with masses of water I applied
the mix everywhere in the hand. Then once that was dry I applied a layer that was just
a little darker with some yellow in with the brown - covering everywhere except for the
lightest tone highlights and also leaving the fingernails which were a slightly different
colour. Then I painted the lightest colours within the brush too.
With my method, the next stage is to go in with the very darkest tones within the subject.
With this hand that requires some bravery as the darkest tones are relatively really
dark in some of the creases. It looks like I've taken the mix way too dark, but that's
just because we're seeing it next to the lightest tones we've already painted. By painting the darkest
tones straight away, and matching that colour as best I can, it makes it easier to paint
the darker midtones which are the shadow areas that connect up with the darkest creases.
I used a brown and pink combination here, a little more watery than my darkest tone
mix. Again, it looks REALLY dark compared to the lightest tones, but trust me, it will
look right once I work on the midtones. In fact, as the mix dried, I could see it wasn't
quite dark enough in some places to connect up properly with the darkest tones I painted
before, so I apply another layer to a few areas.
Next I use a brown, yellow and pink mix at a more watery consistency to work my way up
the tonal range into the mid midtones. I overlap into the darker midtones I painted before
to create smoother transitions there. I then adjusted the mix to add more yellow
to work into other parts of the midtones before switching down to a smaller brush to work
around the fingernails. Again, I applied another layer to those areas I thought needed darkening
once the paint had dried off, as watercolour so often dries a little lighter than it appears
when wet. Next, I used a really watery and quite orange coloured mix to work on the lighter
midtones and to smooth any transitions into the mid midtones too.
As I compared my painting with the photo, and because of the way that tone is relative,
I could see that, as it dried, far from being too dark in the darkest tones, now the midtones
were painted, the darkest tones needed darkening even more.
So then in turn I adjusted the darker midtones with another layer to them to bring them back
in balance and then I did the same with the mid midtones, also making sure that I began
to add a little more detail with my brush at this stage. Then in turn darkening the
mid midtones revealed to me that I could again darken the lighter midtones a fraction with
my paler and more yellow mix after painting in and therefore darkening the fingernails
and the black brush, I could yet again see that I needed to darken up my darkest tones
again, and then work through the darker, mid and lighter midtones in order to get the hand
back in balance. Once I was happy with how it was looking tonally
I used my smallest brush to paint in extra detail to the hand, making sure the paint
underneath was dry so the markings were kept crisp. This had the effect of darkening the
hand overall so yet again I had to darken up my darkest tones EVEN more. Would you have
predicted that back at the start? Hopefully you can see that going in with the darkest
tones really early on was super helpful to this process. If I had simply worked on the
midtones to begin with, by layering up watery mixes, I would have really struggled to get
the darkest tones as dark as they should be for realism because I'd have had nothing dark
on the paper to compare them to. A full video class of this hand is available
now in my online School. If you've enjoyed this tip video, please subscribe
to my YouTube channel and I'd love it if you'd share this video with your friends.
And if you'd like to take one of my tried and tested video classes FOR FREE, come on
over to AnnaMasonArt.com where you'll find even more
resources to help you pick up your brush and paint the way you've always wanted to.
Remember, you won't improve your painting unless you MAKE the time to paint. So be sure
to schedule in some me-time this week and paint something YOU love.
Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you soon with another tip for creating watercolours
with 'wow'!

How to paint realistic skin tones in watercolour

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