Mixing Peachy Flesh Tones

Portrait by Charles Reid

Last year shortly before the first Sketch Seminar, I first came across the beautiful watercolor portraits by Charles Reid. If you haven't seen his portraits before do yourself a favor and go remedy that at once!

Photos provided by "Watercolour Fanatic"

Until that point I'd been using a water soluble crayon in something like a peach tone for my sketches. There is is just something about the way Reid's colors melt into one another that made me feel like I had to try his method.

After a little digging in search engine results I came upon a video clip where he shares his color recipe. You can watch it here.

washes of this recipe in various intensities

Reid's basic recipe:
2 parts cadimum red
1 part cadimum yellow
dot cerulean blue (worked out)

Now I haven't been working with watercolors very long so there are some colors that just baffle me! Yes, that is to say that I don't own cerulean blue. Instead I subbed my cheap phthalo blue. I think it worked well – when I remembered to work out the pigment before adding it to the mix!

Photo taken from Gurney's Blog Post

I really enjoy using this mix of colors in combination with this guide for color points I found on James Gurney's blog. (Another artist worth investigating!) Of course there is a way to use this guide that looks suspiciously like a clown, but with moderation and enough water things tend to level out. Below is a study I did with Reid's color mix and Gurney's hints.

Even though I still over work my paint relatively often I greatly prefer this method for peachy tones to my crayon. Why? Well, with a dash of yellow ochre or raw sienna can really shake up the tone. Mixing these tones instead of using a pre-made color brick is also great because it gives a gradient between colors that really shows off the benefits of watercolors.

What about you, do you prefer premixed colors or mixing your own? Why? Do you have a favorite peachy recipe? How about other skin tones?

Lighten Up

A few years ago, I decided that I am not that strong at sketching people's likeness and yet my friends were still coming up to me and asking me to paint a portrait of their child. What I discovered was that many of these kids were involved in activities (such as sports and band) where there was plenty of action to convey the child's personality. No longer did I need to show the likeness of the subject and yet everyone knew exactly who was portrayed in the picture. This also allowed me to loosen up my sketch style because I was now trying to capture the emotion of the moment, not the accuracy of a person's face. Sports are really helpful because identities are determined by the number on their jersey since most contact sports require some kind of helmet or head gear. These are a few examples of this looser style.

How does this relate to "Urban Sketching" you might ask? Urban Sketching is the activity of capturing a scene from an urban setting, whether that be architecture, nature (such as parks and forest preserves), people going about their lives (there is a whole list of urban activities that people can be caught doing that are just made for the urban sketcher), modes of transportation and any combination of all of these. Most of the sporting arenas where I have captured these activities have been on college campuses in the Chicagoland area. While these are predominantly studies of the human figure, they are definitely not static images.

All of these sketches were started as pencil roughs, followed by some kind of felt tip marker or brush pen. The only exception is the hockey scene which was painted in acrylics.

Elmhurst College Men's Lacrosse Team

Recreational racquetball matches, Northern Illinois University

The hero of this shot is #24, Tyler Shanks

Master cooking class: student is on the right