Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Flesh and freckles


After rubbing out the lighter areas of my base flesh color, I'm starting to add deeper values and color.
For portraits I always try to separate the face into three regions of color. It's like thinking of the colors on a traffic light. I try to go amber or a neutral yellow-orange on the region above the eyebrows. Then red for the region below the eyebrows to the bottom of the nose. And finally a greenish blue for the region below the nose. You can make the blue-green more obvious with guys, but it's a good idea to try to be subtle with the girls. This technique really turns the face in three dimensional space.
While the final red wash was still wet on her cheeks, I give it a light spray with the misting bottle. The atomized droplets of water disturbs the underlying wash just enough to give it that freckled look associated with redheads.

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