A Monarch in the hand…….

Here’s a peek over my shoulder at what I have been working on lately….another hand! The first one was holding a butterfly as well and I will give you a look at that in a day or two. This one started out on a grey background and I think I am having an easier time judging the colours of the skin – It’s all about the skin in these paintings.

I started it with a tonal underpainting of a mix of Ivory Black and Yellow Ochre. Then I layered the skin tones on, and as I build up the layers they get thinner and more blended, fine tuning it as I go, using a lot of Acrylic Matt Medium. It is better to dilute your paint with medium rather than water because you may run into problems with flaking if you dilute by more than 1/3 (I could yack on about the molecular structure of Acrylic paint, here, but, I will hold off for another time!)

I am using Anders Zorn’s palette for skin (Cad Red Medium, Ivory Black, Yellow Ochre and Titanium White) Artists -If you use another medium besides Acrylic – you could easily replicate this palette with equivalent colours in your own medium and get a GREAT result, even if your colours are not exact! I have used it in Conte and pastels both of which work well with layering colour and graduated blending. If you are interested in people, faces, skin, it’s a great way to make only a small investment in a new medium and have fun and get a satisfying result….You don’t HAVE to splash out and buy 150 colours in a medium you want to try.

Interestingly, the orange of the Monarch Butterfly’s wings also came from the Zorn Palette – Cad Red and Yellow Ochre are GREAT for Monarch Orange….. I must make a note of that.

So now I will continue on with this one, building up the layers, fine tuning the skin and when I am ready, adding in a different colour for the background…probably some kind of blue as it complements the skin, and the butterfly and orange and blue are such a natural pairing for colour harmony.

Questions? Comments? Anyone with their own thoughts on skin tones?

Thanks for reading!