Painting Shadows on a Female Nude--Gray or Brown?

[Ong]

I am shadowing and shading a 100% female nude and I am wondering how best to achieve the final touches of dark shadow around the nose, behind the bent knees and elbows, eyes, blond hairline, and the body creases.

I airbrushed Tamiya Skin Tone to give the figure a peach base and I then proceeded to shade with Flesh Wash and Ink, giving the shade a subtle dark brown tint. Now I'm wondering if I should add Gray Wash and Ink to the arm pits and behind the knees as a kind of line bordering.

My concern is that adding gray shades would make the figure appear so contrasted, older and make the skin look "dead," and yet when I look at real nude paintings and photos, artists do use light gray. Is gray shading best used when the person is indoors and brown shading best used in the sunny outdoors? Would gray shading be mistaken for body hair?

The peach flesh tone is so subtle that with any color mistake, I can't respray the Tamiya Skin Tone base coat without messing up the entire highlighting and shading of the figure.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Steve Edwards]

Try mixing your flesh shading dark tone with green? It's a grey, but not a dead flat grey.

That's something like veridian green mixed into the skin tone colour. Best of luck!

 

[Mike the Swede]

I would try to use purple/pinkish tones, and build it up carefully. It all depends how you want to portrait the woman, what age, social status, period in history, etc. A female aristocrat from the 18th century would have quite a different complexion compared to a farmer from the same period...

 

[kagemusha]

Not sure...but this might help with ideas...first one in oils...second one airbrushed acrylics for body...

https://www.planetfigure.com/threads/nuts-planet-martina.116904/

https://www.planetfigure.com/threads/dark-elf-assassin.65411/

Ron

 

[fogie]

The important thing to remember is to mix a warm tone ...grey, brown, touch of
crimson, whatever - just keep it warm and blend it in.

Mike

 

[captnenglish]

I would try to use purple/pinkish tones, and build it up carefully. It all depends how you want to portrait the woman, what age, social status, period in history, etc. A female aristocrat from the 18th century would have quite a different complexion compared to a farmer from the same period...

Brilliant answer

 

[Lucas Ferron]

If I may add to the discussion, I recommend reading this article:
https://www.artistsnetwork.com/art-techniques/fleshtones-and-color-temperature/

Also, there's no 'skin color' both because skin has a lot of different colors (greens, oranges, reds, whites, blacks, violets, blues, etc) and because color is always a function of light and environment.
You would use wildly different paints to paint the skin of the same person in different environments and under different light conditions.

I think a good 'trick' is to make the highlights more influenced by the ambient light, so if your subject is under a neutral white light your highlights will move towards neutral de-saturated colors. check vallejo's pale skin as an example, in some 'recipes' pale skin comes after sunny skin tone, a more saturated and organge-yellow color.
On the other hand, shadows tend to be more influenced by the surrounding environment. Clothing, the ground, furniture, other people, objects, these things will impact which hues will show up in your shadows.
Finally, depending on the body part you'll have different color profiles. We're used to using reddish tones to the cheecks because it's a highly vascularized.


uuuh... finally (part 2), if you're worried about ending up with a dead-looking skin, add more red/magenta to the transitions between the midtones and the shadows. This is a tip I got from this video: