BEST OIL PAINTS FOR PORTRAITS SKIN

The one colour I can’t live without at the moment is sap green. I just have to add a little more when mixing with better quality colours as they have more pigment in them. This isn’t the best quality paint but its the right hue for my work. Sap green was originally a lake pigment made from unripe Buckthorn berries. I also have an old tube of water-mixable Duo Aqua sap green which I can use as its also warmish. I have just been going through what I already have in my paints box. The sap green I generally use is the Winsor and Newton Winton variety, but I’m sure there are a lot of other ones out there including the Lukas one. I painted this shortly after I did a glazing workshop with Louis Smith in Manchester and it was a revelation for me. It served this purpose in the portrait painting shown. The Sap Green I worked with when I studied with Louis Smith was one of the warmest greens I had painted with (Lukas studio oils), and I discovered mixing with Alizarin Crimson is brilliant for cooling down reds in shadow tones. Michael Harding’s website says that it would be ideal for the plein air painter which is true. It is good for cooler shades and hues but I haven’t yet been bold enough to use it in a portrait. I love Michael Harding’s oil paints and I love his Sap Green, but it doesn’t have the particular warm quality I am generally after when I reach for it, in the context I want it. There a lots of different Sap Greens made by different oil paint manufacturers as each develops their paints in their own way. Maybe greenish is too strong a word (it might not be a word) but generally when I paint shadows there are always greens silently working their magic.

BEST OIL PAINTS FOR PORTRAITS SKIN

skin in shadow is invariably greenish in hue.

People generally aren’t that green, but they are greener than you might imagine. Red and green are complementary colours so together they neutralise each other. Perhaps its difficult to tell, but the above detail of a portrait painting was made possible with the invaluable Sap Green and even though impossible to see really its all over it! Sap Green cools reds. Sap Green is a generic name for a warm, deep green.

Best oil paints for portraits