Oil Color pallet problems, and general concerns with color mixing

[Demo]

Here is a bit of background information. I am currently working on 2 large, (at least the largest I have worked),
paintings at the moment. One is a traditional oil painting, the other is a digital painting that will be on a light box,
both will be displayed as a diptych in a show of my work, date to be announced sometime with in the next year.
The college I am attending has given me a large grant to work throughout the summer.


I am currently working on the Oil painting I'm not very far In but I am running into problems with the color pallet that I would like to achieve.


I would really like to get some feed back from other oil painters, but any and all comments are welcome.


I hope that by posting this I can reach the desired pallet, and in the process provide others with information/ guidance and help others learn from my mistakes and work.



Some objectives I have in mind while working on these paintings.
- Work on keeping a better control of the pallet and overall color scheme of the piece

- Maintain a smooth transition of representation to abstract symbolism

- Express a visual language closer to that of how I draw
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So Right now my current objective is to really focus on fixing up the pallet to achieve a result closer to the reference.

I'm fully aware!!! the the progress of the painting Is absolutely horrendous. There was a quick gray scale value map that I started with just for the general placement
of the facial features and such but my painting professor has pretty much drilled into my head to not overly worry about the value map, for multiple reasons. While I do understand much of his logic
I'm more interested in a more atelier approach, which seems to have a very studied exactness at every stage... anyways





Now from studying the reference compared to my current pallet, I'm seeing that even though I thought my color
pallet was de-saturated enough It still has a very greenish and yellowish tint. The flesh tones seems to get more
saturated near the shadows and needs to move to a warmer purple hue. Another obvious problem is that the darkest
color within the painting is a very saturated blue, even though its of the right value the saturation is pulling it towards
a brighter value and is really flattening out the shadows.

*My current coarse of action Is to wipe down the surface let it tack up, and work on removing more saturation from the face.
I have 2 main concerns.

1. While mixing oils, removing the saturation of the colors they all seem to become a blue-ish tint, I would assume that
because there is a blueish green tint to the canvas that they would appear warmer, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

2. My second and maybe bigger concern is that by removing the saturation from the face my models flesh will look very deadish,
and while the reference isn't the warmest flesh in the world it still looks living.

Thank you for reading and any comments in advance..
I am also posting other images that are inspiration, reference and some of my own work that will go into the piece.

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My work


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Reference and inspiration




1.Color pallet for face

2. Reference for colors for hands with hard light behind

3. I really like how the skin glows in these.


Back to work

[dpaint]

first your using the term palette wong. Your palette is the pigments you choose to mix your colors from. all those colors can be mixed from many different palettes. The best palette for portrait painting is an academic palette
which has a full range of value and color.
I recommend

Ivory Black
Ultramarine Blue
Cobalt Blue
Viridian
Manganese Blue
Raw Umber
Alizarin Crimson
burnt sienna
Cad Red Medium
Cad Red Light
Cad Orange
Yellow Ochre
Cad Yellow Light
Cad lemon
Titanium White

Color accuracy comes from practice mixing your colors. Have you done your color charts with whatever palette you are currently using? If not you will have trouble mixing the proper color no matter what pigments you choose. There is no secret formula for mixing the proper color.

As to approch it is generally better to start with a simple block in and build the head from large masses of light and shadow before placing the features.

[sone_one]

for starters... why did you reverse the lightdirection entirely? i see no use in picking a certain photo as ref, if you are going for the opposite light direction. i might attempt an overpaint when i come home, but this is totally puzzling me, and without understanding your aim, i doubt an op would be of any use to you.

as for the palette if its ment to reproduce the colors in the ref, i think ivory black, titanium white, yellow ochre and a tiny bit of red (i use english red by rembrandt, which could be a bad choice so any pointers on that would be appreciated...dpaint? ) should be enough to reproduce everything thats in there colorwise.

[Elwell]

You could hit every color in the gamut of that first photo with raw umber, mars violet, black, and white (which, incidentally, would be an extremely low chroma RYB palette).

[Demo]

Dpaint b (1) : a particular range, quality, or use of color <- was what I was referring to sorry for the mix up but I do believe the point still got across.

Sone One The direction of light is not really that important, too some degree. I'm only using the flesh tons and carrying them over to the photos I have of my model. Not the best circumstances for going about this but I don't think it should be a huge problem.
Thank you also for your help

Elwell Thank you, I have every thing well most every thing on these list that are getting posted, with the exception of mars violet but I believe I should be able to manage.

Well since the surface is dry I believe its time for a second attempt hopefully It will go better, thank you all progress update later.

[JGoodliff]

skin is a full spectrum surface, I'd push the shadowed areas into a cooler tones, and bring some warmth into the areas closest to us like her lips and nose, warm colours will pull forward whereas cool colours will recede - I use this as a rule but it can of course be broken

you may also want to bring her eyes down a little and watch the left side of her face, it's thinner - or is hair covering it?

best of luck

[sone_one]

Sone One The direction of light is not really that important, too some degree. I'm only using the flesh tons and carrying them over to the photos I have of my model. Not the best circumstances for going about this but I don't think it should be a huge problem.
Thank you also for your help

i see, so you got other ref photos you use for lighting and form? im asking because i see some major problems if it comes to structure and proportions in your painting.

[Demo]

Yeah Sone_one I really messed up some of the structure of the face after the first try with the colors I mixed. But at that point I knew I screwed up so I just applied what I had to see if there was going to be any salvaging any of the colors, anyways it did leave behind somewhat of a nice tint.

anyways spent a good deal of time color mixing for my second time, and here's where I'm at.



Not perfect or even close but slowly getting better. Lots more to fix in the face structure, looks as though the nose mouth and chin needs to com up by about half an inch, so back to work.

[williams73]

yes your rendering has improved fro 1 to current.......the greatest master of dramatic lighting in my opinion and probably 1000's of other artist's is Caravaggio if you haven't, take some time and look at his work

[Demo]

I thought I would post some progress shots still lots of work to be one but it is going better.

[Demo]

Here is another shot of the progress so far I'm in between moods of happiness and disgust over the rendered quality of the face under certain light it looks wonderful and then under others it is terrible ill try to post a better quality photo later to show what i mean. Also I know things look a bit disproportional its the angle of the photo not sooo much the painting. Uggh looking at this photo again makes everything distorted uggh sorry again for the angle



As always comments are very much welcome

[Suncut]

The (our) right eye seems to be placed really weird right now, it's different height from the other eye, and seems to be too far from the nose, and has a weird pointy shape. Also the forehead is huuuge. Maybe you followed a guideline saying the eyes should be halfway down the head and forgot to account for the fact her head is tilted back? I like the colours overall.