Portrait Practice – Color Experiments

head study painted with oils by christine mitzuk
2.5 hours, 8″x10″ gessoed hardboard

Colors used for this head study

  • Perylene Black (Winsor & Newton)
  • Yellow Ochre (Winsor & Newton)
  • Permanent Yellow Light (Rembrandt)
  • Permanent Red Medium (Rembrandt)
  • Permanent Magenta (Winsor & Newton)
  • Permanent Alizarin Crimson (Winsor & Newton)
  • Untramarine Blue (Utrecht)
  • The white was either Utrecht White, or Flemish White by Utrecht. I forgot my usual white at home so bummed some from our Portrait Co-op host. Thanks Frank!

This time I played with Perylene Black (Winsor & Newton). It’s actually a very dark green that’s slightly bluish. It’s also transparent, as opposed to Ivory Black which I usually use which is semi-transparent. (Note, the green shadow is NOT Perylene. It’s a bit of Yellow Ochre + Ultramarine Blue + white. There are a few faint strokes of Perylene on top of the first mixture.)

The Perylene mixed with any of the reds yielded some lovely darks. Throw in a little yellow and the mix shifts to an interesting brown.

I also thought I’d try Magenta in mixing flesh. It gave me some very nice cool notes.

I also gave the Permanent Yellow Light a try. That gave me some very nice peach flesh notes for this model.

And if trying new color combinations wasn’t enough, I started the drawing differently too. This time I used Yellow Ochre tinted with white to do the drawing.