Painting Beautiful Skin Tones with Color & Light [Hardcover]

Chris Saper (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 2001

Artists constantly tell us that they need guidance for rendering skin tones in their portraiture. This book helps them overcome this elusive challenge by providing a clear set of easy-to-follow principles for painting a variety of skin tones in three major mediums--oil, pastel and watercolor. The first chapter is rooted in the basics, showing artists how to recognize and use the five major elements of painting: drawing, value, color, composition and edges. From there, artists learn how to work with light, shadow and color to effectively capture the beautiful skin tones of various ethnic groups, including Caucasian, Asian, African-American and Hispanic. Next, artists discover how to execute the principles learned, using detailed instruction for color selection, mixing and application. Four mini-demos, three long demos and many examples illustrate the lessons. Artists will benefit from advice on shooting and choosing photographs to paint, how to edit their compositions and work past their limitations.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

A generation ago, books on portrait painting focused almost exclusively on Caucasians. James Horton was one of the first popular writers to explore the full range of color differences in his How To Paint Skin Tones (LJ 3/15/96). Saper here presents a similar volume that does not markedly improve on Horton's. Like Horton, Saper, whose portraits are held in private and corporate collections, sets out principles for painting a full variety of skin tones in several media, including oil, pastel, and watercolor. Both authors give advice on shooting and choosing photographs as references. Libraries that already have Horton's volume on the shelves can pass on this. For those that don't, Saper's book is an essential purchase.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Chris Saper's portraits are currently held in private and corporate collections throughout the US and Canada. Her award-winning work has been featured in several books, including The Best of Portrait Painting. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: North Light Books (September 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1581801637
• ISBN-13: 978-1581801637
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 8.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #33,551 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #48 in Books > Arts & Photography > Painting

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A GEM OF A BOOK!, March 18, 2002

By 

Margaret (Upstate, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Painting Beautiful Skin Tones with Color & Light (Hardcover)

After poring through scores of art books for the many years, it doesn't take me long to spot a good one. When Chris Saper's book arrived from Amazon and I flipped through page after page of stunning illustrations, I knew I'd found a gem!

But it's not a mere coffee table book, though the paintings are beautiful enough to merit that, it's also a guide to deciphering what makes a portrait work. And what doesn't.

After years of painting portraits, I am still confounded by color temperatures. Is that shadow warm or cool. How about that filtered sunlight? I can change my mind a dozen times. Saper's clear and sensible explanations on how to determine color temperature was like being handed a map to the hidden treasure. She shows a before and after that really drives home her points. The section on color harmonies, which includes dealing with the background, clothing and props, is another gem that resolves many issues aspiring portrait artists struggle over. Other portrait books I've read only gloss over these key areas.

Saper's demonstrations employ a variety of races, but she somehow manages to make each one useful even if you think you'll never have the chance to paint people of that race. (But after seeing hers, you'll want to.) It has to do with her explanations for choices of background, poses, props and color balance, and also seeing how well it works out on the canvas or paper.

Most artists, myelf included, out of necessity rely on photo reference material that unfortunately is far from accurate, even though it may appear to be so. Saper skillfully unravels the tangle of pitfalls one encounters here: depth of field lies, value clumping, color distortion. She directs us on how to handle and compensate for these problems. Other books address this, but not with as much insight.

It amazes me to think I might have missed out on this wonderful addition to my library if I had relied on the Library Journal review quoted above by Amazon. The reviewer, obviously not an artist, said Saper's book does not markedly improve on what was covered in James Horton's book, How to Paint Skin Tones, adding that if you have his book you can pass on Sapers. Wrong! I have Horton's book and have been so frustrated by it. He himself has created some great portraits, but he doesn't tell you how in his book. He offers formulae for creating skin tones that are simplistic and rely on skin deadening colors. Unbelievably the suggested colors do not vary whether you are painting in oil, acrylic, pastel or watercolor. The portrait demonstrations often failed at even getting a good likeness. The watercolors looked like they were done by a novice. There simply is no comparison with Saper's book, despite the similarity of titles.

I'm glad I did my own research, including visiting her website, which gives an idea of her work and style. But surprisingly, the book has even better illustrations of her work. North Light Books did an incredible job with the color plates. Many books lose it from one part of a demonstration to the next, making it impossible to figure out what changes the artist made. Not so with Saper's book. And the close-ups of changes she makes are very helpful. By the way, the illustrations in the book are much better than on the featured cover for some reason.

I can't imagine you would regret purchasing this book. The illustrations alone are worth the price.

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars highly motivational !, February 13, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Painting Beautiful Skin Tones with Color & Light (Hardcover)

I bought this book based on the reviews so I think it is just right to give my own feed-back now.
If you are into portraits in whatever medium and you can only afford one book, buy this one, because if gives you more (unlike the title suggests) than just tips about skin colours. The introduction about the five elements in painting (drawing, value, colour, edges and composition) is clearer and more practical than in many other books I have ordered (I ordered 7 art instruction books in total). For example, Chris Saper presents colours theoretically with a colour wheel and the definition of the terms hue, intensity, but also gives you practical advice on which colours to buy first to make your palette and on how to mix them to make the different skin colours (hispanic, caucasian, black/african, asian/pacific). She even gives you a different receipe for mixing colours whether you're painting a brunette, redhead or blond type caucasian. Better than others she explains you the difference between cool and warm shadows, the colour and temperature of light and shadow, colour harmony and more importantly the three fundamental problems to overcome when working from photographs. The other books I've ordered that dealt with these items, did it often in a less accessible, practical or complete way. The second half of the book gives you mini-demonstrations and step by step demonstrations always with a materials list and colour reference.
The book doesn't explain you how to draw portraits, so you should already have acquired some ease at that in order to benefit completely from this book, because it is of course useless to know how to colour a face if you can't draw that face in the first place ! Then again, in my opinion, the drawing is the lesser important part because you could just transfer the contours from a picture and still make it artistically worthwile by your composition and use of colour. That's why I would rather buy a book like this one than one about how to draw faces if I could afford just one.
I you want to get even further into the matter of portraiting I would recommend the book "the Artist's complete guide to facial expression" of Gary Faigin that not only gives you a hint on how the facial muscles are related one another to form our expressions but also gives you a very complete explanation of the proportions of the head, the skull, the eyes, and the position of the gaze in different situations and positions that will help you draw faces more realistically and internally coherent.
If you want advice about design & composition about more than just portraiting and just one artist's point of view, I recommend "design & composition secrets of professional artists" from international artists.

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Book in my Art Library., September 10, 2002

By 

"ronintel" (Suttons Bay, MI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Painting Beautiful Skin Tones with Color & Light (Hardcover)

Here are a few quotes in Chris Sapers' book that changed my view point on how to chose the correct colors in any painting.

"Painting beautiful skin tones has more to do with understanding color and the way it is affected by light than any other factor."

"Light lends its color temperature to everything it touches."

"Everything left in shadow takes on the opposite temperature."

"Light carries the color in a painting, but shadows carry the painting."

The high key of her book is dealing with various light sources and determining the colors to use in both light and shadow. If you think about it, with out light you can not have color. Plus notes on compositions, edges, pallete, and much more. Chapter 3 talks about "The Local Color of Skin: A Question of Orange."

When I was required to write a report on portait painting for college, I have chosen Chris Sapers book over 40 some art books that I bought from Amazon.com with 4 and 5 star ratings. The main reason, her book was the most useful, informative, compact and well written.