Shades of Expression

African-born artist and educator Samuel Adoquei discusses the subtleties and nuances of painting skin tones in art

- Samuel Adoquei

When you look around at big cities across the globe, you will see our advancing universe and the growing skin tones everywhere, as well as the new creative challenges and advantages it offers for today's portrait painter. Artists can no longer idealize the unique beauties evolving around us. We are no longer limited with paints we have the colors to paint almost any figure, so we need to take advantage of our new skills, styles and movements to help us paint our beautiful growing skin tones. I hope the tips in this article help you enjoy our changing universe, for the age of beautiful skin tones is here. May colorists and figurative painters share the beauty they see when they paint people. Below, I'll be discussing ideas and tips to help today's portrait painters.

SKIN TONES AND FLESH TONES

Skin tones, sometimes called complexion, refers to the actual color of a sitter's skin (black, brown, red, yellow, white, etc.). In art we often call this local color. Flesh tones, on the other hand, refer to the different nuances within the actual color. Within the black, brown, red, yellow or white skin color, there are several subtle combinations, or nuances, that are known as flesh tones. Like the yin and yang idea, many colors come together to make one color, and in one color exists many different colors. A sum of those nuances makes a local color.