ART – Practicing Painting Skin

Since skin is so difficult to get right, I thought I’d practice by painting a color study a shirtless Bruce Lee. Once again, I limited myself to doing this study using only one brush size.

This helps me, not get into all the details and allows me to see the main colors and shapes.  If I can succeed in making the study look like what it is, without the details, I’m on the right track.

The foot he’s standing on was cut off in the reference photo I was using. I didn’t feel comfortable making it up so I left it alone.

There’s an awful lot more colors in a skin than “peach” or “dark browns.” When studying the reference photo I saw lots of reds and dark reds in the shadows.

They weren’t quite brown.  There where some browns but mostly reds.

You can see the colors I thought I saw in the reference photo above the study.  I didn’t use most of those colors. I didn’t touch any of the purples or bright reds.

I usually see a lot of purples and blues in skin shadows but not this time.

I’d like to say I’m starting to get the hang of things.  I might do one or two more skin studies and then try to do a finished portrait.

That will be the test to see how much I’ve learned by doing these studies.